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

More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 454 posts

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#211

Post by Syonyk »

lrem wrote: post #197
avalys wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selecting an engineer doesn’t absolve the board of the responsibility to choose the right guy. There are incompetent engineers, unethical engineers and there are engineers who are bad leaders. But an accountant as CEO is not going to restore a culture of engineering excellence.

Why? The CEO of a company this big, no matter their background, has no business building an intimate understanding of the tech. They’re there to set up an incentive system to further the goals of their choosing. Neither seems to call for deep understanding of neither. And no background absolves a CEO from building a surface understanding of all aspects of running the business. TBF, from my experience with VPs, techni…

> Why? The CEO of a company this big, no matter their background, has no business building an intimate understanding of the tech.

This is certainly a point of contention in modern schools of business thought, but the concept of a CEO who doesn't understand what the company builds is bizarre to me.

The CEO of Boeing, IMO, should probably have aircraft engineering experience, and, ideally, also be a pilot with the suitable type ratings to fly the stuff they build.

And they should be open to "Hey, if you have engineering concerns about the airplanes we're building for the traveling public, you come to me!" style office visits. Someone with concerns about the "single sensor fault runaway trim" style system should have been able to bring it up, and have him understand it.

I know this isn't what Boeing has. And they've lost a lot. This is now increasingly clear to people outside aviation circles.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#212

Post by zimpenfish »

randmeerkat wrote: post #94
TylerE wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk is an interesting standards bearer for sanity.

> Musk is an interesting standards bearer for sanity. Think what you will about Musk, but SpaceX has completely revolutionized space travel and will be in the history books a hundred years from now.

> SpaceX [...] will be in the history books a hundred years from now

As will Theranos. That's not really a great indicator of how good or useful something is.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#213

Post by TylerE »

zht wrote: post #163
TylerE wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which can basically be translated as avoid (especially) Africa, South East Asia (that isn't Japan or South Korea), and most of South America. Eastern Europe is a dodgy but no on the same level.

neither Japan nor South Korea are South East Asia

What part of Asia are they then? They’re East and south of its center.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#214

Post by _a_a_a_ »

lrem wrote: post #197
avalys wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selecting an engineer doesn’t absolve the board of the responsibility to choose the right guy. There are incompetent engineers, unethical engineers and there are engineers who are bad leaders. But an accountant as CEO is not going to restore a culture of engineering excellence.

Why? The CEO of a company this big, no matter their background, has no business building an intimate understanding of the tech. They’re there to set up an incentive system to further the goals of their choosing. Neither seems to call for deep understanding of neither. And no background absolves a CEO from building a surface understanding of all aspects of running the business. TBF, from my experience with VPs, techni…

Lack of understanding of X almost inevitably leads to a lack of valuing of X. Then the incentives will become perverse.

The best bosses I've worked for are the minority who took the time to understand at least some of the technical side of things.

I'm always struck by the fact that I, as a lowly dev, am expected to understand the business yet the suits floating far above me think they don't need to know what actually happens down below. Bad mistake. Lack of knowledge is never a good thing.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#215

Post by re5i5tor »

Syonyk wrote: post #211
lrem wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? The CEO of a company this big, no matter their background, has no business building an intimate understanding of the tech. They’re there to set up an incentive system to further the goals of their choosing. Neither seems to call for deep understanding of neither. And no background absolves a CEO from building a surface understanding of all aspects of running the business. TBF, from my experience with VPs, techni…

> Why? The CEO of a company this big, no matter their background, has no business building an intimate understanding of the tech. This is certainly a point of contention in modern schools of business thought, but the concept of a CEO who doesn't understand what the company builds is bizarre to me. The CEO of Boeing, IMO, should probably have aircraft engineering experience, and, ideally, also be a pilot with the suit…

Agree 100%

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#216

Post by zerocrates »

gruez wrote: post #141
Closi wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree! By the time there were c380 Max's built, two of them had already fallen out of the sky (despite operating for only a year). That's c0.5% of the fleet falling out of the sky every 12 months! Still not too risky on an individual flight, but if you were a pilot across a 40 year flying career those odds start to stack up across your cohort! Plus it's a bizzare safety stance to try and sell "So what their planes fa…

>By the time there were c380 Max's built ??? Are you talking about the 737 max?

They mean "c" as in "circa," i.e., about 380 had been delivered.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#217

Post by wahnfrieden »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #169
dylan604 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they already have the SOPs and inspection protocols that reveal defects and proscribe ways to identify, document and address any defect it's great to have those protocols, but when employees are retaliated against for bringing issues with no corrective changes made, what's the point in having the protocols?

Any of that happens at the supervisor or mid-level manager level and should be taken to HR. By complying with bullying, the employees are not only committing a federal crime, they also risk being debarred by the FAA. That means they no longer work in the Aviation Industry.

HR retaliates frequently

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#218

Post by contravariant »

flaminHotSpeedo wrote: post #56

This title is extremely misleading, to the point of being factually incorrect. Boeing didn't find the fault, Spirit did and notified Boeing, and the problem only affects undelivered fuselages.

Oh, and here I was trying to be optimistic and say they're at least finding them now.

Turns out they're not even doing that.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#219

Post by armchairdweller »

wongarsu wrote: post #122
armchairdweller wrote: post #48

I've read in a different place that the many problems could be a result of uncareful and miscoordinated outsourcing, particularly in the software domain. Is there any good information / insight on this?

Both this issue and issue with the door bolts were caused by Spirit, who Boeing outsourced the production of fuselages to. There's lots of info on the quality troubles with them going back years. For example here is an article from May of last year [1] about a quality issue with Spirit that had been going on for 4 years. Here [2] is one from last October which says "The goal of the agreement is to stabilize Spirit’s…

Thank you, this is exactly the information I was looking for.

Re: More misdrilled holes on 737 MAX in latest setback

#220

Post by PedroBatista »

rossdavidh wrote: post #3

I do get the impression that the current Boeing CEO is attempting to turn the culture around, to a more "admit the problem and fix it" kind of attitude. The problem is that, if you are doing this after many years of "deny the problem and ship it", the number of apparent problems is actually going to go up for a while. I wonder if Boeing's customers and shareholders will have enough patience for him to complete the tr…

Unfortunately no.

He now adopted the "admit the problem and fix it" attitude because he was "caught", before that was business as usual for Boeing. It was/is more a "don't ask, don't tell", dump the risk on other separate entities/companies and cross your fingers because we need to get those planes out of the assembly line as fast and cheaply as possible no matter what.

Boeing is and has been under pressure, but it's their own fault. They have been fucking around for DECADES now and when there were "difficulties" they always called the US government to "facilitate" sales or their buddies inside the regulatory bodies to put the green check on their garbage.

Nothing about this is news, it has been known for years and years.

Unfortunately Boeing always has a sweet defense contract waiting to compensate any "rough year", so they keep fucking around..

Post reply on HN