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Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

nytimes.com

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Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#101

Post by paulddraper »

asimuvPR wrote: post #35
gaur wrote: post #33

There are hundreds of millions of people in North America. Why do people act like gaining or losing a couple thousand jobs is some kind of earth-shaking development? I get that losing jobs sucks for the people involved, but sometimes I even see US jobs reports delivered as breaking news in national newspapers. Why?

Firing people has an exponential effect.

I believe it has a long-reaching effect, but not "exponential", at least not along any axis I know of.

Does firing 1000 people have a more than 2x effect than firing 500?

Unless by exponential, you just mean "a lot".

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#102

Post by forgetsusername »

iamatworknow wrote: post #65
forgetsusername wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the sum of the losses has a noticeable impact on the economy I get what you're saying, but...does it? If I look at global real GDP, we're going along, business as usual. As the OP says, jobs are gained and lost on a much greater scale, monthly. There's a reason that jobs are being shed at this particular company, and it isn't because we no longer need transportation infrastructure. Bombardier is out, Tesla is in.

>Bombardier is out, Tesla is in. Pump the brakes there. The next time you ride the subway or take a commuter flight you won't be riding on a Tesla train car or aircraft. I get that the average HN visitor is enamored with Elon and Tesla, but c'mon now.

>Pump the brakes there.

My point is, Bombardier fires and across the map Tesla hires.

I'm the furthest thing from a Tesla pumper if you are so inclined as to look at my comment history.

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#103

Post by Gravityloss »

dredmorbius wrote: post #89
xenadu02 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no Minimal Viable Product for commercial airliners. Either they fly with as close to 100% reliability as possible or almost no one will buy them. The cost to an airline of even a single crash is way more than they could ever hope to save by buying from some unknown maker. It's also a massively capital-intensive business. It isn't impossible that new competitors will emerge but it will be a long difficult roa…

There's not an MVP for a superjumbo, but you could start with UAVs, small planes, and start scaling up. The design challenges (and off-the-shelf parts) for smaller aircraft are more viable. Alternatively, you could start by building subsystems and expand to full aircraft.

The trend has gone the other way though. Companies like Wright, Curtiss, Martin Baker and Vought did complete aircraft but ended up doing subsystems. The aircraft and development projects have grown. The market has matured to a few big players. If you look at the A350 construction videos, you get a little glimpse of the massive investment required just for that part. New technologies like vacuum infused out of autoclave composites might simplify manufacturing a lot though. IIRC Sukhoi Superjet uses them.

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#104

Post by Gravityloss »

yongjik wrote: post #87
wott wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now you have a goal in life: to try it on a snowmobile.

...Peeing in a Bombardier snowmobile flying in turbulence?

Lake ice with shallow snow dunes is great for a little snowmobile flight practice.

If only the machines weren't so damn noisy. They are a real terror to the environment.

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#105

Post by gaius »

tormeh wrote: post #92
cstavish wrote: post #53

In 2014, while in college, I did a co-op rotation at the Bombardier Transportation facility in Pittsburgh, PA. The rail division may be based in Germany, but there's a sizable rail engineering contingent in Pittsburgh. I worked with a lot of good people and engineers there--I hope they do alright. Even in 2014 there was grumbling by the engineers about upper management, and I remember attending an "all-hands" meeting…

>In a fairly tone-deaf delivery, he spoke of limiting his own business-class international travel. I am reliably informed that business travel sucks donkey ass, (almost) regardless of class. It's tone deaf because travel has positive connotations to most people, not because he's out of touch with reality. To a business traveler, economy class is adding insult to injury.

Yes and no. I remember back in the day an exec taking a Concorde flight from NYC to London to tell us that if we could all manage to save $5/day, there would be no layoffs... Yeah, he was wrong about that, but he would have gotten loads of airmiles...

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#106

Post by gaius »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #12

I initially thought that the number of bombardier jobs (as in, the guy who drops bombs from a plane) was being reduced by 7500. I was shocked there were that many.

A bombardier commands a gun crew in the Royal Artillery. But I doubt there are 7500 people in the entire regiment after this round of cuts.

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#107

Post by totalZero »

tormeh wrote: post #92
cstavish wrote: post #53

In 2014, while in college, I did a co-op rotation at the Bombardier Transportation facility in Pittsburgh, PA. The rail division may be based in Germany, but there's a sizable rail engineering contingent in Pittsburgh. I worked with a lot of good people and engineers there--I hope they do alright. Even in 2014 there was grumbling by the engineers about upper management, and I remember attending an "all-hands" meeting…

>In a fairly tone-deaf delivery, he spoke of limiting his own business-class international travel. I am reliably informed that business travel sucks donkey ass, (almost) regardless of class. It's tone deaf because travel has positive connotations to most people, not because he's out of touch with reality. To a business traveler, economy class is adding insult to injury.

I am reliably informed (by Kayak) that the cheapest direct flight from JFK to Heathrow, one week from today, costs $901 in economy class on British Airways, while the cheapest business class ticket costs $5451 on Virgin Atlantic.

The saying "A fool and his money are soon parted" extends to corporations, too.

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#108

Post by gaur »

asimuvPR wrote: post #67
gaur wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever that means.

It means that when you fire one person it affects many more. When you fire 7,500 there are thousands more affected.

Still uselessly vague. Who is affected? How are they affected? How did you determine the effect is exponential as opposed to, say, logarithmic or linear?

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#109

Post by dredmorbius »

Gravityloss wrote: post #103
dredmorbius wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not an MVP for a superjumbo, but you could start with UAVs, small planes, and start scaling up. The design challenges (and off-the-shelf parts) for smaller aircraft are more viable. Alternatively, you could start by building subsystems and expand to full aircraft.

The trend has gone the other way though. Companies like Wright, Curtiss, Martin Baker and Vought did complete aircraft but ended up doing subsystems. The aircraft and development projects have grown. The market has matured to a few big players. If you look at the A350 construction videos, you get a little glimpse of the massive investment required just for that part. New technologies like vacuum infused out of autocl…

Wright got into the business prior to its significant maturation, as I recall.

I suspect you could divide the industry at some arbitrary point and argue signifibant maturity by then. 1950, 60, or 70 depending on whether you're considering manufacturers, technology, or airframes, by and large.

Consolidation does seem to be a very strong trend, and one that may prove difficult to reverse.

Re: Bombardier to Cut 7,500 More Jobs Through 2018, Most in Rail

#110

Post by ConfuciusSay02 »

dpc59 wrote: post #82
ConfuciusSay02 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also due to, in the case of the Quebec government, nationalistic sentiment. It's a difficult balance to strike - keeping and supporting high tech manufacturing, while trying to remain competitive. I think at the moment, the government intervention (blocking suitors and direct investment) is in fact doing more harm than good, but perhaps they know better - I have no knowledge of how competitive the C-Series reall…

The liberal party of Québec isn't very nationalistic, it's mostly that they have very deep ties to the Beaudoin family that has inherited Bombardier from their parents without having the competency to manage it. And our government is in the hand of corporations since we still have colonial institutions, so they spend our tax dollars on free loans that will never be paid back.

Thanks for the info. I guess it's simply nationalistic window dressing for run-of-the-mill corruption.
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