You see this at startups too, middle eng management were actual engineers and as the startup grows career managers creep in and skew the alignment of the engineering departments away from engineering solutions, the “product” they make, to problems they understand instead, political jockeying, manipulation, appeasing the LCD and the next managerial rung above them.
Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company
31–40 of 234 posts
Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company
#32Silly corporations, pursuing profit instead of the good of everyone. Why would we expect any corporation to cut corners to improve profits, which is definitely not what private for-profit corporations are explicitly organized to accomplish? What a weird thing that nobody could have predicted. Really tickles my nose. Makes me want to sneeze actually. aaaa AAAA AAAAAACHSEIZETHEMEANSOFPRODUCTION that was a weird one, so…
Er, we have through the stock market.
Depends who is the "we"
Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.co…
I think there are a few other factors to take into account, such as private jets flying faster on average, no layovers, etc. Looking only at flight hours doesn't really show the risk for an individual (e.g. an exec choosing between commercial flights and private flights). My guess is that the average exec is about as likely to die from one vs the other since the exec would spend more time flying in the commercial jet.
So it's really not a fair comparison and I wouldn't be surprised if they're functionally equivalent after taking into account all major variables.
Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company
#34Earlier 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.
Interesting side note, Boeing does make private jets - the Boeing Business Jet family[0].
But Boeing executives doesn't fly on these, since they're too large for even CEOs. Boeing executives fly on one of the three Boeing owned Bombardier Challenger 650s [1][2][3].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Business_Jet
[1] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N541BA/908...
[2] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N543BA/908...
[3] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N544BA/884...
Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company
#35So exactly the situation that Steve Jobs describes in his infamous interview on how sales and marketing takes over product focused companies.
What makes the interview infamous? Did you mean famous?
Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company
#36Silly corporations, pursuing profit instead of the good of everyone. Why would we expect any corporation to cut corners to improve profits, which is definitely not what private for-profit corporations are explicitly organized to accomplish? What a weird thing that nobody could have predicted. Really tickles my nose. Makes me want to sneeze actually. aaaa AAAA AAAAAACHSEIZETHEMEANSOFPRODUCTION that was a weird one, so…
Er, we have through the stock market.
Lol no we don't. The richest 1% of Americans own 50% of the stocks. The top 10% of Americans own 84% of the stocks.
Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company
#37Silly corporations, pursuing profit instead of the good of everyone. Why would we expect any corporation to cut corners to improve profits, which is definitely not what private for-profit corporations are explicitly organized to accomplish? What a weird thing that nobody could have predicted. Really tickles my nose. Makes me want to sneeze actually. aaaa AAAA AAAAAACHSEIZETHEMEANSOFPRODUCTION that was a weird one, so…
Are there any nationalized airplane manufacturers with a better safety record than Boeing?
Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
i have quite the video for you (timestamped, but the whole thing is worth watching): https://youtu.be/rvkEpstd9os?t=2499
Seems like a totally unbiased source. /s I mean, do you really not understand how that sort of thing is done? They ask 100 people and then edit it down to the 5 most extreme responses.
While that's a reasonable suspicion to have, the reporting in this case
is accurate.
I'm from Charleston, where the plant is located, & I have several friends that work at Boeing in assembly and quality inspection. What you see in the video is exactly the same sentiment I've heard for years.
Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company
#39I don't understand how this was a software failure. From everything I've ever read about this issue, including this piece, the failure seems very much like a model & design failure.
It seems like a systems & human factors engineering failure. Not a software failure.
Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company
#40Earlier 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 employees don't go anywhere right now.
I love seeing these false statements on HN, where most users have no idea what the aerospace industry is like.