I could even be wrong about it being a Kay quote, but I think so.
thanks HN, I figure if someone here doesn't know, maybe someone can call Kay and ask him ;)
"We will live in a society where the best educated engineers are not designing anti-lock brakes. They are either managing comparatively poorly educated people who are designing anti-lock brakes, stitching up wounds in people who were injured by faulty anti-lock brakes, or defending companies that got sued for their anti-lock brake systems that didn't work."
from http://philip.greenspun.com/school/tuition-free-mit.html
"I feel bad for some companies out there. The founders, who are these incredible engineers, are now directors of their departments doing management rather than engineering. At the same time most of the people they are managing are nowhere near as good as they were at doing the actual work."