I think what's actually happening is that we're eliminating all non-STEM pipelines for building a career. The truly adventurous can go start their own businesses, but STEM has become the default pipeline for everyone because it's the only thing that pays well. Everything else, even being a lawyer or doctor, is much more of a "calling" than a career play. Other necessary professions like teaching or nursing are considered lower tier, when the really shouldn't be.

Because everyone is pushed into STEM, I believe that the bar for engineering has been lowered. I'm a SWE and over the last few years, I've realized that more and more of my coworkers don't have any idea how computers work. Most can't use a shell, don't understand unix, never wrote a line of C, are unclear what a pointer is, that sort of thing. It's no longer a requirement to understand computers and computer culture to be employed as a developer.

I think a lot of older SWEs probably recall stereotypes of women and minorities not being able to do computers because most of them didn't grow up with the culture. In the 80s and 90s, it was much less common for those demographics to have a computer in the home and to have internet access. We tried to fix that by promoting diversity, especially in the STEM pipeline. In reality, that diversity just killed the culture by sinking it to the lowest common denominator, which looks a lot like leetcode.

> I should have dispensed with all that and started out as an artist.

Then you'd be poor, which is why you didn't dispense with all of that.

> Maybe women leave STEM because they can.

I can't wait to join them.