[cmpalmer52]

There was an AI picture someone made of a typical person from Huntsville, Alabama. It showed an ~60 yo guy with glasses and a NASA shirt. Someone on the local subReddit said, “You’re looking at the world expert on the maximum bend radii of avionics wiring harnesses and conduits and he’d be happy to talk to you about it.” Funny, but it made me think that the engineering shops around here are full of people like that with similar, hard earned, expertise in aerospace engineering and design and they’re all retiring or retired. What percentage of this expertise did they pass along to the younger engineers? I’m sure they tried, but maybe 50-60%?

We know that everything doesn’t get written down (hence the reverse engineering of the Apollo systems). And the stuff that does get written down doesn’t have the experience that created the document. Remembering a failed vacuum experiment with some adhesive which led to “You must use <some different adhesive>” isn’t going to prevent some bean counter in the future saying, “Why don’t you use <failed adhesive>? It’s cheaper and seems to have the same specs.” Or, for avionics harnesses, “There’s enough room. Just make it fit!”

All of that to say, Boeing ain’t what it used to be. And I know people who have worked there in recent years and they say the same.

[Arrath]

I think loss of institutional knowledge is a huge problem across all sectors of the economy. In my niche of specialty construction engineering I saw it get exacerbated by the Great Recession, companies froze hiring and laid folks off from the bottom up, while retaining senior people. Who are now or have already retired, without a younger cadre to have absorbed their knowledge and carry it on.

[cmpalmer52]

Yes, we see that, too, in the natural gas industry. The old engineering guys are retiring and being replaced by technicians who can implement a design, but not design something new. One of the reasons our firm provides engineering services through contracts to smaller utilities. But even the larger utilities are losing institutional knowledge, largely due to replacing engineers with techs, many of whom are field guys with no engineering training.