It’s worse than that...
starting in the early 2000’s, companies began to uncerimoniously dump senior engineers.
The senior engineers were the mentors of the next generation of engineers, relaying their experience as to what works and what does not work. Many times what looks good on paper is a disaster in practice. The current class did not receive this mentoring.
What I was observing before I retired was the new class going down into the archives and pulling prints for things that had long ago been discarded. These new engineers, lacking the mentoring, put this old crap back into production.
What we are seeing today is a lack of vision due to having to muddle around on their own without the support of the “old guys” that knew what looks good on paper does not always work.
These decisions were not made by the engineers. These decisions to cut the senior staff was made by beancounters who have no skin in the game.
I’m kind of surprised someone like Musk hasn’t searched the country for experienced engineers. They could work from anywhere and he could skim the cream of the crop of experience.
Knowledge and experience are not nearly the same are they?
I too am a retired engineer after 42 years in service building all manner of things massive and snall. One of the things I saw decay was component qualification testing. Too much trust was being placed with vendors saying they met not only specification but application suitability knowing nothing about operations.
Some things got better with technology and access to knowledge but whet did not get better got worse.
Once a millwright engineer did a consulting job for my late Dad, also an enginee r. The work was on some ship size rotating machinery tnat would not perform. Some complained about his fee for a relatively short visit and wanted an itemized bill. He submitted the invoice for the same amount but 10% for his time and 90% for knowing where to put the marks. The problem was solved. Nobody else could do it.
Experience. You will never get anywhere without it.
The google age refutes that idea.
Never ask if someone understands. You have to take the time to find out what he understands before you release him to perform the task. Then you have to inspect and not just expect.
starting in the early 2000’s, companies began to uncerimoniously dump senior engineers.Leftist reformers, professors, and corporate fools all believe nothing that came before them has any value.
It is not chance that rules the world. Ask the Romans, who had a continuous sequence of successes when they were guided by a certain plan, and an uninterrupted sequence of reverses when they followed another. There are general causes, moral and physical, which act in every monarchy, elevating it, maintaining it, or hurling it to the ground. All accidents are controlled by these causes. And if the chance of one battle – that is, a particular cause – has brought a state to ruin, some general cause made it necessary for that state to perish from a single battle. In a word, the main trend draws with it all particular accidents
And supposedly cheaper off-shoring usually brings unexpected costs, inefficiencies, and defects. Supposedly, when Boeing investigated the faulty software in their new astronaut hauler, they found it riddled with defects from the cheap Indian coders they had relied on. Too many American companies are run by scheming careerists looking no further than the next accounting period.