Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 137 posts

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

#91

Post by philjohn »

user5994461 wrote: post #51
notreallymee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 br…

Yep - I've complained numerous times about being able to go through the upgrade with points flow on an existing booking, only for something to go wrong after entering my payment details and then just having to wring a call center to process the upgrade.

I wonder what the cost of annoyed customers who now fly Virgin and call center salaries is compared to proper engineering?

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

#92

Post by jimkleiber »

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…

I appreciate you pointing this out. Reminds me of a book called Obliquity where I think the author specifically mentions Boeing in a story talking about how companies make more money when they don't specifically focus on making money. If I recall correctly, he mentions how Boeing used to focus on making really good planes and when they did, they made a lot of money. When they shifted to focusing on profit, they started to make less money because they made worse planes. The book is a few years old but feels quite prescient.

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

#93

Post by mrunkel »

brycesbeard wrote: post #56
notreallymee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This reminds me of when I gave an tour of the software development company I was working for (we had about 250 employees at the time) and his reaction was "so many people, but you guys don't produce _anything_".

He was right, we didn't ship anything physical.

We just lined up electrons. :)

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

#94

Post by dmix »

jimkleiber wrote: post #92
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…

I appreciate you pointing this out. Reminds me of a book called Obliquity where I think the author specifically mentions Boeing in a story talking about how companies make more money when they don't specifically focus on making money. If I recall correctly, he mentions how Boeing used to focus on making really good planes and when they did, they made a lot of money. When they shifted to focusing on profit, they start…

That's because we as a culture over-analyze and study businesses as if they are living entities that are the sum of all of it's different internal divisions/parts/stockholder-connected output, instead of fundamentally about delivering value to customers and getting back a greater amount of value in return.

The universities and pop-business books has made everyone so obsessed with the business processes themselves and their management, particularly the stuff that has commonalities across various niches: finance, management culture, 'innovation', etc.

But the all of the various unique fundamental value propositions are what really drives the companies, everything else is just helping deliver and execute that, but the core of the business often goes to the way-side in favour of obsessing over perfecting all of the the small processes in between. An ideal organization should put its primary business front and centre, above the various small processes which it is composed of mostly just for practical reasons of running a business.

It's sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two but I do very much think that it's possible to lose sight of that distinction in the day-to-day running of things, especially once the business gets really larger and running the business itself becomes the biggest time-sink for everyone involved.

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

#95

Post by austhrow743 »

pcurve wrote: post #73
notreallymee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Their idea of agile was to release stuff once every 3 months in a 2 week window." Can someone explain why this is actually bad? (EDIT: I'm being serious, so please don't just down vote it without explaining. For airline industry with legacy systems, I don't necessarily think it's bad, but maybe I'm missing something.)

I took it as more of a "only did this one aspect of it" statement more so than a "the one thing they did was bad" statement.

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

#96

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

brycesbeard wrote: post #56
notreallymee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Adding weight to headphones does have a practical advantage: it keeps them firmly on your head.

I had a relatively expensive - but very lightweight - set of headphones a while ago and I swapped them for a cheaper but heavier pair because they just wouldn’t stay in place.

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

#97

Post by tome »

jimkleiber wrote: post #92
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…

I appreciate you pointing this out. Reminds me of a book called Obliquity where I think the author specifically mentions Boeing in a story talking about how companies make more money when they don't specifically focus on making money. If I recall correctly, he mentions how Boeing used to focus on making really good planes and when they did, they made a lot of money. When they shifted to focusing on profit, they start…

Is it this?

https://www.johnkay.com/2004/01/17/obliquity/

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

#98

Post by dantiberian »

brycesbeard wrote: post #56
notreallymee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Remember how Beats headphones used to add weights to feel more substantial?

This was not really true, the original tear down that found weights was of a counterfeit pair of Beats headphones.

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/07/are-beats-headphones-real...

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

#99

Post by coob »

brycesbeard wrote: post #56
notreallymee wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Remember how Beats headphones used to add weights to feel more substantial?

Beats didn’t do this. Cheap counterfeit headphone manufacturers did.

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

#100

Post by icedistilled »

WWLink wrote: post #38
hkmurakami wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This mirrors my experience in automotive regarding the sentiment for hardware vs software.

I think that's often the case in any company that doesn't sell software as a product/service. I know automotive companies are really terrible at it. That said, I'm not sure what level of engineering they do anyway. It seems like at best they design the chassis and maybe the engine. Everything else appears to be contracted out to some other firm. Is that the case?

Agreed, my company's biggest problems all come from a lack of basic software/programming skills which they've decided is not something they need to spend any effort on. In the words of my managers, "we are not a software company" and "learning to code is easy" and "eughhh I don't want to learn any of that computer science stuff". That latter one was when I mentioned something about clean code.
Post reply on HN