That's a shame. When I left in '83 that hadn't hit. And there were plenty of old timers who taught me the ropes.
I still have my copy of the TDM - Tool Design Manual. There's an excellent section on design "checking" that would save gazillions of dollars if employed nationally. Most people go for the flashy "design review", which is basically show-and-tell. Or worse, they depend solely on their modeling software !
My first boss was a guy brought back out of retirement, with 45 years off tool design experience.
When I first got there, I was sent to an 8 week, 8 hour a day tool design course, taught by two "designers", meaning non-engineers. They taught me more than any PhD ever did !
Sounds like it's all gone down the toilet. When we built the 767 static test airplane, the wings failed at 115% of design load.
Maybe the 787 should dump the hoopla and go back to the old ways, as their wings crapped out at 85%, I hear ! Attention to detail and inspection of quality beats "Six Sigma" every time in small lot sizes.
Boeing is all about keeping each other’s friends employed. Safety issues, critical design issues, industry standards, etc. are not known by most managers. What they do know are the metrics by which they get bonuses, like how many tests they complete even if the tests do nothing, or how many change requests are completed even if they cannot quantify the work to be done because they are not qualified to even attempt to do the work, etc.