Yeah but should programming issues become "how can I be more friendly to the waiter so they give me what I want?"

That's not what I want programming to become. I'd choose a different profession then. Maybe I'd become a surgeon because the AI labs haven't cracked robotics yet. And the people in general look up to surgeons and down to IT people, but that's another story.

Sadly, you will have to choose another profession, and as your example shows, the better paying ones need 10 years of gruntwork to get there.