Most EEs now end up working process at defense contractors as "systems engineers". There are FPGA and hardware people still but that takes too long and does not survive the contracts process. I submit that a $10k per unit product is all but officially extinct without a patron.
Here's hoping for said patron's heart health.
IT support is being utterly hollowed out. I spent most of the week watching a small ad hoc team trying to get past permissions and licensing to *get my email working*. Great people pushing some invisible, variable sized boulder up an imaginary mountain.
But mainly, the dominant force in capitalism now is the merger and that applies debt to the acquired. It's "technology on the halfsies". so the kids do what could be done in a medium sized board as a software stack on some gigahoochie processor.
I hope there's some "maker" style ecosystem to support the production of board layout pros because the number of people who understand even the basics of a transmission line seem very thin on the ground to me.
M&A is burning the marble of the temples into quicklime to bury the dead.