Re: I can't get the sensor to fit
The underlying problem is a culture that encourages middle management to treat line workers like that and not escalate issues that need fixing. Organisations will get politicised to the point that people start behaving that way if you don't keep an eye on the culture and values. The hard part is to avoid letting carpetbaggers into your management team. Once you get one manager with that mentality the toxicity will spread to everyone that person is in a position to put pressure on. It affects culture - by allowing a culture of undue pressure on workers - and hiring practices - A's hire A's, B's hire C's.
Keeping a culture alive where people are able to work on complex tasks in a zero-defect manner is not a trivial undertaking, and the vast majority of management teams are not capable of doing it. Certainly, British hiring practices for managers favour politically savvy 'people manager' types who aren't inclined to rock the boat, and the trend in management culture seems to be moving more in that direction in pretty much all industrialised countries. It happened at NASA with the O-ring fiasco, it's happened at Toyota (coming out with brakes IIRC) and now it's happened at Roscosmos.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
