I fixed my mum's computer a few years back (cleaned up some adware and other stuff that was making it awful to use) and did a bunch of virus scans and cleanup etc. After a while she asked "Is this what you do for a job?"
The conception of what happens inside our industry just isn't present in the wider population, and I imagine we're not unique in that.
Yes, this is a thing we see over and over. With all this extra access to learning and advancements in fields, that previous generations didn't have, there's a bit of a gap in truly understanding the complexities of various fields. We see this attitude a lot that kind of assumes anyone who isn't digging ditches is playing dress up, and anyone could put on the outfit and do it.
That's why we have things like anti-vax, and people taking these incredibly simplistic views of complex fields. Assuming that anyone who puts on a lab coat can have the same valid medical understanding as the field that has been learning for hundreds of years and learned how to condense that down into a few years of school and an internship.
It's the same reason older generations think you can just show up on time and move to the top of your field, sure it helps, but catching up to the baseline of knowledge in a lot of fields is a huge gap, you don't just sweep the floor in a factory anymore and learn how to program the robots over serial port. There's a big jump there that didn't used to exist. (though I assume there was a similar gap in the industrial revolution when we started mechanizing work).
People can't even wrap their mind around real automation, they still assume it's going to be mechanization from the industrial revolution with computers. And there's so much else in this industry that people can't even understand that affects them in every day life situations.
> People can't even wrap their mind around real automation, they still assume it's going to be mechanization from the industrial revolution with computers. And there's so much else in this industry that people can't even understand that affects them in every day life situations.
The conception of what happens inside our industry just isn't present in the wider population, and I imagine we're not unique in that.