Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#211

Post by solatic » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 5:43 AM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #175

solatic wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which incurs training costs, integration costs, loss of intellectual capital, logistics loss, and results in an inferior product What I'm arguing is that, in order to effectively outsource, one must get good at the so-referred training and integration costs, while hedging against logistics issues. Otherwise you will get, as you prophesy, an inferior product. But I'm not convinced that's inevitable. Of note, keeping…

> What I'm arguing is that, in order to effectively outsource, one must get good at the so-referred training and integration costs, while hedging against logistics issues I think by now we have demonstrated that this is false, no? In the 1960s, it was a popular idea (especially among managers) to assume that a company can have a core competency of "management" rather than making products or services. If true, such a…

> it was a popular idea (especially among managers) to assume that a company can have a core competency of "management" rather than making products or services.

No, that isn't the argument at all. A manager at an ice cream factory doesn't need to understand aircraft manufacturing tolerances. If a manager at an ice cream factory outsources the production of chocolate, and the chocolate that arrives as an input is slightly off-grade, it's not going to cause thousands of tons of aluminum and human flesh to come crashing out of the sky.

Risk management has its similarities across disciplines, just as the principles of Lean Manufacturing are similar across disciplines. But you can't effectively outsource something you don't intimately understand, which (by the way) is why it's impossible to outsource research.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#212

Post by closeparen » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:18 AM UTC

na85 wrote: post #208

closeparen wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you call the process by which the defense sector designs and builds weapons? This cannot be "engineering" by your definition, as the people involved are not consulted on the foreign policy objectives their work will serve, but it's probably what others in the thread think the word means. Even in bridge building, the balancing of human civilization's advantages against its environmental cost is a matter of…

I believe if you go back and read my comment you'll find I said engineers need to consider the ethical ramifications of their work. I neither prescribed a particular ethical conclusion nor required consultation for my definition. There are lots of people who choose not to work in Defense because of the ethical considerations. There are others whose personal senses of ethics are not offended by the idea of making weap…

The aircraft doesn't do what it's specified to do. That's a technical problem. If the aircraft misbehaved but the people involved were really scrupulous about it, it would still be an engineering failure and their strong ethics would not mitigate that.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#213

Post by sargram01 » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:42 AM UTC

ThalesX wrote: post #123

sargram01 wrote: post #31

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.

I’ve also had the misfortune of working with an early startup that as soon as it got a series A hired a team of career managers on board. The product plummeted soon after, product market fit got lost as the direction became more and more political and by the end, the ones that came out on top and ready to move to their next venture were the managers that managed to tick their measurements and KPIs even though they we…

> But, they do wield weapons that us engineers often don’t have the time not desire to sharpen...

Right, this is something more engineers need to get better at, this is nothing more than first year law school debating which is teachable. Seems like Management training for engineers should include this skill for good. Also having a backbone to fight too.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#214

Post by ulfw » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 6:43 AM UTC

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…

The "industry" wasn't consolidating though. What industry? There were three larg(er) players (Airbus, Boeing, McDD) and a handful of small ones (deHavilland/Bombardier, Embraer, etc). What consolidation was happening in 'the industry' around that time?

Boeing started said consolidation itself by having McDD buy it Boeing with Boeing's money.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#215

Post by ozmaverick72 » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 8:00 AM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #214

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…

The "industry" wasn't consolidating though. What industry? There were three larg(er) players (Airbus, Boeing, McDD) and a handful of small ones (deHavilland/Bombardier, Embraer, etc). What consolidation was happening in 'the industry' around that time? Boeing started said consolidation itself by having McDD buy it Boeing with Boeing's money.

The consolidation the author is talking about is consolidation of defence aerospace contractors - Grumman, Northrup, McDonald Douglas and Boeing. McDonald Douglas was in some financial difficulties and the defence department encouraged the merger to keep them alive.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#216

Post by piva00 » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 8:22 AM UTC

I read this article [0] about a month ago that went through what happened to Boeing after the MD merge. After reading it I went through some other articles comparing the development of the 777 to the 787 (the first plane to be designed with this new Boeing management completely in control) and it's staggering how Boeing went downhill from an engineering-focused company perspective to a bean-counter paradise, it seems to be the common trope: you let business people take complete control of your products' pipeline and the race to the bottom starts, the company can still deliver while the old culture lingers but as more time passes the more problematic these deliveries are until the company has been sucked dry to deliver on-paper good quarterly reports but is rotting from the inside.

Maybe it's a side effect of financial capitalism taking over, maybe it's not but it's quite correlated.

[0] https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-invest...

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#217

Post by ulfw » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 8:28 AM UTC

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #161

anon1m0us wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I see the same default response to accidents in self-driving cars. It's because the driver didn't have their hands on the wheel. It's because the driver fell asleep.

If you're referring to Tesla's Autopilot, Tesla's legal stance has always been very clear - you are driving the car and it is your responsibility to pay attention. Now their marketing is very different and confuses people and I can understand why people would think otherwise, but Tesla has never waivered from "it's your fault, not ours" when something goes wrong. So yes, if you fall asleep or don't have your hands on…

"Marketing" being "different" from "legal" is the definition of corporate lying if I've ever seen one.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#218

Post by rjsw » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 9:42 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #145

rjsw wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Boeing people that I work with are not allowed to travel.

Not allowed to? How does that work? Boeing thinks they control what people do on their vacation time?

They are American, they don't get significant vacation time.

I was really writing about work travel though.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#219

Post by rsj_hn » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 10:13 AM UTC

solatic wrote: post #211

rsj_hn wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I'm arguing is that, in order to effectively outsource, one must get good at the so-referred training and integration costs, while hedging against logistics issues I think by now we have demonstrated that this is false, no? In the 1960s, it was a popular idea (especially among managers) to assume that a company can have a core competency of "management" rather than making products or services. If true, such a…

> it was a popular idea (especially among managers) to assume that a company can have a core competency of "management" rather than making products or services. No, that isn't the argument at all. A manager at an ice cream factory doesn't need to understand aircraft manufacturing tolerances. If a manager at an ice cream factory outsources the production of chocolate, and the chocolate that arrives as an input is slig…

I guess I don't understand your point. First, you say "that's not the argument", but then you make the case that Ice Cream production is qualitatively different. Yes, exactly! You don't have the depth of the supply chain or the level of interconnectedness in the ice cream factory as you do when you are building a jet with pieces outsourced that are moving parts that need to work together. A slight flaw in the wing tip will change the stresses on the plane, the fuel efficiency, will require software updates, and will trigger changes throughout many other components. Now change that from "flaw" to unknown factor. In that environment, it's really impossible to specify what the tolerances on everything should be in full precision, you need a team of people with a common purpose and short communication paths who can collaborate on fixing these issues in a cooperative manner rather than in a contractual vendor/supplier relationship. E.g. if there is a problem discovered in the design, perhaps you need some changes in the wingtip design and in 1000 other parts, and everyone needs to work together to make that change. Now, what happens when these are 1000 different companies working to spec, with lots of lawyers poring over the details of what was required. It becomes an unworkable nightmare. Only a true coordination talent with heavy doses of prescience could try to solve that nightmare, Boeing thought they had this coordination talent, but they didn't because no one does.

Such a talent is not a core competency of any firm.

More importantly, such a manufacturing process is incompatible with innovation, where you have to be able to make lots of mistakes as you stumble towards a better design iteratively. It only works when everything is known to spec before the contracts are signed -- e.g. when you are not innovating.

This type of design agility can't be extracted from the minds of conscientious engineers working together on a shared vision, and parceled out to for profit contractors looking to do spec work.

Similarly risk management certainly adopts a common language, but the idea that you can actually manage risk in a quantitative way is not something borne out by experience. Rather, you can cover your a$$ and say you have sign off from you GRC people so that when stuff breaks down you can point the finger at someone. We just exited a massive financial crisis, and we see security breaches on a massive scale, most of which happen in firms with well funded GRC teams. Again, wishing that you can control these variables does not make it so. Putting together a bureaucracy to control something doesn't mean that it's controlled.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#220

Post by largbae » Mon, Oct 21, 2019, 10:24 AM UTC

privateSFacct wrote: post #201

largbae wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank goodness it's so safe! I am glad we are only talking about theoretical crazy combinations of events that can lead to a crash... You brought up faulty replacement parts yourself as a contributing cause, but when challenged you switch to methods to stop the unstoppable, undocumented MCAS. To which faulty part were you referring? The unimportant, non-SPOF AOA sensor?

The cosmic ray bit-flip of the 5 independent critical bits is very unlikely. We are being told right here on HN and in the news that this means the plane can't fly. In the US there were close calls, but fewer. If you beleive in the chain of safety better maintenance and pilot response may have saved the day a few times when faced with the MCAS problems. The safety reports from US pilots certainly sound scary (nose do…

I've got your point, and I think that knowing what we know now perhaps the planes could have been saved. I'm still not for blaming the pilots though: Would you have wanted to be the captain of a max while MCAS operated against a faulty AoA without having any way of knowing that MCAS existed or of the handling/stall risk that led to its creation?