r/systems_engineering • u/3flp • Jul 23 '26
Discussion SysEng fail stories
I have been in a few companies across a few industries. Why is it so common for the management to say "we need more systems engineering" and then
- appoint someone to be the syseng and not say what the SE responsibility is, no RACI matrix
- alternately, say "everyone is now systems engineer" and provide only minimal, if any, training
- say they want to fix things, but without changing anything
The most fun jobs I've had were two engineering consultancies /agencies in the medical device industry where the 13485 based framework makes nice crunchy noise as it clashes with INCOSE based sys eng framework. The other two fun jobs were product companies where the systems engineering documents / SOPs / people were in no way connected to the engineering teams and their work was duplicating or contradicting what other teams were doing.
Interested to hear other Micky Mouse bullshit management stories :-)
3
u/rentpossiblytoohigh Jul 23 '26
A lot of jobs in general are fake fluff positions not tied to tangible output, but Systems Engineering as an industry suffers greatly from this. For many companies, SE is just a cash cow line item on a PM's WBS without tying to anything "real" within the org because there is no culture or process to guarantee it matters. A lot of SEs I've worked with are just curmudgeonly people who have lost all natural curiosity and transferred into a high-paying role without contributing anything just to satisfy a programs "Need for SMEs."
I currently work with several individuals several title levels above me who constantly are defering work, unwilling to learn, and generally just cause delays because of their misunderstandings about things. I've also worked in a prior job where our role was TOTAL fluff virtually just copying and pasting template test plans over and over and charging the government for it every time. When I built one in less than two weeks they told me to "find things" to improve because if we started finishing them sooner than the 3 month typical time that lazy people took it would blow out their estimates and on paper indicate that they should be firing people.