The engineering industry goes in cycles:

1. No one can get anything done, companies cannot produce cheap products, customers are angry things are always broken and nothing works.
2. A company decides that maybe hiring the best and the brightest engineers is a good idea. So they offer engineers a fair wage but only compensate success.
3. Flocks of engineers start working at the company. They build a culture of high trust and integrity. Profits soar. Wages go up. People hear about how much these engineers are making, and wonder why doctors don't get paid as much.
4. Now the Chinese, Indians and others want that money, so they get certificates and degrees and get hired, pennies on the dollar, to do what the elite engineers were doing. One by one, the engineers are replaced with incompetence. Meanwhile, the good engineers decide that farming is a great alternative to engineering.
5. Go back to step 1.