> There's a whole real-life social network out there, and they definitely aren't inviting the programmers.
I'm not sure if someone in your position is in the right position to be making this conclusion, if only because your lack of experience of social status (or those of people who you know who share your vocation) doesn't prove the vocation has any causality on social status. If there is a real-life "social network" out there, and "the programmers" (of which you are one, presumably) aren't getting invited, what is the inference to draw there? That programming is inherently low status, or that many low status people are in the vocation?
To give a counterexample, much of my career has been "just a programmer", but I have never had issues building close friendships with investors, executives, musicians, actors, and other well connected people. But elite private social clubs and organizations? Dinner parties with politicians? That's all passé. That's what people who _want_ to signal high status but actually can't do. And all of the politicians and investors follow the trailblazers who are scaling creative collectives and entrepreneurship federations who are in...you guessed it, my friend group.
As I have gotten older, I have become increasingly annoyed with the "programming is a low status" vocation trope. It's incredibly naive and simplistic. You think other vocations are higher status? Your friend who is a barrister isn't high status. He looks high status to you because you've never seen what truly high status is. That isn't a dig at you; rather, it's an invitation. Reserve your judgment of the world and how it works until you actually meet and party with these billionaires, politicians, and inheritors of nobility/trust fund wealth.
Having gone to college with these folks and having made friends with them, I'll tell you that the way they work is a lot different than what you think. They are almost allergic to these vocations that you would think of as "high-status" because they think these people are upper-middle class try-hards who are simply lame. They want cool artists, musicians, photographers, club promoters, entrepreneurs and other exploration minded folks as friends. Money and vocation can't buy cool. And programmers can be very cool. But you'd have to try and figure out what that means. It usually means you have to follow more of the hacker ethos than the academia ethos. You have to have a little bit of a piratical penchant for creative destruction.