My mentor worked at JPL - he was a BS, MS, PhD from MIT - he got out of there so quick (i believe less than 2 years). He said the pace of work was so slow, he didn't feel like anything got done in his entire time there.
You might get hired into an overstaffed team and not do that much for a year until it's crunch time and then you're underfunded so it takes an extra year. Arguably you spent three years to achieve one year's worth of accomplishments.
Big hardware development has probably accelerated some overall--the development of new chip architectures and "big iron" computer systems was at least multiple years when I was a product manager, but especially safety critical systems or things you get one shot at still take slow deliberate process.
Assuming they keep at pace, there will imminently be a static fire and it will be headed to space this year. And to emphasize it's not some evolutionary thing but a complete rethinking of rocket design, unlike anything before, that stands to once again completely revolutionize the industry should it succeed.
Going from spitballing to revolutionizing space, in 6 years (2 of those years being during a highly disruptive pandemic), on a private budget? I'm inclined to say the problem is government, but I'm almost wondering if that isn't just a knee-jerk. It just seems that in modern time that many "businesses", government included, just don't really have the capacity to move quickly - even when it's 100% possible.
So at one point in time your mentor would have held the status / degree / title of Bachelor of Science. They were then promoted to Master, and then to Doctor.
That’s probably what you’re saying, and this isn’t really a correction. It’s simply something interesting that I wanted to share with everyone else.