The media is spamming this story because the people who still consume mainstream media love to see smarty-pants liberals who make 10x their income lose their jobs. While it is true that there are hiring freezes at some of the big tech companies and there are lay offs, a lot of the positions being laid off are non-technical roles like PMs and recruiters. The few friends I have who are SWEs and got laid off are spending their winter skiing/snowboarding while enjoying their severance and sifting through recruiter messages on LinkedIn.
Never made the jump but I have a CS degree from a completely average state school and get hit up by recruiters almost weekly specifically because I’m an ATC. Leidos pays former center controllers hundreds of thousands just to serve as SMEs so it should be no surprise that aviation/defense companies would love to hire someone who knows the user side and the technical side.
Lastly, I know plenty of people who have made the switch and someone who finished a degree while making AG pay at ZOA and is now making over 350k/ year at meta. So if anyone who is reading this was thinking about pursuing a degree go for it. Don’t let those haters with associates degrees in ATC management get you down.