Mediocrity (often achieved through process) has cold advantages:

- It's cheaper because you're paying people less.

- It's more resilient because people are easier to replace.

- It's more predictable because you're not asking for groundbreaking work.

- Etc... you get the idea.

The only real downside is you're not going to build an exceptional product. But here's the rub: not every product needs to be exceptional in every way. Thus most departments in a company are perfectly fine with mediocrity.

Those "good engineers" aren't wanted.