We're going through a very unique, fast-paced transition and the problem is mostly cultural/psychological IMO

People react before they've had the time to really process it, and show a lot about their existing thought processes

Many technical people IMO fetishize technology and processes, disagreeable-but-right authority justified by their willingness to work on things that most people find hard or just don't want to do. Computers can be a vessel for identity and self-worth - it's alluring to think of technology (and ourselves) as intrinsically valuable. A surprisingly large contingent seems to see work as necessarily zero-sum and adversarial, and make it a core part of their identity (and often not even particularly abnormally powerful or better for it) - like what even is the archetype there?

People like your wife are the ones writing crazy excel spreadsheets and VB6 macros, and making decisions about enterprise IT products, and solving problems with computers! They're actually probably more knowledgeable about "what is a useful and valuable way to use computers" than the ones who find computers fun and freeing and Just Want to Code.

Algorithms will dole out as much outrage as you can take but at the end of the day, doing stuff with computers that people want to pay for - usually, automating or securing things - is why people pay us!

One framing is people overindex on Being a certain kind of person or (the archetype they aspire to or identify with, that is valuable in a passive sense), over Becoming or Doing what's necessary for their work to be valuable (actively helping people, and stuff that's not fun). Very normal to feel grief and not want life to feel so uncertain, but it was literally always uncertain! Life isn't over because the business people at your IT job want to build software!