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Having done both, the main reason is because software development is a completely (high paying) white collar job while IT in the sense of tech support is a (not as high paying) white collar job with blue collar characteristics. For people who specialize in printers and security cameras, it's pretty much a blue collar job, not all that different from a plumber. Like many blue collar jobs, it's dirty as well. Like, security cameras covered in bird shit, old PCs filled with cockroaches, ancient switches caked with dust, cables chewed off by rats, printer toner getting everywhere (FYI, toner dust is carcinogenic), and so on. And this isn't even getting into help desk, which is completely indistinguishable from customer service, except you're getting yelled at boomer coworkers instead of boomer customers.

There's also a "wool pulled from your eyes" and "learning how the sausage is made" moment. You see the front office that's all nice and fancy looking, then you get to the server room and you see mission critical file servers running Windows 2000, boxes piled up blocking the circuit breaker just barely covering the label specifying that obstructing the circuit breaker with random shit is an OSHA violation, box fans everywhere because the boss cheaped out on AC. Executives pretty much treat the dev team as the golden goose while tech support is treated like some red-hair stepchild. The favoritism is very obvious, which probably also contributes to CS R*dditors thinking they're hot shit. The funny thing is that developers and certainly R*dditor developers are nowhere near as tech savvy as they think they are.