“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”

#111

Post by matwood » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

cstross wrote: post #109

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah. People tend to forget that as each problem is solved, the next problem is typically more complex.

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

#112

Post by treis » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:18 PM UTC

ilogik wrote: post #37

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…

> 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.

A busted AOA sensor is going to set off a whole bunch of alarms since it's used in air speed and stall calculations. It's not something that is going to be missed with or without MCAS.

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

#113

Post by guatepeor4 » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:19 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 $$$$ when a fresh out of college “average” engineer can write the “same piece of code” for $$

Probably a lot of diversity hires too, with lower IQ. Maybe some womynz who tech are in the management roles. It's amusing to watch how a culture piously self-desructs.

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

#114

Post by reitzensteinm » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:25 PM UTC

guatepeor4 wrote: post #113

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 $$$$ when a fresh out of college “average” engineer can write the “same piece of code” for $$

Probably a lot of diversity hires too, with lower IQ. Maybe some womynz who tech are in the management roles. It's amusing to watch how a culture piously self-desructs.

If this disturbing march towards the lowest common denominator continues, eventually Boeing may even hire you.

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

#115

Post by guatepeor4 » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:27 PM UTC

reitzensteinm wrote: post #114

guatepeor4 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably a lot of diversity hires too, with lower IQ. Maybe some womynz who tech are in the management roles. It's amusing to watch how a culture piously self-desructs.

If this disturbing march towards the lowest common denominator continues, eventually Boeing may even hire you.

I am not applying.

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

#116

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:28 PM UTC

TheCondor wrote: post #110

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 se…

[deleted]

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

#117

Post by linuxftw » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:31 PM UTC

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…

> 1. Use inputs from both AOA sensors, if they disagree by 5.5 degrees, disable MCAS

This can only mean that MCAS is disabled even more frequently. This is a terrible idea. This is like RAID0.

The failure mode will increase greatly in complexity. MCAS might cut in and out, the plane might behave erratically.

What the need to do is add a damn switch for 'disable MCAS' and tell people how and when to use the damn thing.

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

#118

Post by jcranmer » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:32 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.

> On top of anecdotes (in my grandfather's generation, the norm was to fluently speak 3-4 languages)

I'm not aware of anyone in my grandfather's generation that can speak more than one language fluently. The fact that my grandparents grew up on farms on the edge of the Dust Bowl may have something to do with that, but I rather suspect you're attempting to compare a tiny subset of the population in the past against the majority of the public today.

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

#119

Post by gruez » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

tomohawk wrote: post #91

Its interesting how an unknown source making unverifiable claims on a site which is basically a rumor mill gets so much attention.

It's not, if you think about it. People believe what they want to hear. Unverified post agreeing with the popular narrative gets immediately accepted as fact, and posts disagreeing with the narrative gets accused of being shills or damage control.

I'm not saying this guy is a fraud, but if there's no supporting evidence, there's no evidence to believe him.

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

#120

Post by ebg13 » Tue, Apr 16, 2019, 1:35 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #81

Scarblac wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than having one sensor, the chance that one of two breaks is larger than that just a single one breaks. And by alternating you ensure that the broken sensor will be used.

Was talking to my flight instructor about twin engine planes. He was adamant that they were LESS safe than single engines because 1) you are twice as likely to have an engine failure and 2) the statistics indicate (non-intuitively) that an engine-out in a twin is more likely to lead to fatalities. He said the insurance companies used to think twins were safer but they have adjusted their rates after looking at actual…

To your second point, my assumption as a non-pilot is that a symmetrically balanced glide is more controllable than lopsided thrust that could put you into a spin?