“ The person he’s replacing, Michael Griffin, holds a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering and served as a NASA administrator. Indeed, Kratsios will be less academically credentialled than most of the program-managers he oversees. So how did he get here?”

It’s a big problem when you take people who shouldn’t be in a position and put them in it. It’s an even bigger problem when you do it in a place with a long history of pedigree. If I’m a director who was hired into the culture when that mattered, and now I’m several steps under a boss who flouts that, that’s a huge upsetting culture change.

Now luckily, he’s only going to be in this job for a few months so the damage will be largely mitigated, but still. This is an idiots game and it doesn’t make us smarter for trying to nit it to being acceptable. It’s not.