Here is a good feedback from a retired fab workers in the states Well ..... I am one of those guys who got into the Fabs as a technician when I was 18, 1978, and stayed there till I retired 40 years later. And I have to say I experienced everything you talked about in this video. When I was in High School, we were offered Electronics as an alternative Shop class. Most kids wanted Auto Shop, or Welding. I took 3 years of Electronics, as we learned to build and tune Stereo Amplifiers, from etching our own PC boards all the way through tuning with a Scope. So naturally I wanted to work in electronics.
When I turned 18, I drove to San Jose, and started working for Siliconix, an FET manufacturer. It was hard and dangerous work, with long hours and low pay. BUT, this what the beginning of Silicon Valley, and the thing to do was jump to another company each year and double your salary. I was able to purchase my first home when I was 22 because of this activity, and everyone was doing it. It was around 1985 that things started changing, when you were required to have a Bachelors Degree or equivalent experience to get in, and that's when all the US fabs started competing with Japanese companies, and we had to up our game. Instead of Monday through Friday 8 hour shifts, the fabs switched to 3 day/4 day 12 hour shifts, plus a half hour before and after shift passdowns to the next shifts.
I was always an Equipment Maintenance/Engineer my whole career, and the stress from manufacturing supervisors riding you for any down equipment was always there. That and mandatory overtime days, meant you were always exhausted. Then there was the issue of danger. Fabs have always been dangerous, and I knew 3 people who died in accidents, and several more who developed cancers and respiratory aliments.
Almost all technicians will get hurt at some time during your career. Things like toxic gas line leaks, chemical spills and explosions, electrical shocks, and laser flashes were common over the years. When you are tired, and being harped at by the fab manager to bring of down equipment at 3am and you are exhausted, accidents happen.
I know dozens of equipment guys who have permanent floaters in their eyes from KrF Laser Flashes, and they just joked about them as a rite of passage, and other guys who joke about all the acid holes in their pants from the sinks, or RF burns from plasma etchers. So over the years the safety requirements got more stringent, but the hours you worked increased.
They don't care what it costs, they will pay you, but you have to be there, always working in the fab. Was there a heat wave this summer? Who knows, I was freezing in the fab all summer, the AC always on high, trying to remove the heat from a dozen 4KW CO2 lasers running in the Laser Spike Anneal room.
The point being, if you have to have higher education to get a good paying job, you don't want to work in a fab on dangerous machines, that emit X Rays, or flash your eyes with invisible light, or worry about Arsine or Phosphine gas leaks, or get splashed with Hydrofluoric Acid, or get sprayed with carcinogenic photoresist from a leaking pump bellows, or get fried with RF or HV from a Megavolt Implanter. You can sid comfortable in your easy chair and write a couple lines of good code while enjoying a cold Jolt Cola in your jammies and collect twice the income.
So, I put it like this, if you are going to invest in a good education, why would you want to find yourself specialized and trapped in a Fab for your whole career when you can learn software and have a pajama jammie jam every day instead?