It's not that bad engineers only socialize with other bad engineers - but rather that many naïve and inexperienced engineers are much too kind, and will try to

It's not that bad engineers only socialize with other bad engineers - but rather that many naïve and inexperienced engineers are much too kind, and will try to onboard every friend or relative they know, without ever having worked with them - they're basically vouching people blindly. This is something I've seen myself: Clueless manager hires the wrong man for the job -> wrong man is utterly clueless on how things work, what needs to be done, and flounders around for a couple of months -> wrong man decides that, hey, I know this one guy that seems to know his sh!t, let's get him onboard. Just fast-track him through the process. Turns out the new guy is also wrong man for the job, and doesn't know what to do. So now they're two (wrong) guys doing busywork while the ship is sinking.