Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#341

Post by clon » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #278

papito wrote: post #260

Most business in the United States is done despite of management, not because of it. The executives lie and BS through all of it, and the soldiers on the ground kill themselves to get things done.

Unfortunately this is much too true. Compliance controls are a sham. Auditing is garbage. Corporate America is made up of executives who unirononically fail to execute on anything. The few places that do execute are: startups (nobody trusts you or your product, you have to go the extra mile) and a few corporations with strong culture. It’s impossible for eg regulations to guarantee that corporations will follow the i…

David Calhoun is the replacement - head of Blackstone private equity. An accountant running an engineering company, what could possibly go wrong.

You can assume that stock price will take the front seat now, if it already had not. The bean counters have yet to internalise the fact that it is am engineering culture failure, stemming from the toxic MacDac merger. This is a further signal that things are going downhill for Boeing.

To be fair, Dennis Muilenburg was at least an engineer, lead the X-32 program (the funny looking bug plane that was runner-up for the JSF). An engineer, possibly at am advanced Peter principle level, but an engineer.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#342

Post by kundiis » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

Its interesting how this works! After all the damage, all Boeing can do is fire a few people. This time it is CEO! Who is accountable going forward?

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#343

Post by gilrain » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

ben509 wrote: post #92

Waterluvian wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume golden parachutes are built into the contract when they begin as the CEO.

"Golden parachute" is just a pejorative for "severance pay." And, it shouldn't be surprising the person hired to be a company's chief negotiator tends to negotiate themselves a good deal.

That's only technically true. We don't usually think of "severance pay" as being enough to live in luxury, without working, for the rest of your life and provide enough inheritance for your offspring to be significantly privileged.

For most of us, severance pay is maybe enough to cover basic living expenses at a lower quality of life for a few months. A difference of that magnitude definitely deserves its own jargon.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#344

Post by dnautics » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #332

dnautics wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Supply and demand. Do you know how rare it is to find such psychopaths? Those are valuable humans.

Damn man you are so right...

Ok but don't despair.

1) on the individual level, maybe measuring other's (or one's own) worth by how much money you have or how much political power you have is the flaw.

2) on a collective level, if we do think that reward in the financial sense should go to the good people, we should think about what we consume; we have ultimate agency over all of that.

As for politicians, I'm less optimistic; the popularity contest in high school never selected for good people and I see no evidence it's any better among adults.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#345

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #294

dmix wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of good unions can do but I think they went way too far in their demands over the decades of their existence (like making it super hard to fire delinquent workers and hyper specialization where one guy does one job, and refuses to wear multiple hats like any modern business requires, because his union requires him only to do that one job). It’s not like unions are bad or evil, this sort of scope creep…

That's not the reason why they continue to exist. They continue to exist because if they didn't the whole thing would slide backwards in a hurry and then we'd have to start all over again. I've seen a lot of union based excesses and there are tons of horror stories. With all those taken into account the situation is still far to be preferred over what you'd get without unions. Witness the kind of pushback IT companie…

[deleted]

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#346

Post by dv_dt » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

clon wrote: post #341

pm90 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is much too true. Compliance controls are a sham. Auditing is garbage. Corporate America is made up of executives who unirononically fail to execute on anything. The few places that do execute are: startups (nobody trusts you or your product, you have to go the extra mile) and a few corporations with strong culture. It’s impossible for eg regulations to guarantee that corporations will follow the i…

David Calhoun is the replacement - head of Blackstone private equity. An accountant running an engineering company, what could possibly go wrong. You can assume that stock price will take the front seat now, if it already had not. The bean counters have yet to internalise the fact that it is am engineering culture failure, stemming from the toxic MacDac merger. This is a further signal that things are going downhill…

Dennis M was an engineer, but the McNeirney the previous CEO was the first non-engineer and very much a MBA type. I figure Dennis is stepping down for not being able to fix problems that came up under the previous CEO fast enough or completely enough.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#347

Post by temac » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:16 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #129

PaulHoule wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 737 faces competition from a few directions. First of all, smaller planes such as the A320 and E195 feel bigger inside than the 737 does. It's like the difference between the "boat of car" from American manufacturers to the Japanese cars that were small on the outside but big on the inside. If you just want a low-cost plane at the A320 level of technology, China is coming online with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

> First of all, smaller planes such as the A320 I was going to go all "what do you mean, smaller ??? ... surely you mean the A220", but had to good sense to look it up and you are right, the A320 Neo is actually a tad smaller than, for example, the 737-800. Also lighter. Just carries more passengers a longer distance faster with slightly wider seats. Hmm..

The A320 family actually includes the A319 (smaller) and the A321 (bigger), and the A321 (or A321neo) is quite similar to the 737 you selected: 737-800. Even the 320 is only slightly smaller than the 800; and it is quite bigger than the 700.

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#348

Post by masklinn » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:16 PM UTC

Xixi wrote: post #314

PaulHoule wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 737 faces competition from a few directions. First of all, smaller planes such as the A320 and E195 feel bigger inside than the 737 does. It's like the difference between the "boat of car" from American manufacturers to the Japanese cars that were small on the outside but big on the inside. If you just want a low-cost plane at the A320 level of technology, China is coming online with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki…

What do you mean by bigger? The A320 has a cabin width of 395cm vs 380cm for the 737, so it is more spacious.

The 737 is larger but has less usable space.

A 737-800 is 39.6m long to the 320neo’s 38.6, they have the same wingspan, the 320neo seats up to 195 versus 189 for the 737.

The 320 also has significantly more range (6500km to 5500) and needs a bit less runway (1950m to 2300).

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#349

Post by zvphy » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:17 PM UTC

geddy wrote: post #103

Wonder how many hundreds of millions he'll get as a "safety parachute". Lord only knows he was probably barely making ends meet and his kids wouldn't have Christmas without it!

From this comment on Reddit [1]:

> He opted out of his bonuses for 2019 and 2020 a few months ago. Looking at the Boeing 2019 shareholder voting information [2], he had a base pay of $1.7 million in 2018, and his retirement package seems to have totaled about $32.4 million. Tack another $6.6 million on if the board treats this as a layoff instead of a retirement. He may also be eligible for another $807,018 per year in retirement pay. See pp. 46-48 for details.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/eelg8h/breaking_boei... [2] https://s2.q4cdn.com/661678649/files/doc_financials/annual/2...

Re: Boeing CEO ousted as 737 Max crisis deepens

#350

Post by clon » Mon, Dec 23, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

dv_dt wrote: post #346

clon wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Calhoun is the replacement - head of Blackstone private equity. An accountant running an engineering company, what could possibly go wrong. You can assume that stock price will take the front seat now, if it already had not. The bean counters have yet to internalise the fact that it is am engineering culture failure, stemming from the toxic MacDac merger. This is a further signal that things are going downhill…

Dennis M was an engineer, but the McNeirney the previous CEO was the first non-engineer and very much a MBA type. I figure Dennis is stepping down for not being able to fix problems that came up under the previous CEO fast enough or completely enough.

He did come across as a basically decent person.

He was not ousted for being unable to undo the MBA damage. He was let go for being unable to jedi mind fuck the plane back into the air. This, as far as his employers are concerned, is the measure of his failing.