Computer programmers have parents who are computer programmers at a rate 6 times the rest of the population. This is higher than most of the jobs on our list.
My first encounter with a computer was at her workplace in the 70s, when I was on a school holiday not observed by her work, and she had no babysitter. By that time, she was programming in FORTRAN and no longer moving jumpers. I remember that she sat me down in front of an old teletype terminal in the computer room and I got to play "Colossal Cave Adventure" all day. I was totally hooked, and I think she had to drag me away.. I still cringe at how much paper my day of exploring the cave must have wasted. After years of begging and pleading, we got our first home computer a few years later (Apple II clone, the Franklin Ace 1000), and I've been programming ever since.
Most people in my town were not exposed to computers outside of limited encounters at school. I think that day in my Mom's office was what got me hooked on computers, and what started me on my career path.
If one of your parents is a programmer, it's easy to go down the rabbit hole.
Plus it's way cool since you can impress your kiddie friends.
"So you want to become a plumber, but with APIs and data instead of pipes and water?"
Being a farmer myself, I don't think I have ever met a fellow farmer who didn't also have parents in the business. In my experience, the hurdles of getting into the role (required capital, knowledge, etc.) in this day in age seem insurmountable without family help. While anecdotal, I find it difficult to believe it is that close to computer programmers, where first generation workers appear to be quite common.
I was never going to be anything else than a programmer, although it took me a while to realise it. :)
Today I have a son age 7 and he's on Tynker, and Dash & Dot. I reckon programming is going to be more of a skill to have which can then become the basis for other engineering things, we'll see I guess - but he'll have that from an early age at least.
(FWIW, I was so impressed to see Tynker introduce pub sub events in their courses early on. A lot of work places could do well to use such patterns..)
Software developers, applications and systems software have parents who are software developers, applications and systems software at a rate 9 times the rest of the population.
Kind of undercuts the "self-made" programmer meritocracy that seems to be a prevelant idea though.
[1] https://books.google.de/books?id=nDWPW9uwZPAC&lpg=PA295&ots=...
The numbers are supposed to based on the child generation. If the numbers were based on the parent generation ("likelihood of passing down job preference") then a growing field should indeed increase the likelihood.
If we denote the event "Child is a programmer" by C and the event "A parent is a programmer." by P, then the sentence "Computer programmers have parents who are computer programmers at a rate 6 times the rest of the population." can be expressed in terms of probability as P(P|C)/P(P) = 6. Bayes' rule tells us that P(P|C) = P(C|P)P(P)/P(C), so the sentence is equivalent to P(C|P)/P(C) or "Parents who are computer programmers have children who are computer programmers at a rate 6 times the rest of the population."
It doesn't matter whether you are looking at the child generation or the parent generation, the heritability relative to the general population will come out to the same number. A growing field may increase the P(C|P) part of the ratio, but it will also increase P(C) in general, so it is not clear whether the relative measurement will change at all, and in which direction.