For "Question #1: Why, in spite of high wages and cultural/economic importance of tech, has the number of CS majors has been basically flat for 15 years?":
The interesting metric for employees is not wages, but "wages minus cost of living". As long as the costs of living are that high in the Bay Area, the wages with respect to this metric are not that large.
For "Question 2: [...] What motivates males to pursue CS?"
An important factor for me was hacking into the machine more deeply than any human has gone.;-) (just kidding, but it should bring over the mentality). With all the legal hurdles against Reverse Engineering, DCMA, show trials against Phil Zimmermann and Aaron Swartz, hacking has become too dangerous. Also with all the standardization (Web standards, POSIX, WinAPI, ...) instead of "being able to do things on your own" it has become much more boring. Finally I am annoyed by "a new bandwagon every year" (is this a sensible translation of the German "jedes Jahr eine neue Sau durchs Dorf treiben") in particular in the web community instead of thinking long and deeply about the best way to solve a problem.
The interesting metric for employees is not wages, but "wages minus cost of living". As long as the costs of living are that high in the Bay Area, the wages with respect to this metric are not that large.
For "Question 2: [...] What motivates males to pursue CS?"
An important factor for me was hacking into the machine more deeply than any human has gone.;-) (just kidding, but it should bring over the mentality). With all the legal hurdles against Reverse Engineering, DCMA, show trials against Phil Zimmermann and Aaron Swartz, hacking has become too dangerous. Also with all the standardization (Web standards, POSIX, WinAPI, ...) instead of "being able to do things on your own" it has become much more boring. Finally I am annoyed by "a new bandwagon every year" (is this a sensible translation of the German "jedes Jahr eine neue Sau durchs Dorf treiben") in particular in the web community instead of thinking long and deeply about the best way to solve a problem.