If anything, IT is the outlier in "well-paid office jobs which garner lots of respect".
I used to look at engineers and think I missed out by not going down that road. Fast forward a few years and it turns out most engineers I talk to see the tech industry as being a much better draw (higher salaries, more jobs, etc).
That is a relatively modern thing - I thought IT was relatively unrespected even 20 years ago, although I am not in the US, so maybe different there. I suspect the change was occurring about when Zuckerberg became wealthy, maybe late 00’s?
It is fucking bizarre to me seeing “geek” go mainstream (although commercialised geek is definitely different from traditional geek - maybe even incompatibly so?).