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Boeing's 737 Max software outsourced to lower-paid engineers

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Re: Boeing's 737 Max software outsourced to lower-paid engineers

#111

Post by tmaly »

throwawayMUSE wrote: post #74
danielg6 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentioned recent grads (working in Seattle for an India-based company) who wrote code on specifications, not “mechanical turk”-style employees. It was followed by a quote from a former Boeing software engineer affirming this. Is your issue just with the amount ($9) being paid?

I worked at a Fortune 10 in the early 2010s for several years. We had a small army of local and offshore Indian contractors through Larsen and Toubro Infotech, an Indian IT company. They were paid between $10-20 an hour, many couldn’t understand English. These guys have no CS background and would get stumped writing fizz buzz. But hey, management got ball game tickets and other favors from the L&TI reps. One of the d…

If one could improve on this process, it seems like a huge opportunity.

I have one person in our Mumbai office out of a 8 person team I manage. He had been absolutely fantastic with the work he does.

Re: Boeing's 737 Max software outsourced to lower-paid engineers

#112

Post by [deleted] »

meowface wrote: post #33
crorella wrote: post #11

Money saved by firing experienced engs and outsourcing the development Why is that so hard to understand? Massive fail at risk management maybe?

For one, in part because many managers don't really understand software or software projects and think it's mostly just people * man-hours. "Through this cost-saving measure, we've tripled the amount of people working on the project and expect to reduce the amount of time it'll take to complete by two-thirds without incurring any additional costs." In their minds, it's an easy win. And they were probably regularly re…

[deleted]

Re: Boeing's 737 Max software outsourced to lower-paid engineers

#113

Post by [deleted] »

ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #87
crorella wrote: post #11

Money saved by firing experienced engs and outsourcing the development Why is that so hard to understand? Massive fail at risk management maybe?

The software did exactly as it's supposed to do: If the AOA sensors tells you the plane is tilting too high up, pitch the nose down a little. The main issue was that there was only one AOA sensor connected in standard packages and the hardware for it failed. The pitot tubes failed for the doomed Air France incident which caused the software to read incorrectly and stall. For what it's worth AirBus has a huge engineer…

[deleted]

Re: Boeing's 737 Max software outsourced to lower-paid engineers

#114

Post by [deleted] »

newsoul2019 wrote: post #38
chimpburger wrote: post #27

"Rabin, the former software engineer, recalled one manager saying at an all-hands meeting that Boeing didn’t need senior engineers because its products were mature." Boeing is dead to me.

Understand the sentiment, but can anyone be sure that Airbus isn't doing something similar.

[deleted]

Re: Boeing's 737 Max software outsourced to lower-paid engineers

#115

Post by nobodyandproud »

ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #87
crorella wrote: post #11

Money saved by firing experienced engs and outsourcing the development Why is that so hard to understand? Massive fail at risk management maybe?

The software did exactly as it's supposed to do: If the AOA sensors tells you the plane is tilting too high up, pitch the nose down a little. The main issue was that there was only one AOA sensor connected in standard packages and the hardware for it failed. The pitot tubes failed for the doomed Air France incident which caused the software to read incorrectly and stall. For what it's worth AirBus has a huge engineer…

The problem is that developers also need to understand what they are coding, and fight back when they notice that the design is fundamentally flawed.

In this case, the lack of redundancy should have been a red-flagged.

This is why domain knowledge is at least as important as coding skills.

Re: Boeing's 737 Max software outsourced to lower-paid engineers

#116

Post by danielg6 »

gotdevops wrote: post #101
ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The software did exactly as it's supposed to do: If the AOA sensors tells you the plane is tilting too high up, pitch the nose down a little. The main issue was that there was only one AOA sensor connected in standard packages and the hardware for it failed. The pitot tubes failed for the doomed Air France incident which caused the software to read incorrectly and stall. For what it's worth AirBus has a huge engineer…

You sound suspiciously like every other outsourcer I’ve worked with who breaks something critical. A million reasons why it wasn’t their fault. They did exactly what they were told right and didn’t take one second to validate the assumptions surrounding the systematic nature of the solution. The goal, the mission, the end state solution. That was another departments concern right. That was QA’s concern, that was desi…

I do think it’s weird that the parent post started out by saying the sensors were designed to spec, but is he wrong? The article even said as much. (Not MCAS though.) I didn’t read it as an excuse.

It seems like you’re saying that outsourced devs should have as much accountability as home-based devs or the entity Boeing itself. I don’t agree with this. The salary does not reflect that. The work that’s assigned does not reflect that. Anecdotally working with outsourced devs and based from the comments here, no one honestly thinks that.

It seems like you were triggered by the “excuses” part of the post. But what about the rest of it? He made a valid point (which I think you proved) about people using the article to discriminate.

I guess I’m just wondering why you’re making generalizations. I’ve worked with many devs (who weren’t outsourced) who blame everyone else but themselves. I learned to use ‘git blame’ very early on.

Re: Boeing's 737 Max software outsourced to lower-paid engineers

#117

Post by danielg6 »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #105
ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The software did exactly as it's supposed to do: If the AOA sensors tells you the plane is tilting too high up, pitch the nose down a little. The main issue was that there was only one AOA sensor connected in standard packages and the hardware for it failed. The pitot tubes failed for the doomed Air France incident which caused the software to read incorrectly and stall. For what it's worth AirBus has a huge engineer…

> Articles like this are just drummed up to stir negative emotions about "others" The negativity seems more targeted at the leaders who arranged this than at the developers. Both the examples you cite are from the same comment, and even that comment is more about resentment towards management corruption than about the incompetence of the developers hired as a result of the corruption. > The software did exactly as it…

See the post below yours lol.

Re: Boeing's 737 Max software outsourced to lower-paid engineers

#118

Post by souprock »

inamberclad wrote: post #2

Was just looking at their job listings recently - a lot of the software jobs are in India. I don't know if they're flight software positions or just database/website stuff, but it still surprised me. On a side note, if anyone is looking for all-around engineers, including software/electrical/mechanical stuff, feel free to shoot me a message.

If you can do low-level software, particularly assembly, sure:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797601

Re: Boeing's 737 Max software outsourced to lower-paid engineers

#119

Post by durnygbur »

weaksauce wrote: post #80
meowface wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, in part because many managers don't really understand software or software projects and think it's mostly just people * man-hours. "Through this cost-saving measure, we've tripled the amount of people working on the project and expect to reduce the amount of time it'll take to complete by two-thirds without incurring any additional costs." In their minds, it's an easy win. And they were probably regularly re…

someone needs to throw the mythical man month at these managers.

There would be no englightment happening.
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