tl;dr: Successful companies develop "competence blindness" much like Mexican cavefish lose their eyes: in stable, low-competition environments, careful engineering becomes a vestigial trait that gets suppressed because the environment doesn't reward it. New hires learn the house style, staff hiring panels, and select for comfort with existing dysfunction, while sighted engineers who join either leave or gradually adapt to cave rules. The remedy isn't a top-down "center of excellence" (which suppresses the trait it claims to cultivate), but swimming into different waters where sight is expressed again.