381–390 of 637 posts
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>> Most business in the United States is done despite of management, not because of it. You must be very unhappy in your cubicle.
have you seen anyone ever happy in a cubicle?
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 remember when the company decided to do all 401k matching in Boeing stock in 2009. I thought that was the norm? I've only worked at one public company and they did matching in company stock as well - I'd periodically sell it and reinvest so only about 20% of my holdings was in company stock. I wish I'd kept more in their stock since they've done quite well.
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.
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.
Why isn't this taught in public school?
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> An engineering background is the bare-minimum requirement But why? Is their problem an engineering one? Or a culture, leadership and values ones? Everyone's saying that they put profit before safety. That's a financial decision that they need to address not an engineering one!
You have to be an engineer to understand safety. We're talking about world-leading aerospace engineering, not producing some SaaS product. You need someone that understand the technology involved better than anyone else in the industry.
You're just restating the same thing without any actual arguments. Why do you need to be an engineer to understand safety? I don't know what magic training or experience do you think engineers get that nobody else does? And as I've already said, it looks to me that Boeing's chronic problems are leadership not technical. Get a leader in.
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No, it's not simple, and it's not easy. Doing the right thing when it involves immediate cost and disruption takes courage. I'm sure in 1982, the Johnson & Johnson CEO was also "being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs". That's how big organizations work. But in 1982, J&J leadership could see beyond that, cut through the noise…
> I'm sure in 1982, the Johnson & Johnson CEO was also "being fed a diet of wrong and horrible information from lower executives keen on deflecting blame so that they could keep their jobs". This is not necessarily a given. In the Tylenol case an external saboteur was to blame, so little or no internal CYA was necessary. Easy and correct for everyone to just blame it on the saboteur and then do the right thing to fix…
If J&J had behaved like Boeing, they would have blamed the saboteur, blamed law enforcement, and blamed retailers while gradually and secretly fixing the packaging problem before regulators could force them to do it.
If Boeing had behaved like J&J, they would have taken immediate responsibility, voluntarily grounded the entire fleet even before all the causes were known, and put passenger safety first.
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I expect to be able to sit in my seat without having my knees crushed? How about that for a start?
One option is to not fly american airlines (with a lower case a). The highest rated US airline is 3 out of 5 stars on Skytrax. As far as I understand, the reason for this is that foreign airlines are not allowed to fly US domestic routes, and most US people don't fly international which means they don't know that things could be better. It also seems like people in the US to a greater extent than other countries only…
I'm not so sure people do it any different elsewhere. I mostly fly in Europe and have definitely never considered anything else than price and suitable flight times. I consider all airlines to provide the same standardized service. Yes I'd pick BA over Ryanair, but wouldn't pay extra for it.
Why don't they just kill the 737 MAX program and start on another aircraft? As a consumer it will build confidence and trust in me.
Keep in mind, there is a gold rush for new airlines right now. Africa/India/Asia are developing and are requiring thousands of planes to fill the demand (it's no coincidence Africa and Asia is where these new planes ended up crashing). If Airbus gobbled them up, they'd likely be airbus customers forever, as mixing plane types is more expensive for airlines.
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.
I would not consider that so Geographically constrained. to me the most obvious textbook example [1] would be Nokia. I mean, there was no way the top management could have failed in the golden era of the dumb phones given the engineering talent (both for the electronics and the operations) within th ecompany. The single time when top management should/could have shown their value was the time when smartphones came. And they practically managed to destroy the company. I wonder if they themselves understand how literally clueless they were/are?
[1] Admittably with zero actual inside information
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Do you mean McDonnell Douglas? Muilenberg became CEO 18 years after the merger. I wouldn't expect him to exemplify Boeing's old culture. It was also only 6 months before the first 737 MAX flight.
Oops. Yes. His lineage is in the Boeing culture, not the McDonnell Douglas culture.