I’m sure that the Boeing engineers who built the terrible planes knew that it wasn’t the best design; but they okayed the plans because that’s what the bosses wanted.
Having worked in corporate for more than a decade now, I’m pretty sure anyone who said that the planes were shitty design throughout the design and review process were asked to explain themselves ad nauseam while everyone who was admiring the emperor’s new clothes was free to leave the offices early for cocktail hour.
That’s the way these things actually work: group think. Someone coming in saying “none of this appears to make sense” has to be a one-in-a-billion level genius because they are lining up for the firing squad. (And what genius would do that?) When the group has already written up the proposal and the customer has already signed off on it, it will not be changed no matter how insane or impossible it is.
And then QA is also a laugh as a gate. Eventually through a variety of tactics, every single QA resource that tries to actually assure quality will be either excised from the company, or be turned into a yes-man / rubber stamp by corporate movements.