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What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

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Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#91

Post by autokad »

tomthehero wrote: post #50
autokad wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a lot of people say things like 'stock price', but that's missing the point. the lesson is in the nuance. its many factors, effecting all aspects of our lives now honestly. - young people's disregard for the knowledge of people older than them. This can be an essay in itself, but there's the idea that the reasons why people are doing things the way they are is because they are stupid, something like: "you are young a…

Don't blame this on young people, it's probably mostly post-40 dudes who run the board of these large companies

young dudes of the time, that are now hitting their 40s. Dont get me wrong, the new young are doubling down on that world view.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#92

Post by TaylorAlexander »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #61
Rinzler89 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Boeing's stock price went up 10x in the time frame covered by the article. The people responsible for gutting the company have cashed out. Why does the stock market reward idiot shit like this? I've seen the same whit a a large US semiconductor company. In the 2008 crunch, the fired the most tenured employees and offshored the work abroad. Granted, the company didn't fail, their stock went up and now it's 5-7x that…

> Why does the stock market reward idiot shit like this? Well at a first order, the answer is that the stock market as a system for promoting value creation is an imperfect approximation of an ideal value creator, and more and more we are beginning to see the myriad of ways this concept produces antisocial results. (See for example the state of hospitals and schools, and the rising rate of individuals with crippling…

I should add that our short term market-based approach to economic activity fails to produce appropriate housing outcomes, and that the approaches in Vienna or Singapore could end our homelessness crisis and make everyone happier. I recently read a doctor’s account of the homeless people who use the ER as a community space by complaining of minor illnesses, and it seems so clear to me it would be cheaper to give them small private subsidized housing (not the awful and alienating “shelters” that offer no privacy or storage and have strict rules, making the street more appealing). Fixing housing could be cheaper than them using the ER or paying for their prison space, and it would also make the streets of San Francisco smell a LOOOT better (and BART), but our short term market based system just chops up everything good, sells it for parts, and speculates on all the land and buildings.

https://www.shareable.net/public-housing-works-lessons-from-...

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#93

Post by ordu »

> Swampy knew he was caught in a prisoner’s dilemma. If he went along, he was breaking the law; if he didn’t, whistleblowers who complained about unsafe practices were routinely terminated on grounds of violating the same safety protocols they had opposed violating.

How is it a prisoner's dilemma? Is it about cooperating with whisleblowers or defecting them?

It seems to me to be a mere dilemma, two choices, both bad. There was no interplay of cooperate/defect strategies.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#94

Post by twojobsoneboss »

darth_avocado wrote: post #12

> He mocked him in weekly meetings whenever he dared contribute a thought, assigned a fellow manager to spy on him and spread rumors that he did not play nicely with others, and disciplined him for things like “using email to communicate” and pushing for flaws he found on planes to be fixed. Sounds like a regular middle manager in any tech company. Sad unfortunate effect of the power asymmetries in corporate structur…

Apart from pushing someone out who they don’t wanna pay severance for, what incentive does a manager have to treat one of their reports like dirt?

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#95

Post by justrealist »

margalabargala wrote: post #3

If you read this article looking for new or surprising insight, you won't find it. It is not new information that Boeing started a rapid decline shortly after the McDonnell Douglas merger, and it will be unsurprising to you to hear that shortly afterwards, Boeing began abusing its most senior employees into leaving. What this article offers is new detail into exactly how Boeing has gone about cannibalizing itself. Th…

> It's worth reading, perhaps unless you're going to be flying on a Boeing plane anytime soon.

This is all bad for Boeing, but at the end of the day, nobody has died on an American carrier in a Boeing plane in a very long time.

Aircraft safety is layers on layers on layers. Let's not FUD people into thinking that flying on the worst plane Boeing has ever put out is anywhere comparable to the daily risks of driving.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#96

Post by jmspring »

The problem here is that large corporations trusted with public safety - be it flight safety in the case of Boeing; electical generation and transmission safety in the case of PG&E here in California - is that companies cater to Wall Street and bean counters rather than anything else. This is where the CPUC has failed in the case of PG&E and the FAA failed in the case of Boeing.

There should be oversight and public safety should play into private corporate governance for such things.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#97

Post by polygamous_bat »

sideshowb wrote: post #47
darth_avocado wrote: post #12

> He mocked him in weekly meetings whenever he dared contribute a thought, assigned a fellow manager to spy on him and spread rumors that he did not play nicely with others, and disciplined him for things like “using email to communicate” and pushing for flaws he found on planes to be fixed. Sounds like a regular middle manager in any tech company. Sad unfortunate effect of the power asymmetries in corporate structur…

Um so... what was he supposed to use email for, according to the manager?

Generally when companies seek to avoid liability, they push to have their employees use telephone to communicate so that compromising emails don’t come out during the discovery period of a lawsuit. I imagine this is one of such cases.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#98

Post by zer00eyz »

segasaturn wrote: post #62
zer00eyz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire first half of this (tfp directly above this comment) article blindly supports the spin that there is some conspiracy where someone killed him. HIs own family goes into great detail all over the press about how he had anxiety and ptsd. That he quit his job on DR orders or the stress was going to give him a heart attack. The shit Boeing did to him was awful (stress, anxiety and ptsd) and Boeing should be bla…

There's more than enough circumstantial evidence to support the allegations of foul play here. When people kill themselves, they usually do it somewhere private and personal to them, like inside their home, or their car. Not in the parking lot outside a courthouse.

>>> or their car. Not in the parking lot outside a courthouse.

NO: Barnett's body was found in a vehicle in a Holiday Inn parking lot in Charleston on Saturday, police said.

Or you know this

The family says Barnett's health declined because of the stresses of taking a stand against his longtime employer.

"He was suffering from PTSD and anxiety attacks as a result of being subjected to the hostile work environment at Boeing," they said, "which we believe led to his death."

FROM: https://www.npr.org/2024/03/12/1238033573/boeing-whistleblow...

The man was found dead, with a sucide note (hand written) and his own gun in his hand.

You know what happens when gun owners get the urge to kill themselves. They kill themselves. Guns make suicide less of a cry for help and more or less "effective".

Any article that doesn't mention what his family had to say about the matter is not only creating a narrative, but they are openly disrespecting the family of a dead man to grab attention and headlines.

How about todays interview with his OWN FAMILY:

FROM HIS MOTHER: If this hadn't gone on so long, I'd still have my son, and my sons would have their brother and we wouldn't be sitting here. So in that respect, I do," Vicky Stokes said when asked if she places some of the blame for her son's death on Boeing.

OR THIS: Stokes and her son Rodney Barnett said they do not want to comment on whether they believe he died by suicide until the investigation by the Charleston police department concludes.

source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/john-barnett-boeing-whistleblow...

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#99

Post by Analemma_ »

hughesjj wrote: post #36
Rinzler89 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Boeing's stock price went up 10x in the time frame covered by the article. The people responsible for gutting the company have cashed out. Why does the stock market reward idiot shit like this? I've seen the same whit a a large US semiconductor company. In the 2008 crunch, the fired the most tenured employees and offshored the work abroad. Granted, the company didn't fail, their stock went up and now it's 5-7x that…

I blame index funds. Pump the % gain, index funds buy it up because it looks like a better ROI. Abuse that by doing short term shit and ride the wave of self fulfilling prophecy by the index funds buying into it (amplifying noise into a signal) and leave retail/workers holding the bags. I get that statistically DIY'ing your portfolio will almost always lead to worse returns but I really do wish I could exclude certai…

I don't think the timing adds up for this explanation. Friedman introduced the shareholder value doctrine in 1970, and Jack Welch's Pierre Hotel speech that kicked off the era of slash-and-burn management was in 1981. Meanwhile, index funds were a tiny fraction of assets under management until well into the 2000s.

Re: What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

#100

Post by YeBanKo » 

   > “Prince Jim”—as some long-timers used to call him—repeatedly invoked a slur for longtime engineers and skilled machinists in the obligatory vanity “leadership” book he co-wrote. Those who cared too much about the integrity of the planes and not enough about the stock price were “phenomenally talented assholes,”
Decline in attention to quality at Boeing is a known thing. But this attitude towards engineering and specially to machinist is just utterly f*king stupid. Especially to machinists, because experienced one are hard to find, not even talking about toolmakers. It seems that the starting salary for machinists isn't that great and many shops lost to outsource. And experienced folks retire leaving a wide gap behind. Of course, this does not excuse such an attitude toward engineers either.
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