Soo engineer here. There is a good reason for that. I have met quite a few PhDs that can't make the transition from academics to work. I have probably watched 5 million dollars worth of gear get destroyed over the years due to new grad PhDs with our common sense. Some you can throw in a padded room to feed math to and get some theories that can be refined, some become real assets to your team and an over all force multiplier, others just go back to acidemia to teach new PhDs without common sense.

PhD is the shortcut to success but that doesn't mean you still don't have to walk the path. You just start one rung up the ladder and you get promoted in half the time( or meet experience requirements faster when applying for new jobs).

I would ask you to look a bit at my post history. I'm an electrical engineer who specializes in keeping old equipment up and running. A 20 year life cycle is good but it is still not what I would consider BFL. Even spare parts sitting on a shelf go bad.

Old programs used to work off of punch cards, and before screens outputs would be printed on long sheets of paper. You just don't find parts for that kind of equipment anymore. Instead you scrap it and build an emulator. Look there will be a time when the last mechanical hard drive fails and the last 3.5 inch floppy is forever demagnetized, and that is ok as long as you don't wait to the last minute to transfer essential functions.

You're confusing two different issues here. Planned obsolescence and artificial control of products shortening life spans artificially is different than trying to design something that lasts forever. Do you know how hard it is to get parts from 40 years ago? Just because electronics don't move does not mean there is not ware on the components. Batteries die and corrupt stored memory, old capacitors leak acid destroying the PCB around the part, shorts damage multilayer boards so you cannot see the full damage. Faster digital speeds gets into RF territory requiring specific trace sizes for timing and impedance control, meaning repair by jumper is only possible on low speed systems.

In short the faster more powerful electronics become obsolete at their jobs faster. PCs fit in this category. Even if your hardware is good you will be out paced by software needing more memory and more processing power. This being said, there is no reason to restrict someone from fixing a bad circuit on their coffee maker.

I'm a weird guy who actually buys job related text books and will read them. So yes, keeping on top of new trends, ideas, and processes help a lot as an engineer. I'm able to solve problems that others cannot because I know how to ask the right questions, use the right vocabulary in google searches, and where to look in my books for more information. I don't need to memorized everything just get a general idea of where to find more information when I need it.