Software Craftsmanship is often disastrous in Computer Science departments, never mind other fields.
I remember getting a C program from one of the biggest names in both undergrad CS education and machine learning and finding it wouldn't run on 32 bit machines because it had a static array that consumed 4 GB.
Even in computer science, the product is papers, not working software, and the situation is worse in other fields.
As someone who had an academic background, I think going from "pictures of cats" to "math and science" is like going from the frying pan to the fire. Entry level positions in the math and science Juggernaut pay from 2-5x less what a junior or senior person in the social media Juggernaut gets. You can sink anywhere from 5-10 years into getting a PhD, and then you'll find that there are just enough new jobs for the children of yesterday's professors who weren't totally destroyed by their upbringing and that they've got an insurmountable advantage in the game of musical chairs.
Science and Math is a system that uses up young people, especially men, the same way that the racing industry uses thoroughbred horses. There's no realistic career path for 95% of the people who get involved... other than working on "pictures of cats" or whatever it is that pays.
to add to your last paragraph, I would like to quote someone, who asked the rhetoric question at a self-celebration event at a (supposedly) flagship research institute:
"How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified to find other possibilities?" -- H. Schopper
I remember getting a C program from one of the biggest names in both undergrad CS education and machine learning and finding it wouldn't run on 32 bit machines because it had a static array that consumed 4 GB.
Even in computer science, the product is papers, not working software, and the situation is worse in other fields.
As someone who had an academic background, I think going from "pictures of cats" to "math and science" is like going from the frying pan to the fire. Entry level positions in the math and science Juggernaut pay from 2-5x less what a junior or senior person in the social media Juggernaut gets. You can sink anywhere from 5-10 years into getting a PhD, and then you'll find that there are just enough new jobs for the children of yesterday's professors who weren't totally destroyed by their upbringing and that they've got an insurmountable advantage in the game of musical chairs.
Science and Math is a system that uses up young people, especially men, the same way that the racing industry uses thoroughbred horses. There's no realistic career path for 95% of the people who get involved... other than working on "pictures of cats" or whatever it is that pays.