I am not flying Boeing again.
Simple as that.
Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens
211–220 of 637 posts
Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens
#212https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/business/boeing-dreamline... > Safety lapses at the North Charleston plant have drawn the scrutiny of airlines and regulators. Qatar Airways stopped accepting planes from the factory after manufacturing mishaps damaged jets and delayed deliveries. > Less than a month after the crash of the second 737 Max jet, Boeing called North Charleston employees to an urgent meeting. The company…
> > Less than a month after the crash of the second 737 Max jet, Boeing called North Charleston employees to an urgent meeting. The company had a problem: Customers were finding random objects in new planes.
> Turns out trying to squash the unions by moving to a different state helps show why the unions existed...
You think that the existence of unions are the reason why they didn't have these problems in Seattle? Nothing to do with, say, a more experienced (and perhaps better trained) workforce?
Now, sure, the move was to avoid unions, and the move (to a less experienced workforce) probably has something to do with the problems. But you make it sound like these problems wouldn't happen if North Charleston was unionized. I am extremely skeptical of that position.
The only way I could see unions having anything to do with it is if the foreign objects were left as sabotage by those who wanted to organize unions in North Charleston.
Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
BS! Which of these was done by the accountants? 1. Drive MCAS with only one AOA sensor. 2. Don't tell MCAS to look for (or even think about) bad AOA data or AOA disagreements. 3. Don't actually bother to tell pilots that they don't have AOA disagree warning lights. 4. Don't bother to tell pilots that MCAS exists at all. 5. Don't test MCAS subsystem to see what it actually does with bad AOA data. 6. Give MCAS a ridicu…
If you were following the articles then you'd know that various people did those on criteria set by management, independently in a non-communicating and problem oppressing organization structure created by the management. So in short: all of those were caused by the accountants....
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/times-watchdog/the...
“One of the people familiar with MCAS’s evolution said the _system designers_ didn’t see any need to add an additional sensor or redundancy because the hazard assessment had determined that an MCAS failure in normal flight would only qualify in the “major” category for which the single sensor is the norm.
Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens
#214> Chairman David Calhoun will take over as CEO and president, effective Jan. 13, the company said, adding that a change in leadership was necessary to restore confidence in the company. If they wanted to restore my confidence, they’d have picked an engineer, not an accountant.
Someone like Dennis Muilenburg then? If the last one was an engineer, why would another engineer restore your confidence any more?
> If the last one was an engineer, why would another engineer restore your confidence any more?
He's probably talking more about mindset than educational and professional background.
You can have a leader with the mindset of an ornery engineering-first engineer. You can also have a leader who's an ex-engineer with the mindset of a business executive. There's a big difference between the two.
I personally do not know which of those categories Dennis Muilenburg fell into, though.
Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens
#215So I read somewhere than Muilenburg was the only engineer in the Boeing C suite. There were no pilots in the C suite. And this was part of the problem.
The new CEO has a degree in accounting. I bet he’ll do great.
Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Turns out trying to squash the unions by moving to a different state helps show why the unions existed... Could you point out where you see a link between unions and the poor quality control that was observed in the plant?
> While Boeing has nurtured generations of aerospace professionals in the Seattle area, there was no comparable work force in South Carolina. Instead, managers had to recruit from technical colleges in Tulsa, Okla., and Atlanta. > Managers were also urged to not hire unionized employees from the Boeing factory in Everett, where the Dreamliner is also made, according to two former employees. > “They didn’t want us bri…
So how would a union have helped with that? Qualified workers don't magically come into existence just because there's a union.
The problem was the move. (True, the move was to get away from the union, but it's the move that was the problem, not the presence or absence of the union.)
Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens
#217After both The Economist[1] and The New York Times [2] publicly undermined faith in Dennis Muilenberg. No question at this point that he needed to be replaced. The question is - why didn't the board act sooner? [1] https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/12/18/boeings-misplac... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/22/business/boeing-dennis-mu...
The Times article was the last straw, you know the board members all read that. Plus the space launch failure.
I seriously doubt that the space launch failure had anything to do with the CEO being fired.
Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why on earth would the next CEO be incentivized to do anything other than wring all the money out of the company that they can? The punishments for failure are insignificant. They get to keep millions and millions of dollars even if they wreck the company.
Worked with Microsoft. What stopped Nadella from doing the same as Balmer?
Microsoft's board sure pulled off a winning strike with Nadella. From "almost IBM-dinosaur" to biggest market cap on Earth pretty much tied with Apple, and massively reversing public image from hated to just about liked by many. Huge win for Nadella. He sure loves what he does, money is besides the point.
But then again it's so obvious in his case, I mean I and probably many saw it coming — the man just does not operate at the same level, he's stellar you know, like the Jobs and Musks and Waltons of this world).
I have no hope for Boeing to recruit such a great man, I don't think that kind of business actually wants that. Imagine a Dorsey / Musk disruptor, pushing open standards, thinking of direct B2C, whatever... That just wouldn't fly with Boeing's board and mindset (oh pun so very much unintended yet so apt).
Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea how the Boeing board works, but most boards aren't involved in the day-to-day operations of the corporation and would be considered separate from the "leadership team".
Still the purpose of a board is to have oversight, which is mostly about signing of company structures and signing of processes for large processes the process for creating and approving a major new product line. And well, if they'd pick some lower manager the critique would be the same. And if they pick an outsider the critique would be about them not understanding the business ... critique is always the easy part.
It's entirely possible that there was dissent on the board and some faction that was pushing for more responsible practices was overruled. If so, the changing circumstances may have empowered that faction and/or a specific person on the board.
I mean, that's just one possible situation where someone coming from the board won't necessarily be more of the same, but I don't know why we should assume the board acts of one mind. That seems really unlikely to me.
Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why on earth would the next CEO be incentivized to do anything other than wring all the money out of the company that they can? The punishments for failure are insignificant. They get to keep millions and millions of dollars even if they wreck the company.
Why are you assuming that money is their only incentive? It seems to me that if the promise of a golden parachute led to CEOs simply not caring if they do well or not, then there'd be no point in paying them well or trying to hire the best. Heck, there'd be no measure of "best", because all the candidates would just have a string of disasters behind them. There's an S curve to the utility of money. Anyone who works a…
> Why are you assuming that money is their only incentive?
Why are you assuming that I think money is their only incentive?
I was replying to a comment contemplating that "the incentives may be correct now". The amount of money guaranteed to executives chasing short-termism provides a perverse incentive working against any desire to do their job well. There are multiple incentives, but they are not aligned.
> There's an S curve to the utility of money.
Seems to me that it's more like a bell curve, with the optimal center waaaay to the left of where it is today. Pay too much money and the temptation for CEOs to max out their own gains at the expense of the company's long term health rises.