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I suspect that many of the industrial accidents we are seeing recently has a lot to do with those that “can do” retiring over the past few years. Those competent people are being replaced by those that “can’t and won’t” but are given a place of importance in companies that need to make sure they have a sufficient number of employees that check the correct boxes in order to satisfy the EEO regulations.

That's half of it.

I retired from a company that had been run by engineers and others who worked their way up from within the company.

When the VP in charge of our division, who had been in that position since the end of WWII, retired, a bean counter was hired to replace him.

Throughout the company business and accounting degree types were hired to replace all of the engineering types as retirements continued.

Few of the new hires understood maintenance and upgrades of equipment, dimensional control of products or training of people.

All they cared about was numbers, getting product out the door.

For about 10 years everything spiraled downward as all they cared about was the next quarter earnings.

Finally somebody in upper management must have figured it out and started hiring bright young engineers.

Everything was improving as I left.

Combine the EEO, ESG and DEI practices with bean counters running the show and it's amazing we don't have more disasters in manufacturing and transportation.