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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”

#121

Post by avip »

jcranmer wrote: post #118
avip wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 th…

I agree and that’s why it was framed as an anecdote.

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

#122

Post by CptFribble »

navigatesol wrote: post #86
chippy wrote: post #33

"I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period and I can absolutely guarantee this happened." was in response to this comment: "I would be very surprised if in a few years from today a bunch of engineers don't testify that ample of warning was given to management about this. " Reddit doesn't make it easy to find what they replied to.

> "I would be very surprised if in a few years from today a bunch of engineers don't testify that ample of warning was given to management about this. " I love this mentality that "managers" are the only people responsible, and that the people actually putting the thing together are not. It's the same with the bank scandals, or the VW scandal, or the Facebook scams; it's all the executive team! We were just peons fol…

Not everyone is swimming in buckets of FAANG cash and has the freedom to be fired at any time.

The pressure to keep putting food on the table is strong, especially when you have kids.

Many people see nonsense they have no power to personally fix, and in a big bureaucratic organization even making a ruckus will usually get you nothing but shown the door.

So for many, the choice is 1: say nothing, keep your paychecks, and the problem still exists, or 2: say something, possibly lose your job, and the problem still doesn't get fixed because you have no authority.

The only resort is whistleblowing, which may or may not work and is losing its protections all the time.

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

#123

Post by puranjay »

basetop wrote: post #100
chippy wrote: post #33

"I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period and I can absolutely guarantee this happened." was in response to this comment: "I would be very surprised if in a few years from today a bunch of engineers don't testify that ample of warning was given to management about this. " Reddit doesn't make it easy to find what they replied to.

You can thank their redesign. Try using "old.reddit.com" while it last. And stop using reddit once that gets taken down. Reddit was once a great site. Now it's a corporatized, censored mess that sold its soul for short-term cashout in their 2020 IPO.

I have never seen a more incompetent redesign in my life, especially for a "unicorn". That new redesign completely falls apart on Chrome on my mobile (a OnePlus 5T). Comment threads get squished together so much that by the 5th comment in a thread, all words are basically vertically arranged.

If I switch to "desktop site" on Chrome, any text I enter gets automatically erased after hitting a certain number of characters.

I sometimes can't believe the amount of incompetence that is allowed to thrive at successful companies.

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

#124

Post by cwilkes »

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.

Well if you have two sensors you never know which one is right.

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

#125

Post by Pigo »

I contracted with a branch of Lockheed. While I couldn't/shouldn't talk about any of the technology involved, I can attest to the culture I witnessed. I always assumed it was horrible because of the government affiliation. But I think that mostly affected their focus, in that most of the branch was dedicated to wasting money so they could ask for more money. However, the culture itself was stagnate by design. Most of the employees actively fought anything that would require them to learn or change. EVERYONE was counting the clock to retirement. Anyone who wasn't in the same boat left as soon as they got the big picture. It made me extremely pessimistic about taxes.

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

#126

Post by thrav »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #60
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 $$$$ when a fresh out of college “average” engineer can write the “same piece of code” for $$

I think it may be that brilliant engineers still exist somewhere, but I suspect they're less likely to go into aerospace than in the 50s, 60s or 70s. Heck or even the 40s. Immediately after the war aerospace was red hot - there were countless countries and companies putting out new jet designs - both commercial and military. The competition and pace was intense and there was quite some cachet and public interest in a…

They’re at Elon Musk’s companies being underpaid and overworked so they can do something legitimately cool.

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

#127

Post by chipsa »

l31g wrote: post #106
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.

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 seat…

It's not that the MCAS software would switch. It's that the sensors feed into two different flight control computers (Captain and F/O). And which FCC is primary would switch after each flight. Both FCCs run the same software, but with different inputs from the different sensors.

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

#128

Post by [deleted] »

koolba wrote: post #52

> To this day, I refuse to fly on a 787. I'm sure that the Dreamliners that came off the assembly line after about a year or so were fine but there's that first year of production that, as far as I'm concerned, are ticking time bombs. I talked to many engineers who had worked on that program to know just how badly they rushed that initial production. Ouch. Anybody know where to get a list of who’s operating the plane…

[deleted]

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

#129

Post by brational »

masonic wrote: post #24
curiousDog wrote: post #7

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

Most h1bs at boeing will be restricted to internal IT support work. You need to be a US-person (citizen/greencard) for aircraft/military products.

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

#130

Post by _qwfv »

matt4077 wrote: post #89
curiousDog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This doesn’t even begin to make sense. First of all, everything a US company works on is “subject to US laws”. Second, where clearance is required, there is a bright line defining the rules, no “isn’t supposed to...”. Third, security clearances are available for foreigners as well.

Clearances are one piece. Trade restrictions like ITAR are another.
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