Whenever people see old systems still in production (say things that are over 30 years old) the assumption is that management refused to fund the replacement. But if you look at replacement projects so many of them are such dismal failures that's management's reluctance to engage in fixing stuff is understandable.
From the outside, decline always looks like a choice, because the exact form the decline takes was chosen. The issue is that all the choices are bad.
In my work experience I've realized everybody fears honesty in their organization be it big or small.
Customers can't admit the project is failing, so it churns on. Workers/developers want to keep their job and either burn out or adapt and avoid talking about obvious deficits. Management is preoccupied with softening words and avoiding decisions because they lack knowledge of the problem or process.
Additionally there has been a growing pipeline of people that switch directly from university where they've been told to only manage other people and not care about the subject to positions of power where they are helpless and can't admit it.
Even in university, working for the administration I've watched people self congratulation on doing design thinking seminars every other week and working on preserving their job instead of doing useful things while the money for teaching assistants or technical personnel is not there.
I've seen that so often that I think it's almost universal. The result is mediocre broken stuff where everyone pretends everything is fine. Everyone wants to manage, nobody wants to do the work or god forbid improve processes and solve real problems.
I've got some serious ADHD symptoms and as a sysadmin when you fail to deliver it's pretty obvious and I messed up big time more than once and it was always sweet talked, excused, bullshitted away from higher ups.
Something is really off and everyone is telling similar stories about broken processes.
Feels like a collective passivity that captures everything and nobody is willing to admit that something doesn't work. And a huge missallocation of resources.
Not sure how it used to be but I'm pessimistic how this will end.
Being a great engineer or researcher doesn't pay. You won't get your name known for your work. All your achievements will be attributed to whoever manages you at best, or attributed to the corporation above you with not a single human name at worst.
People like being recognized for their work. Every great achiever wants to have their name remembered long after they leave this world. Everyone wants to be the next Isaac Newton. The next Bill Gates. The next Steve Jobs. The next Elon Musk. It's a constant downhill path from being known for using your brain and busting your ass to discover or create something, to being known for managing someone who created something, to being known as someone who bought the company that managed people who created something. Motivations are all fucked up. No matter what you discover or create these days, there's a feeling that you're not going to have your name written in history books. Your best options are join a grift or manage someone who's doing the hard work.
I dunno, there’s something in the fact that Isaac Newton the imaginary cultural figure was hit on the head by an apple, and then invented calculus.
Meanwhile Isaac Newton the actual guy (recalling from memory so feel free to correct) was a bit eccentric (dabbled in alchemy and other mystic arts), had some academic posts, some government jobs, and built Calculus on work that was ongoing in the academic community…
The imaginary Isaac Newton and the imaginary Elon Musk look sort of similar. Because we ignore the boring work that Newton did and the fact that Musk just bought his way around it—their real versions look very different of course! But if you want the actual day to day experience of being Isaac Newton, you can, just go be a professor and make some quirky friends.