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“I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

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Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#21

Unpopular opinion, but had this happened at a company that hired H1-Bs, people would’ve jumped on the incompetent immigrants band-wagon immediately. This here is a fine example of the classic American work ethic devolving into sheer laziness. FWIW, I saw this happen at another Military contractor (Northrop Grumman) too!

Sometimes I wonder what'll happen if the United States ever has to fight a war against an opponent whose industrial base is not 150 years behind it. Then again, I've heard Russian military equipment is in just as sorry a state. No idea what the Chinese military is like, but I'd imagine the real money is in selling to Americans rather than killing them. We're in this interesting place where it's entirely possible that…

I think a war between China and the US, with neutral Russia [1], would be truly terrifying. To given example of the level of sophistication, just have a look at [2]. All the signs point towards China overtaking the US in industrial power, if it hasn't already happened.

[1] if Russia isn't neutral it would stay cold anyways due to MAD I think.

[2] https://dms.licdn.com/playback/C4D05AQE8hl2GCSdo1Q/feedshare...

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#22

Btw, the new "fix" for the MCAS has just been announced and discussed by a 40-year experienced pilot [1]. Turns out that while we shouldn't be doing armchair analysis and assuming the worst of the engineering, management and executive team; the software fix released appears to be rather elementary and MCAS should have been designed with these safety checks in the first place. Why it wasn't is a huge concern and we wo…

> I wonder how we, humans, collectively build extraordinary monuments while we individually rest on stilts My take is that we used to have brilliant engineers in the time where computational ressources were scarce (60s, 70 , 80s...), and they thought out their design thoroughly starting with a fucking paper and pencil. Aerospace indutries still rely on the designs from these times. But now engineering seems to be : l…

I think that's a bit unfair; designs have gotten so much more advanced and efficient in part thanks to computational design. The efficiency, range and maximum weight that airplanes can carry has pretty much doubled since that time.

However, the original comment and the video it is a reply to explains a bit of the countering force; economy and competition. It's management that pressures the engineers to cut corners, basically.

I don't doubt the Boeing engineers are some of the best people in the industry. I'm very much skeptical of management (and whipping them are shareholders) that optimize for time and by extension profits.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#23

Unpopular opinion, but had this happened at a company that hired H1-Bs, people would’ve jumped on the incompetent immigrants band-wagon immediately. This here is a fine example of the classic American work ethic devolving into sheer laziness. FWIW, I saw this happen at another Military contractor (Northrop Grumman) too!

There definitely are, or at least were, H-1Bs at Boeing. In the beginning of my career, I nearly became one myself (this was at the time when Russia and the US were on much friendlier terms), but I decided to steer into computational finance instead. Not all H-1Bs are incompetent or lazy. I still have good memories of my team back in Russia — some people there did contractor work for Boeing (documentation management…

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Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#24

Unpopular opinion, but had this happened at a company that hired H1-Bs, people would’ve jumped on the incompetent immigrants band-wagon immediately. This here is a fine example of the classic American work ethic devolving into sheer laziness. FWIW, I saw this happen at another Military contractor (Northrop Grumman) too!

  had this happened at a company that hired H1-Bs
But they do, so I don't understand what point you seek to make.

https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=THE+BOEING+COMPANY

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#25
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Use inputs from both AOA sensors, if they disagree by 5.5 degrees, disable MCAS. Great, and now you have the other problem the MCAS was supposed to mitigate (the tendency of the MAX to do backflips).

Shrugs, if the MCAS disables with a clear notification to the pilots I think at this point most 737-Max pilots would know the procedure to deal with that. Better than the plane flying itself into the ground.

Which raises a rather obvious question ...

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#26
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how we, humans, collectively build extraordinary monuments while we individually rest on stilts My take is that we used to have brilliant engineers in the time where computational ressources were scarce (60s, 70 , 80s...), and they thought out their design thoroughly starting with a fucking paper and pencil. Aerospace indutries still rely on the designs from these times. But now engineering seems to be : l…

> But now engineering seems to be : let's ask my computing power what is the good design, with little further questioning. I see this quite often at the undergrad level. Even for the simplest problem that can be solved with a pencil and a couple of calculations, many students launch their finite element software and blindly trust the results, even if it is telling them something obviously wrong, like orders of magnit…

I don't find that particularly surprising. Engineering students want to learn how to build machines to find solutions to everything, so it's intuitive that they would place a high confidence in a solution provided by a machine.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#27
post #24

Unpopular opinion, but had this happened at a company that hired H1-Bs, people would’ve jumped on the incompetent immigrants band-wagon immediately. This here is a fine example of the classic American work ethic devolving into sheer laziness. FWIW, I saw this happen at another Military contractor (Northrop Grumman) too!

had this happened at a company that hired H1-Bs But they do, so I don't understand what point you seek to make. https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=THE+BOEING+COMPANY

Usually, H1-Bs aren’t supposed to work on core pieces like aircraft design software and such. This stuff is sensitive and subject to US laws. I know this because I interned at a similar defense company and most H1-Bs were limited to back-office IT apps and such.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I wonder what'll happen if the United States ever has to fight a war against an opponent whose industrial base is not 150 years behind it. Then again, I've heard Russian military equipment is in just as sorry a state. No idea what the Chinese military is like, but I'd imagine the real money is in selling to Americans rather than killing them. We're in this interesting place where it's entirely possible that…

I think a war between China and the US, with neutral Russia [1], would be truly terrifying. To given example of the level of sophistication, just have a look at [2]. All the signs point towards China overtaking the US in industrial power, if it hasn't already happened. [1] if Russia isn't neutral it would stay cold anyways due to MAD I think. [2] https://dms.licdn.com/playback/C4D05AQE8hl2GCSdo1Q/feedshare...

As a Russian, I hope that nuclear weapons still provide enough deterrence to avoid large-scale war between superpowers.

However, this might not be the case, as said superpowers can just decide to avoid nuclear confrontation (because of immediate counterstrike) and still fight conventionally — just like chemical weapons weren’t used on large scale in WW2, compared to WW1.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I wonder what'll happen if the United States ever has to fight a war against an opponent whose industrial base is not 150 years behind it. Then again, I've heard Russian military equipment is in just as sorry a state. No idea what the Chinese military is like, but I'd imagine the real money is in selling to Americans rather than killing them. We're in this interesting place where it's entirely possible that…

I think a war between China and the US, with neutral Russia [1], would be truly terrifying. To given example of the level of sophistication, just have a look at [2]. All the signs point towards China overtaking the US in industrial power, if it hasn't already happened. [1] if Russia isn't neutral it would stay cold anyways due to MAD I think. [2] https://dms.licdn.com/playback/C4D05AQE8hl2GCSdo1Q/feedshare...

But modern firepower between two nuclear nations only requires a few nuclear facilities, not the sort of industrial complex that made the difference in ww2. Good intentions of not using nukes don't really matter, as the conflict would invariably escalate as one of the parties takes over. Which is why this noise of direct war between US and Russia or US and China isn't really credible.

A supply chain war is more credible, China refusing to ship certain products to the US in a conflict. But it is self-destructing too. The world pulling its supply chain out of China would be the end of the Chinese economy.

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