Unfortunately, the clowns get in those higher places because they own the circus already. I stopped counting the amount of times CEOs and CPOs told me "No more meetings to plan out what will happen, there's too many of them, let's dev it and see what happens" (most of the time, this is a world destroying, change-half-your-data-format-under-your-feet event).

But make no mistake: this is also a result of so many countries' piss poor work laws. I can push back against my CEO and happily do so and tell him it's a terrible idea, because the worst that happens is that he gets pissy, but I will not get fired because of it, not get fired because of putting it in writing, because firing people for that would be wrongful termination. Boeing scale fuck ups could only have happened in the US because those engineers would be fired for speaking out.