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

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

#101

Post by PaulHoule » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 12:36 PM UTC

ozmaverick72 wrote: post #31

spectramax wrote: post #2

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…

The software fixes as described sound sensible and it's hard to believe they were not in the original design. Unfortunately I don't see how these changes will allow them to keep a common type rating with the 737 NG. After the updated MCAS has made its one shot trim adjustment you will now be flying an aircraft with different handling characteristics if you keep increasing the angle of attack into the stall. Surely th…

Having a new type rating is a fair punishment, I think, for Boeing and the airlines who have been stringing along this obsolete airliner for way too long.

Note the 737 MAX was rushed out not just to fight the A320neo but also to counter this kind of jet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220

which is cheaper to run than the 737 MAX but also has much better passenger comfort than the 737. I was in the similar

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E-Jet_family#E175

and even though it is a smaller plane, it feels more like riding in a widebody than in a 737.

Canada developed a fully modern small jet on it's own dime and taking risk, then Boeing nearly killed it by offering airlines a 70% discount on the 737 MAX. Airbus bought a controlling interest in it for free because that was the only way it could survive.

Common type rating is a big reason why airlines are sticking with the 1967 era 737 rather than upgrading to modern planes that will make flying much more pleasant, make less noise, use less fuel, less climate change impact, etc.

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

#102

Post by philpem » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 12:37 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #61

6nf wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to explain a bit more: It uses the main pilot side AOA sensor, and pilots switch seats every flight.

So switching seats during the flight would have solved the problem?

That sounds so unlikely that most people would dismiss it as silly...

I'm not a pilot, but if the controls are linked -- why would the plane need to know where the pilot is sitting (or even have a switch for it)?

(Any 747 pilots reading? Can you please fill in the gaps for me?)

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

#103

Post by jcadam » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 12:38 PM UTC

I worked at Boeing on a large satellite program back in this same time frame (2008-2011). I worked on the software simulator for the satellite that was used to test flight code and the ground system (i.e., give the ground control software simulated satellites to talk to, and to ring out procedures).

Anyway, as the final configuration for this satellite was still being tweaked, I needed to get updated mass properties (in order to simulate the physics properly) from the team working on the real satellite as the configuration changed (e.g., they added more batteries, solar panels, decreased RCS tank size, etc.). Ordinarily, these would be emailed to me in an excel spreadsheet every so often. I would make the updates, life would go on.

Now, internally, the simulator software worked with metric units, and the spreadsheet I received would also use metric units. Apparently, one day an engineering manager on the vehicle team found out that one of their engineers had been "helping" the simulator team by plugging the mass properties into an excel spreadsheet, translating the units from imperial to metric, and sending them to me (I did not know any of this, of course... I just knew the vehicle team would send me updated mass properties from time to time).

This was an outrageous affront to said manager, who ordered his folks to not expend any time helping "some other team." So, the next time I needed updated mass properties, what did I get? A faxed copy of something that looked like it had been generated on an old line printer. I called and asked "Where is the spreadsheet?" and got "Sorry, that's all I can do anymore."

Some of the numbers were questionably legible, but I tried to use it anyway. As I was making my updates, I noticed the numbers were way off. Units weren't labeled on the fuzzy faxed copy, so it took me a few minutes to realize that the vehicle engineering team apparently worked with imperial units internally.

Angry phone calls back and forth ensued, but I don't recall the (political) issue ever being fixed. I didn't stay much longer, so I don't know if it was ever resolved.

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

#104

Post by philpem » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 12:41 PM UTC

noncoml wrote: post #10

ptidhomme wrote: post #5

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…

Brilliant engineers are still there. We haven’t gotten stupider as a species in 30 years. It’s the economics that changed. As people say “They don’t build stuff like they used too anymore”. First we started going cheap on the materials. Now we are going cheap on the engineers too. Why pay a senior “brilliant” engineer $$$$ when a fresh out of college “average” engineer can write the “same piece of code” for $$

There's also the prevailing management theory that "all staff can do the same job" -- I've seen this in various perverted and butchered variants of Lean and Agile.

The theory is sound -- at least two engineers on a project should know how a given functional unit works. It's a practice for lessening the impact of "bus factor", where you have one engineer everyone relies on because they're "the one person in the whole company who understands it".

The issue is when this kind of thinking reaches management, and you see someone being pushed into a role when their skill set is radically different to what's needed.

And then there's surprise and finger-pointing when things (inevitably) go wrong...

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

#105

Post by impendia » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 12:54 PM UTC

avip wrote: post #82

noncoml wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant engineers are still there. We haven’t gotten stupider as a species in 30 years. It’s the economics that changed. As people say “They don’t build stuff like they used too anymore”. First we started going cheap on the materials. Now we are going cheap on the engineers too. Why pay a senior “brilliant” engineer $$$$ when a fresh out of college “average” engineer can write the “same piece of code” for $$

>We haven’t gotten stupider as a species in 30 years I'm honestly not sure that's true. On top of anecdotes (in my grandfather's generation, the norm was to fluently speak 3-4 languages), go ask any STEM prof. with 20+ mileage about the general math, science and logic literacy of students nowadays.

I'm a math professor at a US state university. I once asked one of my older colleagues whether our students had gotten better or worse over the years.

About the same, he said.

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

#106

Post by l31g » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 12:56 PM UTC

6nf wrote: post #57

ilogik wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Original MCAS system used only 1 AOA sensor and switched back and forth between the two after every flight. Who the fuck thought that was a good idea??? Let's make it 10x more difficult to detect that there is a problem.

Just to explain a bit more: It uses the main pilot side AOA sensor, and pilots switch seats every flight.

Each side of the airplane has a set of sensors. The ones on the left (while sitting on the plate) are named Captain and the ones on the right are named First-Officer (F/O) . The MCAS software would switch from Captain AoA vane to F/O AoA vane between flights. The location where the pilots are sitting doesn’t affect how the airplane is flying itself. The person flying the plane can be sitting on either of the two seats, but the most senior pilot usually sits on the left.

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

#107

Post by philpem » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:03 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #79

lawlessone wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know software is bad. But using the same airframe from the 60's and just strapping bigger engines to it until you have to move the nacelle and alter flight characteristics seems like a cowboy move also.

"Cowboy" is one person taking shortcuts to get things done but in a risky way. This was Boeing optimizing very hard at "how do we get better fuel economy while keeping the same type rating". In general, I'm totally in favor of them doing this sort of optimization, since pilot training is legitimately a big expense. (In this case it clearly went wrong, both in that MCAS was an unsafe design and that the FAA should not…

There's a point where shortcuts are appropriate, and there's a point where the shortcuts actually cost you time.

You can spend ten weeks messing around with "quick fixes" when it'd take two weeks to redesign the unstable or broken part.

Too much of engineering is obsessed with "get the thing out there and we'll fix it in version two".

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

#108

Post by philpem » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:05 PM UTC

hacknat wrote: post #92

I lived in Seattle for 7 years and got to know some Boeing project managers. The stories they told are very similar to this one. Apparently the life of a Boeing PM or Engineer is endless meetings, I asked one of my friends why this was the case. His response? A good chunk of the managers at Boeing won’t use email.

I wouldn't be surprised if this was a liability thing.

You can't subpoena a conversation unless it was recorded...

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

#109

Post by cstross » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:09 PM UTC

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #99

cstross wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there's more to it than that. Firstly, from 1903-1968 aerospace was in a period of exponentially improving performance (range, speed, altitude) comparable to Moore's Law. But from the mid-60s onwards the rapid improvements stopped, as developments hit hard limits imposed by material science and thermodynamics: it's hard to get a material much stronger than carbon fibre or titanium alloy, it's ridiculously hard to…

Hmm, aren't we agreeing here? :) As a brilliant star with a newly minted engineering degree I might go into aerospace pre-1968 to play with blank sheet developments, X planes and XB-70, Concorde, Harrier, SR-71, 707 etc etc. Much the same with at engine makers - Merlin to Olympus and Pegasus. An absurdly long list, often with remarkably small teams. I might not want to take my 2019 vintage degree into a world of incr…

I forgot the point I was trying to make while giving the background!

It's not that the engineers of yesteryear were brilliant while today's engineers are second-rate: it's that what they were doing back then was in some respects easier. (And we remember the good planes: as often as not they invented utter turkeys: look at the history of the Supermarine Scimitar for example — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Scimitar — TLDR: yes, it's military, but to lose 51% of your aircraft in 9 years of peacetime service takes some doing. And then compare with the F-35, two crashes out of 308 airframes in service over a 5 year period, even though it's a vastly more complicated and higher performance aircraft.)

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

#110

Post by TheCondor » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:12 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #3

My view of aircraft engineering has certainly changed since the 737 stuff came out. You always get told software engineers are a bunch of cowboys compared to aircraft people, because they have to put everything through a bunch of rigourous tests. I asked a friend who trains commercial pilots about it, and to my surprise he told me the processes to get things certified are political and hand-wavy.

I think there were some stories about this from Challenger. The cost, be it financial, political, or other was so great to get a part “space rated” that they’d use redundant bad parts to cope with errors in some cases. I vaguely remember this being used to describe a temperature sensor that was wrong like 1% of the time, they used a group of them and some algorithm to filter out error.

Can you think of a more geek sexy project than working on a rocket, space craft or jet? Then the reality is that it has to be about the least satisfying engineering job around, it looks like you have to make a titanic effort just to do something