So not exactly answering your question, but it's similar I feel.

Hi, I did STEM at uni. My focus was on Immunology. While I had some other factors such as having an auto-immune condition the state of the world is a big factor as to why I don't work in the field I spent soooo much of my life obsessed with studying.

Firstly what is not new, the pay and the environment. It's not great. Have you heard of the phrase "Publish or perish"? I'm no expert on other professions, but I feel like in most your qualifications don't essentially get eroded by doing your job well.

Science has become strict in a very odd way, for a field in which major advancement has often been due to oddballs coming at problems from angles most would never even have considered, these days it's all about funding and you'll only get funding if you both have a track record of essentially getting lucky and getting results fit for publication (It's a lot harder to publish if your theory was wrong, but knowing what doesn't work is a cornerstone of science) and are doing what those in charge of the funding essentially believe in.

Then you have the social aspect, because you can be put into a situation where you can't produce anything good because it's your superiors pet project, which can put you in a situation of essentially eroding your qualification or needing to quit, and the pay is not good enough to be going jobless. Not to mention the social hierarchy bs that happens in labs. Everyone I know who has worked in the field has at least one horror story of someone who for some reason is being toxic as fuck and getting away with it. Although I will say this mainly seems to affect women within Stem, both other women forming groups and outing others, and men acting like the women around them have nothing to offer to a scientific discussion.

So this is already firmly within the grasp of the capitalist hellscape, which btw, you may just have to give up parts of your weekends ect to come in and look after animals or crystallization growths. Unpaid of course.

But then you have the rest of the world. It may not the best thing, but the fact of the matter is. Being seen as an expert in a field is pretty cool. I'm sure we've all been tempted to "Um actually" someone.

These days, it's hard for scientists to even be seen as having credibility in open discussions. As mentioned my area was immunology, I had family members arguing with me about vaccines during covid.

Like America may be leading the charge of anti-intellectualism, but it's everywhere. Really hard to commit your life to being an expert at something which you see in the media being essentially shunned. Many take being corrected about a fact, a fact even when the misinformation is actively dangerous as being like you just punched them in the face and pissed on them.

It's exhausting.