We built an actively knowledge-hostile culture that glorifies and rewards managers, hustlers, grifters, and influencers, and we're then surprised that nobody with ambition wants to... Actually build things.
Also, I mentally separate long working hours from other aspects of “worker conditions.” You can have low working hours but a toxic and unsafe work environment or a physically safe and supportive work environment with long hours. You can also have high and low pay with various working hours (although typically high pay isn’t supported by low working hours unless the business has some sort of massive moat).
Of course it's possible that insane working hours were why TSMC employees got EUV photolithography working at scale before any American manufacturer did. Was that the key difference between Intel and TSMC? It's a question that I personally haven't seen an answer to.
This wouldn’t be a problem, we just let Taiwan work themselves silly why we share in the benefit by getting better and better computer chips, but that doesn’t work if we want to COMPETE with Taiwan in this area.
Educated people are less likely to swallow corporate and Government bullshit and more difficult to control. Companies call them "overqualified".
As in, you might be willing to build, but soon you might be frustrated that you don't see much of the fruits of your labor in terms of mobility or rewards.
The pushback against the capitalist class is real and growing amongst the younger generations.
It helps when your society is covered in frescoes and statues that glorify the engineer and the bricklayer...
But when the wastrel of a director is driving a BMW, and you have a ten-year waiting list for a broken-down Lada, you may still feel some resentment against said director.
The 'Rewards' side of things is pretty decent in some parts of STEM, but are rather lousy in others. Hardware work does poorly on this scale.