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Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

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Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#51
>>The language used in these communications, and some of the sentiments they express, are inconsistent with Boeing values, and the company is taking appropriate action in response. This will ultimately include disciplinary or other personnel action, once the necessary reviews are completed.

And that my friends is all that you need to know about the boeing of 2020.

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#52

Geez. > "Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn't," says one employee to another, who responds, "No." > Peter DeFazio, [D-Oregon], called newly released documents "incredibly damning" That's hard to argue with. You'd like to think this kind of thing would... leak. Who said conspiracies involving hundreds of people are impossible?

Two things:

1. You would be surprised at how normal talk like that is in huge corporations due to internal politics. People bad-mouth other projects that are getting limelight, taking away resources, etc. A more benign example is how often Google employees rag on the GCP engineers as being inferior, which has more to do with the money flowing into GCP than merit.

2. People are irrational about safety, despite data showing something is ok. There were droves of people that said they would never get on a fly-by-wire plane (Airbus), despite having no evidence to support their fears.

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#53
post #5

> The company official said the language used and sentiments expressed in these communications "are inconsistent with Boeing values, and the company is taking appropriate action in response." Do you think this means: a) Change the environment that fosters those kinds of messages? -or- b) Punish those who wrote those messages?

Both, but as a higher priority, c) punish the exec team on whose watch it happened. Bring back the concept of responsibility. They are paid to be in overall responsibility for anything that happens under their remit. Time was such a behaviour in the department, or under their leadership would have ended a career. Realising the actions of a lowly engineer or janitor can end their gravy train, they might implement adeq…

In a system with social capital this would be entirely possible.

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#54
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I’ve ragged on my employers in DMs, and will often express very blunt concerns about quality/risks in emails or PRs. Providing my opinions in such channels is part of what I’m paid to do. If my employer doesn’t heed my advice, manages to majorly mess something up, and my comments come back to haunt them, why is that my problem?

Because openness and transparency requires emotional security as a prerequisite. Surveillance and transparency are not the same thing. If you subject people to an all-seeing eye, people will default to covering their asses, and you will not get the information you seek. Attempting to force people to be vulnerable by unilaterally being open about your own vulnerabilities is manipulative. You will get "my biggest weakn…

> Because openness and transparency requires emotional security as a prerequisite. Surveillance and transparency are not the same thing. If you subject people to an all-seeing eye, people will default to covering their asses, and you will not get the information you seek.

> Attempting to force people to be vulnerable by unilaterally being open about your own vulnerabilities is manipulative. You will get "my biggest weakness is that I care too much"-type deflective responses at best and a cold shoulder at worst.

> In companies, a culture with emotional security is built first in private one-on-one meetings and spread from there - it never originates in a public (public within the company at least) setting.

I'm a little confused... Did you mean to respond to a different comment?

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#55
post #24

I think the only thing that can actually fix Boeing is bankruptcy, so I hope that people refuse to fly on the Max even after recertification and it ends up being too big of a financial blow to recover from.

Or nationalization. Make success about safety and transport rather maximizing profit.

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#56

Geez. > "Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn't," says one employee to another, who responds, "No." > Peter DeFazio, [D-Oregon], called newly released documents "incredibly damning" That's hard to argue with. You'd like to think this kind of thing would... leak. Who said conspiracies involving hundreds of people are impossible?

> Who said conspiracies involving hundreds of people are impossible?

Companies are pretty opaque by design and I'm sure these people signed NDAs.

As long as they believed the company was acting legally (even if not ethically) they might not have felt like they had the legal right to share insider information.

Others might have simply felt the company was working on it. And others might not have wanted to damage the company that employs them.

The people that knew something wrong was going on and kept passing the buck are certainly at fault though and in retrospect I bet a lot of people wish they said something.

It's a tragedy what's happened and unfortunately a bunch of people probably could have saved some lives but didn't.

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#58
post #42

Someone once gave the sage advice of never using the word 'kill' in your code base. 'm_Object.KillListeners();' can sound pretty bad in court. A lawyer can try to make your source code a legal matter, and a jury is free to interpret 'm_Object.KillChildren();' as being proof of willful negligence. Of course, this doesn't really matter when you're actually exposing willful negligence over your internal communication ch…

> man kill

    KILL(1)     User Commands                    KILL(1)

    NAME
       kill - send a signal to a process

    SYNOPSIS
       kill [options]  [...]
Probably not a unix user then?

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#59
post #18

I think this is a reminder - do not say or do inappropriate things using company resources (chat, email, VPN, etc). Don't complain about co-workers, don't joke about breaking the law, don't say or do anything rude or disrespectful. You'll get about 5 seconds of happiness from a joke that can ruin your career.

Boeing might be just the place for you.

Re: Boeing employees mocked FAA in internal messages before 737 Max disasters

#60
From the rpr article, "This airplane is designed by clowns who in turn are supervised by monkeys" This says a lot about Boeing's internals / culture. Probably their subcontractor interaction quality as well. While we can't take one comment in isolation it is a relevant indicator.

Its telling there were no[?] whistleblowers able to come forward beforehand. Consequences are too real and the search for the guilty talkers likely continues and I don't even think they were even remotely whistleblowers.

Perhaps technical prowess isn't as highly respected as it should be? Too many corners cut? Excessive priority of business over engineering? Timelines too tight? Budgets too small? Misallocations?

Don't know. Lots of symptoms of an unhealthy organization. It will become an interesting case-study regardless.

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