When NASA was first spun up in the late 1950s, there were no career NASA people. The people were hired from private industry. Nobody had heard of it, and it had no track record, so people probably did not join it for the prestige.
These days I feel like there is a lot of prestige associated with working for NASA. Everyday people think you are a genius for working there.
There are likely a lot of clout chasing bureaucrat types gumming up the works these days. And there is no competitor currently with the potential for a government money hose.
US government should probably have at least two competing space agencies, preferably more.
Also the field of software engineering has brain drained physical sciences and engineering for the last several decades. If you glance at salaries before choosing a major you are probably not going to do many of the disciplines related to rocketry.