I think this is a common problem for any programming job that's particularly visible or technical. Most programming jobs are boring, frankly, and there are a lot of very smart people in the industry fighting for the few stimulating, high-status, technically-challenging jobs. For example, anything to do with aerospace seems to have competition that puts the games industry to shame.
Obviously it depends on your definition of high-status, but I know a lot of people hiring developers across a range of sectors for technically challenging jobs, and they all have trouble hiring talented people.
Every time I'm advising a young person or young people I always underline that there are challenges everywhere. If I just describe my job, it sounds terrible, very business programming oriented, but in fact in order to make it work I'm pushing myself very hard, lots of server and coordination problems, retrofitting code never meant to do this and doing it in the most developer-time effective manner, and even pushing the cutting edge a bit in some ways. It's as interesting as games programming could be and a lot less stressful, and like you say, there's stuff like this all over.
