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Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

reuters.com

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Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#231

Post by Marsymars »

golergka wrote: post #146
Marsymars wrote: post #44

> 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.

Good accountants know not only about the bottom line of the yearly budget, but also about how long-term risks work, too. As an software engineer, it's very seductive to bad-mouth other professions, especially the suits (MBAs, accountants and other "dirty money people"), but objectively speaking, there's nothing inherently bad or inferior about them.

To be clear, I'm not an engineer, software or otherwise.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#232

Post by cattlemansgold »

jefe_ wrote: post #114

Boeing was still promising end of year FAA certification for 737 Max as recently as early December. Around that time, they had a spokesperson on CNBC who was asked directly how the outstanding steps (which indicated February at the earliest) aligned with their end of year statements and the position was essentially, 'we've been saying end of year and end of year could still happen.' When your brand is suffering a cri…

The Starliner mission was a test. You wouldn't have 100% confidence that a test would be executed flawlessly. The purpose of the test is to find flaws in the system, and that's exactly what they did.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#233

Post by munk-a »

pizlonator wrote: post #215

So 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.

At some point we (society at large) are going to realize these fluffy c-level people are toxic and remove value from companies - then, ideally, we'll move back to a default of promoting internally.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#234

Post by hoorayimhelping »

mihaaly wrote: post #148
jefe_ wrote: post #114

Boeing was still promising end of year FAA certification for 737 Max as recently as early December. Around that time, they had a spokesperson on CNBC who was asked directly how the outstanding steps (which indicated February at the earliest) aligned with their end of year statements and the position was essentially, 'we've been saying end of year and end of year could still happen.' When your brand is suffering a cri…

I am still a bit puzzled how cheerful some people seem about a product that was unable to fulfill its purpose: Starliner getting to its intended destination. Seems like they cheer that it stayed in one piece at least. Not too promising.

>I am still a bit puzzled how cheerful some people seem about a product that was unable to fulfill its purpose: Starliner getting to its intended destination.

Calling a space capsule a product and treating it like some kind of tech product launch and framing it's success that way is weird. It's a spacecraft and the mission was meant to test its capabilities and get data about it during an actual orbital flight, then go from there.

The reason everyone is trying to be so cheerful and optimistic is because it was a partial success - the capsule stayed together and landed, which were part of its mission parameters. But (clearly) the public perception of this mission is that it failed because it didn't get to the ISS, so I imagine people are trying to be cheerful to remind people that they're not upset cause they didn't fail, they just didn't fully succeed.

I'm no fan of Boeing or how they've handled 787 MAX or ULA or Starliner or their relationship with NASA, but calling this not too promising is a bit unfair.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#235

Post by philwelch »

cattlemansgold wrote: post #232
jefe_ wrote: post #114

Boeing was still promising end of year FAA certification for 737 Max as recently as early December. Around that time, they had a spokesperson on CNBC who was asked directly how the outstanding steps (which indicated February at the earliest) aligned with their end of year statements and the position was essentially, 'we've been saying end of year and end of year could still happen.' When your brand is suffering a cri…

The Starliner mission was a test. You wouldn't have 100% confidence that a test would be executed flawlessly. The purpose of the test is to find flaws in the system, and that's exactly what they did.

Doing the tests is fine, but Boeing is acting as though the tests were successful when they were not. Between this and the parachute issues from the pad abort test, I think actually approving Starliner for crewed use would constitute normalization of deviance. This is historically how astronauts die.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#236

Post by jonplackett »

cattlemansgold wrote: post #232
jefe_ wrote: post #114

Boeing was still promising end of year FAA certification for 737 Max as recently as early December. Around that time, they had a spokesperson on CNBC who was asked directly how the outstanding steps (which indicated February at the earliest) aligned with their end of year statements and the position was essentially, 'we've been saying end of year and end of year could still happen.' When your brand is suffering a cri…

The Starliner mission was a test. You wouldn't have 100% confidence that a test would be executed flawlessly. The purpose of the test is to find flaws in the system, and that's exactly what they did.

Reminds me of the news coverage of SpaceX’s first landing attempts, where they crashed into the barge and exploded and everyone was like “it’s a failure, it will never work”. Yeah but so much went right.

I think it’s just the (well deserved) media narrative Boeing is in now. When you kill hundreds of people and then pretend it wasn’t your fault, you get what’s coming to you.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#237

Post by chrisseaton »

Marsymars wrote: post #226
chrisseaton wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Boeing's problems are related to leadership and having the courage to do the right thing. Good leaders can come from accountancy or engineering or wherever. We shouldn't be snobby about it and insist on an engineer when the issue at that level is not an engineering problem.

Yes, I agree! My problem is with the juxtaposition of the new CEO's background and the statement from Boeing that states only that the CEO change is to "restore confidence" rather than something like "ensure a rigorous, confidence-inspiring culture and processes from top to bottom". PR can't have its cake and eat it too.

Maybe they're leaving it up to him to work out what the real underlying problems are and how to restore confidence? Mission command, and all that.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#238

Post by vkou »

softwaredoug wrote: post #188

Former Boeing employee here[1]: I remember when the company decided to do all 401k matching in Boeing stock in 2009. It seemed like a sketchy, borderline unethical way to keep the stock price afloat. All to say I’m happy to have transitioned all my 401k years ago! [1] I worked in the defense industry. Nothing to do with planes: my company was acquired by Boeing and operated relatively independently.

I love that idea for 401k matching. All the downsides of a pension [1], combined with all the downsides of a 401k[2], with none of the upsides of either!

[1] If your employer goes belly up after you retire, you are screwed.

[2] Because it's fixed contribution, as opposed to fixed payout, if you lived longer than you planned, you are screwed.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#239

Post by philwelch »

panarky wrote: post #196
hos234 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did act. Muilenburg was Chairman & CEO and they removed him as Chairman in October. It probably took the new Chairman a month or two to work out what shit Muilenburg was feeding the board prior to that.

And yet working from the outside, the NYT can figure out this shit even faster.

The NYT didn’t have to be right, they only had to sell newspapers and clicks. The burden of evidence for publishing a hit piece is much lower than that for making an actual business decision.

I’m no fan of Boeing but the truth is, betting your entire business requires a much higher burden of proof than journalism does.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#240

Post by bitxbit »

I understand why Muilenburg is getting criticized here but this move should have happened a year ago. This is the Board’s failing to understand the dire nature of the situation. They got blinded by BA’s unbelievable rise with the investment community since 2016.
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