I found a really nice spot working in a developer enablement / platform engineering role. You can continue to be condescending to average developers and then steer them in the right direction!

I think it helps to think of "high achiever" as PR spin for the go-to status/prestige careers for children from affluent and connected families. Whatever that is at the time.

If we wanted to call someone in software a "high achiever", I suppose it could be used to describe someone who breaks the class barrier, to get the affluent go-to status career. Despite whatever affluence-biased gatekeeping the affluent established once they took it over.

While many people in CS that go to FAANG, et. al are high-achievers, most are the cohort of those people interested in science and technical work more than social focused work. Much bigger overlap with pre-med defectors. Also we had plenty of "anti-social" kids, but interestingly they achieved less and were more likely to work at a small regional company after graduating than a SV tech firm.

Why? Are you saying that person with good social skills can't work as a dev? I don't see the connection.

It's tough to stay motivated and learn constantly when you don't like engineering and coding...