[WJW]

That question is pretty meaningless unless you can somehow measure the quality of an engineer. Is it the engineer who can build systems nobody else can, the one who can build the cheapest system that performs to spec, the one that can work well in a team, the one that is always available, the one that can teach others, etc etc etc etc. I'm sure anyone can think of many more aspects to being a good engineer.

I bet NASA and NIST have a great bunch of quality all-round engineers, but I'd be surprised if they were better at leetcode than the average FAANG dev. After all, FAANG devs have literally been filtered through an "are they good at leetcode" process. FAANG may be full of money chasers, but if the way to get more money there is by "being a good engineer" that does not mean much.

[mxkopy]

Government work sometimes has the most stringent standards

[WJW]

Indeed, but "works to the highest (quality) standards" is only one of the many aspects of being a good engineer. For example: government engineers are often not as good at completing projects within budget.

[FactualActuals]

As someone who was a government worker, a lot of the issues why projects go over budget is because management believes that a single developer can do the workload of 4. So the product never gets delivered and that developer leaves to work somewhere else.

[mxkopy]

I think that dilutes the meaning of "quality" to nothing. Like if someone says "that's quality work" or a "quality engineer" I think of something specific.

For example I'd call a BMW a quality car. I wouldn't call a Lada a quality car, though it's much cheaper and has a much higher bang-to-buck ratio than a BMW.

In that sense sometimes government work has to be the highest quality, especially when it concerns security or safety. Sure it could end up being magnitudes more expensive but I'd say that's a question of efficiency not quality