Or maybe SpaceX did that despite being held back by those people. NASA's management is rather infamous too so it's not like they're competing against much there. Every time NASA's managers gained too much influence over the engineers people actually died.
Engineers are pragamtic as profession. Managers are glorified sales, their primary product is selling their team and move the goal post forward.
As as a software engineer, I'd rather buy my next car from an engineer who designed it rather than anyone else in the chain. Not because we speak similar languages but because I know that engineer will happily list ever bit of that makes them feel uncomfortable.
Engineers main task is to physically make something.
Even in software engineering something is being physically built up to run the software. We decided to call this the cloud because we let sales people define it. It ain't a cloud, you cannot fly a plane through it.
Construction is the one step that cannot be easily cheated. The machinery we build today is massive and complex so while the bureaucracy prevents a single engineer from addressing the issues, they are position to see see it.
My first question for a rocket company isn't the CEO's confidence. It is, would engineer #134 use this product with their families? Would you entrust the lives of our children to what you've built?
