Yes this is EXACTLY it, and I was discussing this a bit at work (financial services).

In software, we've all self taught, improved, posted Q&A all over the web. Plus all the open source code out there. Just mountains and mountains of free training data.

However software is unique in being both well paying and something with freely available, complete information online.

A lot of the rest of the world remains far more closed and almost an apprenticeship system. In my domain thinks like company fundamental analysis, algo/quant trading, etc. Lots of books you can buy from the likes of Dalio, but no real (good) step by step research and investment process information online.

Likewise I'd imagine heavily patented/regulated/IP industries like chip design, drug design, etc are substantially as closed. Maybe companies using an LLM on their own data internally could make something of their data, but its also quite likely there is no 'data' so much as tacit knowledge handed down over time.