It seems to me that programming evolves too quickly for this to be a significant occurrence. Granted my dad switched careers away from programming when I was 3, but his experience and mine are radically different. Though the first programming I ever did was on one of his old programmable HP calculators.
Systems engineering is an established discipline, one you can get a degree in. It’s not just a random term I’m making up. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_engineering