Not very bright by the engineers - they had no protection at all if the pilot twitched the nose forward. There must have been some piece of equipment they could have pushed under the nose just to stop themselves getting squashed. Not one of them was on intercom either (unless they have wireless headsets) and without one of them relaying handsignals or similar to the pilot they were very poorly placed in the event that anything else went wrong.
One of those situations when the rush of blood and adrenaline stops you thinking about safety procedures and afterwards you consider all the what - ifs.