Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#21

Post by klyrs » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #3

Has anyone considered that the MCAS bug was just simply nasty and difficult to detect in their simulator? It’s easy to look back with retrospect and make sweeping judgements about the entire company and the FAA. But fundamentally this was all over, as the author mentions, a single software bug and a lack of backup sensors to offset the risk. In addition it was the technical pilots who asked for the stick to be harder…

> Has anyone considered that the MCAS bug was just simply nasty and difficult to detect in their simulator?

That was the assumption a year ago. Investigation has turned up tons of evidence against your null hypothesis. Crucially, this behavior was observed in the simulator and reported up the line.

> ... and a lack of backup sensors to offset the risk.

Not when multiple red flags were raised internally, and the backup sensors were sold as a premium upgrade.

> There will always be limits to how effective regulatory oversight can be.

Especially when we allow corporations to do their own regulatory "oversight"

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#22

Post by tyingq » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

hannasanarion wrote: post #10

briandear wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a hyperbolic statement. Boeing employees and engineers also fly on those planes with their families. It isn’t like they are making decisions with the intent of compromising safety.

Boeing executive decision makers don't. They never fly commercial, they have private jets.

Including BBJs, which are 737s. Note there's a BBJ MAX.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#23

Post by pavlov » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

> To this day, industry insiders still joke, “McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s money.”

That's commonly said about the Apple-NeXT acquisition too — NeXT paid a negative $429 million to take over Apple.

Obviously the results were much different there...

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#24

Post by yourapostasy » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

hannasanarion wrote: post #10

briandear wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a hyperbolic statement. Boeing employees and engineers also fly on those planes with their families. It isn’t like they are making decisions with the intent of compromising safety.

Boeing executive decision makers don't. They never fly commercial, they have private jets.

General aviation (private jets included) has a higher fatality rate than commercial aviation [1]. Even after backing out amateur general aviation, it is still more dangerous [2], though not egregiously so like personal planes, and helicopters make a sizeable chunk of fatality rate that is lumped into the same category as private jets.

But it is still poor optics to rarely dog food your own products.

[1] https://qz.com/work/1169517/executives-are-dying-in-private-...

[2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/corporate-jets-commerci...

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#25

Post by jorprp93j » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 4:06 PM UTC

dmix wrote: post #3

Has anyone considered that the MCAS bug was just simply nasty and difficult to detect in their simulator? It’s easy to look back with retrospect and make sweeping judgements about the entire company and the FAA. But fundamentally this was all over, as the author mentions, a single software bug and a lack of backup sensors to offset the risk. In addition it was the technical pilots who asked for the stick to be harder…

Did you see the article where pilots testing the MCAS software said it was a mess? Years before they shipped it?

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#26

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#27

Post by JMTQp8lwXL » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

Interesting read, but most of the article is about the increased costs of outsourcing of component fabrication. It doesn't really explain how the MCAS system evolved, or the outsourcing on the software side, even though the author identifies a software failure as the primary source of the crashes.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#28

Post by rjsw » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 4:09 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #6

platz wrote: post #2

> Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas? Because the airplane manufacturing industry is consolidating, and Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives. Was it really necessary to add the second part to explain why the merger occured? 'industry is consolidating' seems reason enough. The mixing of explanation with moralism in every sentence is grating. Put the moralism and ethics in it's own paragraph so we…

It’s a hyperbolic statement. Boeing employees and engineers also fly on those planes with their families. It isn’t like they are making decisions with the intent of compromising safety.

Boeing employees don't go anywhere right now.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#29

Post by gbjw » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 4:12 PM UTC

seanalltogether wrote: post #12

So exactly the situation that Steve Jobs describes in his infamous interview on how sales and marketing takes over product focused companies.

See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuZ6ypueK8M.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#30

Post by solatic » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

> In the case of information technology-related manufacturing, research, development, and marketing are the most profitable areas to specialize. Fabricating the units and linking critical components is a low-margin race to the bottom. Inspired by this theory, companies like Boeing aim to specialize in high-margin activities and outsource the rest.

This is the core point which the author seems to be trying to make, that outsourcing necessarily raised costs because it's a de facto defective strategy for improving margins. What the author fails to delve into is precisely why subcontracting failed to deliver as imagined - did subcontractors fail to deliver airplane parts within tolerances? Were the specifications provided to subcontractors faulty? Did the outsourcing contracts fail to require compensation for failing to deliver on-time and within tolerances; did such requirements exist but in reality such financial obligations caused subcontractors to run out of money / go bankrupt and default on their obligations? Was no insurance purchased to hedge against these risks, so that costs would not explode along with delays?

Part of smile theory is that when you decide to outsource lower-margin operations, the ability to outsource effectively in and of itself becomes part of your core competency. That Boeing executives failed to reduce costs as planned through outsourcing is less proof that outsourcing is inherently poor practice and more proof that competency at shifting numbers around on bean-counting accounting sheets is not the same thing as competency at outsourcing.