It was different prior to the mid-90's and the 80's (despite much more primitive tech) were even more fun. Two things happened around the same time: Bill Gates became the worlds richest man (and a household name) and a bunch of college dropouts started becoming overnight multi-millionaires (at least) with the dot com explosion which was well publicized. Prior to that, sure there was good money to be made in some areas of tech[1], but many were driven by interest rather than a career path and most non-tech people just regarded computers as those things they didn't understand. Most business people regarded computers as fancy calculators that did the accounting and it was hella-hard to even get them to learn about spreadsheets. So geeks were pretty much left alone and programming wasn't seen as the mail room job on the path to getting rich it is today.

In that environment, a lot of adults were willing to give technically minded kids at least some amount of their time because the only reason most of us (kids, at the time) were asking questions was because we just wanted to understand how all this stuff worked for fun rather than working on a get rich quick scheme. I also suspect the adults found this enthusiasm more interesting than the general disdain they probably experienced at the office.

[1] As in, put in some time and develop an area of expertise that someone valued... then you could start making money. Most college grads were viewed as fairly useless for their first few years out of school and their salaries reflected that.