Do you think this has changed from say 10 or 20 years ago? To me, I don't get the sense that there has been shift in the social definition of success. Maybe I'm missing something?
Yes, I do.
The goal is roughly the same: financial security, a good home, as much of a family as one cares to raise.
But for basically my entire life as a middle-aged American, there was a well-lit path to that goal:
1. Do good in high school.
2. Go to a university and get some four year degree. Obviously some degrees are duds, but basically any of them was considered a worthwhile investment.
3. Get a white collar job doing something intellectual. Make a decent salary at a stable company. Change jobs periodically as needed.
Now:
1. Doing well in high school is still important, but it is very easy for kids to get good grades using AI while not actually learning anything and not realizing they are setting themselves up for hardship.
2. College is so expensive now that determining which college and which degree is actually a sound financial investment is very hard. An 18 year-old-kid is being asked to make a financial choice with life-long consequences at a point when they have none of the expertise about their long-term goals to know what to do.
3. AI will very likely eliminate many of these jobs. People will be competing for fewer and fewer jobs and who knows what on your resume will actually help you stand out? Also, most of the blue collar jobs are already gone, either automated away (ag) or moved overseas (manufacturing).
There was also a sense in the US that even if the government wasn't great, it was at least functional and a source of relative stability run by somewhat mature adults. That is clearly no longer the case at the federal level.
My overall point is that what's happening in SWE right now is not happening (yet?) in other fields. And so we can't extrapolate from SWE experience to wider social experiance.