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Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

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Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#51

Post by user5994461 »

notreallymee wrote: post #32
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #5

I hate the "everything must be a profit center" MBA attitude. Boeing is a profitable company because they make machines that fly people from place to place safely and efficiently. Part of that is having training, support, service, replacement parts, sales, manufacturing, IT, R&D, and all the other things required to make things fly. It's easy to sit in a conference room and say "gee, IT hasn't made any money, instead…

Using a throwaway account. A few years ago I did some consulting work for British Airways. It was interesting in that as far as the planes themselves, and the operational risk of the planes was concerned, the company had their shit together. Decisions made from a safety first point of view. Engineers making the calls. Everything else no object. But ALL the software around the planes, from the ops to ALL of the b2c wa…

I feel the need to support your point. British airways software has been utter s* in my experience. It's broken multiple times a year for days, making it impossible to buy tickets. Sometimes it's only the website, sometimes the mobile app, more often than not it's both.

My sister has been trying to get a ticket to visit me for Christmas. Couldn't do it because British Airways checkout is broken, tried in multiple browsers. Didn't work yesterday, didn't work today.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#52

Post by nradov »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #29
colonwqbang wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blaming the share holders for something like this is a bit weak. Share holders of a big, established company want long-term and stable profit. Short-term profit at the cost of increased risk is not something that share holders of a company like Boeing are looking for.

In theory they should want that, but if the company spends money on preparing for the future and its profits decline as a result, then the share price drops. The incentives aren't there.

Amazon would appear to be a strong counter example. Investors are happy to tolerate low short-term profits as long as management has a credible plan to increase long-term profits.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#53

Post by [deleted] »

petilon wrote: post #50
throwaway3563 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I’ve learned from these 737 discussions: Anyone who uses the term “inherently unstable” is an armchair aerospace engineer. It’s such a vague weasely term.

Would you prefer "insufficiently stable" instead? The kinds of mistakes Boeing made are so basic that even laypersons can immediately understand it. Like not having redundant sensors. Like fixing a hardware problem using software. See this video about the plane's tendency to pitch up at low speed and full thrust. That's "insufficiently stable"! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p5sboD2oO8

[deleted]

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#54

Post by softwaredoug »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #5

I hate the "everything must be a profit center" MBA attitude. Boeing is a profitable company because they make machines that fly people from place to place safely and efficiently. Part of that is having training, support, service, replacement parts, sales, manufacturing, IT, R&D, and all the other things required to make things fly. It's easy to sit in a conference room and say "gee, IT hasn't made any money, instead…

Is this an "MBA attitude?" I get the urge to rant, but I feel like even a good MBA would have seen training as a liability to mitigate in the larger business, not a profit center in its own right.

A competent exec doesn't structure a business so that "everything is a profit center", as that drives specific behaviors, and you have to be careful about the accountability you put in place and how you're measuring those departments. Competent management should understand that.

That said, there's an annoying fetish from human beings to obsess over what's easy to measure, which is not always what's important. Profit being one of those things...

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#55

Post by baddox »

codys wrote: post #49
baddox wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you even define “optimize for maximizing the next quarters results at the expense of everything else”? Obviously big companies don’t literally do this. I’m pretty sure every big public tech company is currently spending money on products that will not be released before the end of the next quarter.

Big companies make decisions all the time that harm long term prospects (sometimes in ways that are difficult to measure) in favor of obvious short term gains. As an example, when I worked for IBM, they furloughed the entire Systems technology group (essentially the folks working on things that aren't pure software or contracting) for a week. This was done purely to reduce the payroll for the STG so that it's income…

Sure, but now the claim is simply that companies focus on varying time scales, and sometimes those time scales are shorter than what some people would like to see. That’s fairly clearly true, but it’s a very different claim than that big public companies optimize for the next quarter over everything else.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#56

Post by brycesbeard »

notreallymee wrote: post #32
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #5

I hate the "everything must be a profit center" MBA attitude. Boeing is a profitable company because they make machines that fly people from place to place safely and efficiently. Part of that is having training, support, service, replacement parts, sales, manufacturing, IT, R&D, and all the other things required to make things fly. It's easy to sit in a conference room and say "gee, IT hasn't made any money, instead…

Using a throwaway account. A few years ago I did some consulting work for British Airways. It was interesting in that as far as the planes themselves, and the operational risk of the planes was concerned, the company had their shit together. Decisions made from a safety first point of view. Engineers making the calls. Everything else no object. But ALL the software around the planes, from the ops to ALL of the b2c wa…

This was my experience as a contractor for the Navy, years ago. We’ve had radar systems that can detect planes after a reflection on another plane, but the software is dogshit.

Someone once told me, it’s because generals and admirals can see hardware, and fell like they got value for their money. Software, not so much.

Perhaps it’s something innate in humans. Remember how Beats headphones used to add weights to feel more substantial?

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#57

Post by JumpCrisscross »

andrepd wrote: post #43
ljm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels crazy to me that there's no proper accountability for it. "Let's make training profitable" + every other decision on the software side = 346 dead people. Those deaths weren't an accident, they were a result of Boeing's desire for perpetual growth at any cost, and to try and beat Airbus at their game. No one except the families of the victims will suffer from that. But go ahead and carry a bag of weed and be…

Sadly it's not a feature of Boeing, but a feature of unchecked capitalism.

> unchecked capitalism

Airplane manufacturing has lots of problems. But it’s a highly regulated industry. “Unchecked capitalism” is a bad description.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#58

Post by perl4ever »

p1necone wrote: post #33
perl4ever wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shareholders by definition are not short term investors. Short term investors own bonds, short term ones to be specific. So it makes no sense that shareholders are scapegoated for everything. Even if someone trades in and out of Boeing stock in a millisecond, the existence of someone to sell to depends on people having an indefinitely long view of the company.

Why do large publicly owned companies optimize for maximizing the next quarters results at the expense of everything else then? Perfectly rational investors with infinite lifespans might do what you say, but in reality most people are fickle, short sighted and don't actually do much thinking.

I'm not saying stock investors take a long view in some absolute sense, I'm just saying they obviously inherently take a longer view than any other stakeholder.

A bond holder doesn't get paid their interest payment, it's a crisis. The government doesn't get the taxes due, it's a crisis. An employee doesn't get their paycheck, it's a crisis. Dividends are an "if we feel like it" thing. Many, many companies simply say "we have never paid any dividends and we may never pay any at all".

Stockholders by definition can only rely on the nebulous entire future of a company for stock value - either it will be sold some day for $X, or the dividends will total $X. That's a longer term perspective than anyone else has.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#59

Post by SequoiaHope »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57
andrepd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly it's not a feature of Boeing, but a feature of unchecked capitalism.

> unchecked capitalism Airplane manufacturing has lots of problems. But it’s a highly regulated industry. “Unchecked capitalism” is a bad description.

Well, yes the airplane industry is highly regulated. But the endless pursuit of growth is a feature of unchecked capitalism. And my understanding is that there has been more “self regulation” attitudes in the airline industry in recent years. So it makes sense that you would begin to see features typical of unregulated capitalism in an industry that is relaxing regulation.

Re: Boeing push to make training profitable may have left 737 Max pilots unprepared

#60

Post by perl4ever »

baddox wrote: post #55
codys wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big companies make decisions all the time that harm long term prospects (sometimes in ways that are difficult to measure) in favor of obvious short term gains. As an example, when I worked for IBM, they furloughed the entire Systems technology group (essentially the folks working on things that aren't pure software or contracting) for a week. This was done purely to reduce the payroll for the STG so that it's income…

Sure, but now the claim is simply that companies focus on varying time scales, and sometimes those time scales are shorter than what some people would like to see. That’s fairly clearly true, but it’s a very different claim than that big public companies optimize for the next quarter over everything else.

Note that this is unrelated to my (original) comments and I wasn't expressing an opinion on whether companies "optimize for the next quarter".
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