Sounds like practices haven't changed. I'm retired now, but my experiences in 3rd party MRO's were pretty much the same. Some poor (usually Philippino) bugger just gets told what to do, totally unaware of the consequences.
The first thing to go out the window in MRO's is the standard of inspections. An amazing amount of inspections are done in the first few days of heavy maintenance. Why don't airlines explain that to the media?