The Soul of Maintaining a New Machine

This is incredible and so very relatable. There are obvious parallels between Xerox of the 1980s and the way tech companies have ossified in the 20s: stubborn determination to force a hierarchy on engineering/maintenance work to the point of even trying to mandate tools and procedures. Giant rule books and information siloing then; enforced AI and employee surveillance now.

Managers throughout time feel like they know how to do the work better than anyone who is actually doing it. :)

Nice catch. Between degrees I did maintenance for a company I prefer not to name where problems were compounded by unreliable sole-user logic (possibly made in-house, possibly derived from Fairchild) where e.g. a notice went out to replace all RFAN chips with RFZNs.