I think the main reason is that untrained EEs end up doing their best to ship product. Since the rise of outsourcing hardware manufacturing, it is simply that domestic demand is now low. Also, most PHBs have zero understanding of low-level systems, and visible areas are easier to quantify value. Basically, the kids with 37000 dependencies in their nodejs steaming pile of awesome… are more impressive than some graybeard’s 4 C library solution that needs updated once every 5 years.