To me that speaks to a fundamentally incorrect economic structure. I bet PLC programmers could command much higher salaries - at much higher levels of risk - if they held more liability for things going wrong. That, in turn, would spur a lot of economic development around unfucking the field.

On the other hand, markets are generally smarter than I am. Much like how US citizens living in the EU are basically barred from investing in index funds due to two fundamentally incompatible regulatory regimes, there are almost certainly factors here I'm not seeing and wouldn't see without a couple weeks of research and talking to people who have tried and failed as this.

A guy can dream, though.