I worked for Brown and Root for awhile a couple of years after getting out of the Army, we were technical maintenance in a Hercules chemical plant.
I was surprised at how similar the fresh engineers were to second lieutenants, generally they were dumber than dishwater for the first year or two as they had all the theories, but the old techs had to explain to them why they wouldn’t work in the real world.
I was surprised to learn that the older engineers had adopted so many hands on hobbies, it seemed as though they felt the importance of actually involving themselves in hands on challenges, the old timers were much more humble and receptive to practical input than the young guys.
My experience is similar. However, I’d have killed for the computing and modeling and simulation tools engineers have today.
It’s a balance...before I retired, I had a brilliant engineer (modeling & simulation) destroy the input of a spectrum analzyer because he didn’t realize you can’t sample a 100W signal directly without a directional coupler... $6,000 damage.... it rearranged my thinking and I started having lab classes of a sort with them and the techs...