I am in chemical and material handling stuff and it’s the same. What amazes me is when the project manager can’t allow slack where slack is perfectly fine and allows slack where it isn’t.

One guy I will never forget had endless meltdowns about tiny tiny stuff in software and completely forgot that water pipes need heat tracing until the insulation was already installed. Whole project, multi tens of millions of dollars, died because of that. On the plus side before it died the password on the HMI was 8 characters long and required a number and a punctuation symbol.

Even when you are paying for accuracy… I went to a home once for someone who paid for the builders to get everything perfect; the walls were crooked and warped like every wall I’ve ever seen.

I’m just saying it doesn’t matter if one guy is really good because on projects that require multiple people a good team is all that matters. As far as uniqueness to the US vs everywhere, its probably worse here in the US but we have a lot of checks for extreme fuckups so we tend to just have a lot of low-mid tier fuckups. The big fuckups are when somebody lies on their expertise (like that university post tensioned beam bridge that fell in florida)

At a societal level young people arent getting the benefits of their work. We’re getting what is paid for. They’re paying those old guys pensions+benefits but their own has been cut to the marrow. Consumers pay isn’t going to them. And good fucking luck to any of them trying to start up against behemoths both local and national that can nip them in the bud before they become competitive.

What I find is culture drives them out. I am pushed a lot to take away all decision making ability from the techs and electricians. This command-and-control organization system. Anyone who can change employment does and I don’t blame them.

Treat people like they are worthless and they leave. No surprises there.