Tangentially in the 90's one of my high school classmates got his masters in physics and was working on a PhD in electrical engineering when his research professor had him working on software analyzing state of Texas forestry data ( I thought this was a weird cross pollination). He preferred software to the difficult career path ahead for staying in physics (compete for work in labs /PhD/research/tenure or teaching until tenure) and after getting his PhD worked his way up from programmer to CTO of software companies in Austin.