85% in favor of managers being the problem. I pulled that number from the Ford Motor Company turnaround where Deming said management was 85% of the problem.

And I mean, who is responsible for curating those 1x engineers in the first place?

I would attribute most of it to poor customer development or product management. If you can’t find the demand for your product, it doesn’t matter how good the engineers or managers are.

Failed projects are inevitable though, even if you do everything well. Good teams don’t look for people to blame, which results in no one sticking their neck out to advocate for stuff. Instead they look to learn from each experience and hone their processes.