Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

finshots.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 354 posts

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#261

Post by obmelvin »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #173
stg22 wrote: post #140

The role of McDonnell-Douglas is exaggerated. Boeing had achieved pretty close to a monopoly in the mid-1970s, but things had changed by the mid-1990s. 1. Domestic airlines protected by regulation had been effective monopolies and Boeing's engineer-led culture thrived in an environment where airlines didn't care about costs. But that environment died with airline deregulation in 1978 and an engineer-led culture made…

What's wild is that all this happened even with the NSA conducting industrial espionage on Airbus on behalf of Boeing and M-D.

Is there any evidence that's what happened? As far as I can tell, the NSA was doing it's routine thing of spying on foreign governments and and discovered that Airbus was trying to bribe a gov official.

Maybe you agree with Henry L. Stimson that "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail", but I haven't seen anything indicating that the NSA was spying on behalf of Boeing, or even directly targeting Airbus. Maybe I missed something, would be happy to learn if you have any sources to share :)

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#262

Post by hilux »

astrange wrote: post #190
AdrianB1 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a bit more nuanced: 4.1 Company starts to talk about politics instead of products in their marketing campaigns 4.2 Company starts to cut cost on workforce by pushing out experienced people and hiring cheap newbies 4.3 As a result of the previous one, expertise drops rapidly and product quality starts to drop 4.4 As the product quality decreases, bleeding experienced people makes it impossible to stabilize 4.5 T…

Does Boeing have marketing campaigns? They're B2B.

Boeing, like many B2B companies, is B2B2C. They may not sell directly to the public, but they have a public brand. (Unlike Spirit AeroSystems.)

And therefore, B2B companies run ads, e.g. to sway public opinion on government policies, or (now) to restore flyer confidence in their product. If US airlines get enough emails and letters from customers saying "I'll never fly a 737 MAX again!", that gives the airlines huge negotiating leverage against Boeing.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#263

Post by hilux »

mcv wrote: post #34

Here's what I don't understand: the 737 MAX was introduced in 2017. In 2018, two of them dropped out of the sky, the grounded for a while, it turned out Boeing had lost its engineering culture and its priority for safety, and it became clear that the 737 MAX had some serious design problems that they had tried to fix in software. And according to this article, the 737 MAX is Boeing's best selling plane ever. Why? Why…

Because eventually most people remember that getting on a plane, even a 737 MAX, is about the safest part of our day.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#264

Post by matheusmoreira »

CalChris wrote: post #236
EndorphinRush wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t Reddit. Do better. The article referencing this and Airbus is rather sensationalized and cuts off half the quote. This was said in reference to Airbus bribing foreign officials to buy from them. The full quote reads: "When we have caught you at it, we haven’t said a word to the U.S. companies in the competition. Instead we go to the government you’re bribing and tell its officials that we don’t take kindly…

https://archive.is/hqfyE

This article is such a gold mine given the current state of the things.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#265

Post by webreac »

ethbr1 wrote: post #228
tiff_seattle wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.economist.com/special-report/2003/06/12/airbuss-...

>> According to a European Parliament report, published in 2001, America's National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted faxes and phone calls between Airbus, Saudi Arabian Airlines and the Saudi government in early 1994. The NSA found that Airbus agents were offering bribes to a Saudi official to secure a lion's share for Airbus in modernising Saudi Arabian Airlines' fleet. The planes were in a $6 billion deal that Edo…

Another way of presenting the same facts is that Airbus has done business with a country where corruption and bribes are the norm. The U.S. intercepted communications and used them to blackmail buyers so that they chose Boeing instead of the best airplanes.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#266

Post by berkes »

fomine3 wrote: post #153
yongjik wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which makes Airbus even more impressive, TBH. How many "deliberate political project from various countries to stay competitive in the X business" can you think of that actually became successful?

Interesting question. ASML?

ASML was one company formed out of Philips' microchip division (NXP the other part from that division).

So it's not a company built by politicians from many European companies AFAIK.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#267

Post by David_FF »

1997 was 27 years ago

This article is not compelling to me at all

They're seriously trying to blame the problems of Boeing on a merger from nearly 3 decades ago. The culture of the company surely should have evolved radically over 3 decades

At some point, the past is the past

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#268

Post by close04 »

salty_biscuits wrote: post #245
epistasis wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Maybe I have become too much of a PHB, but I find that engineers (or scientists in my case) really love having cost as one of the visible metrics to optimize for, and will generally do a fantastic job at evaluating it amongst quality concerns. At least much better than management can do.

They are often surprisingly ruthless when given cost as part of the objective as well.

All the good engineers I know will prioritize the product though. "Accountants" will prioritize the cost. The "cheapest good product" and the "best cheap product" are almost never the same. The the latter is what you want to pay for but the former is what you want to have.

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#269

Post by arcfour »

kelnos wrote: post #208
arcfour wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this apply to e.g. the Bell System? From what I understand, their network was over engineered and they generally put out a very high quality product, and didn't need to do a lot of marketing.

You don't need to do any marketing when you're a government-protected monopoly and customers have a choice between having phone service with you, or no phone service at all.

But why put out a quality product then?

Re: Did a 1997 merger ruin Boeing?

#270

Post by pydry »

jonhohle wrote: post #239
idiotsecant wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the choice between cost optimized and safe, fast, cool, etc very few engineers are going to go for cost savings. If there's no bean counters in charge and no market cnstraints its obvious that the product is going to be really good and really expensive.

So make cost optimization cool. I always enjoyed getting rid of production hardware and running as lean as possible within operational constraints. Incentivize cost reduction with benefits proportional to the savings. You know what’s cooler than an expensive thing? A high quality thing with higher margins. A very well known and highly profitable company has taken that model pretty far (like trillions in valuation far…

Higher margins are not really cool unless you share them, which the engineers probably did not.

Engineers arent really responsible for these types of attitudes though. Management are. By and large engineers will do as they are requested.

I find it far more plausible that costs ballooned due to an empire building dynamic by management than because engineers arm twisted them into building something "cool". Same reason Uber has, like, 150 people working on a mobile app.

Post reply on HN