This article is a great example of Good Old Days fallacy (https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Good_old_days). It is very unlikely that it is true that "When I was a young engineer, older, experienced engineers and engineering managers understood basic principles and the big pictures of the things they were working on.", rather it is very likely that some did and some did not, and most engineers back then didn't have any more insight than engineers today.
The engineers that a young engineer was likely to seek mentorship from and who would be put in a position to mentor young engineers might be among the best, and so I have no doubt that the author did mostly interact with people that fit his description, but now that he is the experienced engineer / manager he is interacting with the worse engineers, the ones who need attention. As the squeaky wheel gets the grease, the bad engineers will require the most time and management effort to accomplish what good engineers can do without a lot of management / senior engineer time, so from the perspective of a senior engineer most of their time is spent with the worst engineers in their organization.
What I am very confident of, however, is that engineers aren't on average worse than they were back in the good old days.
I believe the author is correct that old-time engineers had a better grasp of basics. When I was starting out, engineering degrees were pretty much ALL fundamental principles and calculus. Everyone was required to (be able to) derive everything from first principles.
Modern engineering degrees focus very strongly on use of tools, and contain a modest amount of first principles, and a an almost trivial amount of calculus. A engineering student could do well today with insufficient knowledge to understand the course their seniors undertook. The modern approach is a different way of doing things, with advantages, but not entirely superior.
>> When I was starting out, engineering degrees were pretty much ALL fundamental principles and calculus.
Where did you go to school? There is (and always has been) a huge difference between what an engineering program at a top school and at some 3rd tier school require of their students. I think you probably went to a fairly competitive program and are comparing what was expected of you and your peers to what is expected of someone to get a degree from a noncompetitive school.
The engineers that a young engineer was likely to seek mentorship from and who would be put in a position to mentor young engineers might be among the best, and so I have no doubt that the author did mostly interact with people that fit his description, but now that he is the experienced engineer / manager he is interacting with the worse engineers, the ones who need attention. As the squeaky wheel gets the grease, the bad engineers will require the most time and management effort to accomplish what good engineers can do without a lot of management / senior engineer time, so from the perspective of a senior engineer most of their time is spent with the worst engineers in their organization.
What I am very confident of, however, is that engineers aren't on average worse than they were back in the good old days.