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

prospect.org

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

#111

Post by lozenge »

proc0 wrote: post #5

> Swampy believed relying on mechanics to self-inspect their work was not only insane but illegal This sounds like the changes that have taken place in the software industry in the past 10-20 years. Engineers are meant to do much more than engineering, including testing their own software, managing project timelines, etc., however with software nobody dies, you just get crappy software that constantly breaks and need…

> however with software nobody dies

Eh, not a good hard-and-fast rule. Fujitsu's Horizon software drove some of its users to suicide.

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

#112

Post by throwaway458864 »

benced wrote: post #85

I am not exaggerating to say that Jim McNerney should be dragged in front of Congress and be forced to explain what he did to an incredibly important American company. It's important to push back against the shareholder value theory where appropriate and humiliation is an underrated component of that.

A public hearing isn't going to change anything. Look at...well, literally any powerful organization or individual brought before Congress for excoriation. The pound of flesh they want is press and votes, and you don't have to change anything to get that.

It's not like they're going to break up Boeing. They can't actually do anything to improve Boeing. All they can do is wag their finger. It's not like there's an alternative American company to give our billions of dollars to. And it's not like other companies will suddenly fear being brought forward to be gummed to death by whining bureaucrats.

You want real pain? Have them pass a law that says the entire executive leadership's bonuses are forfeit, retroactively, if the company fails to maintain an adequate safety record. Shit will change there real quick. (That law will never happen but it's funny to think of)

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

#113

Post by mschuster91 »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #84
stephenhuey wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a previous HN discussion, plenty of people here believed it was fully possible that someone at Boeing essentially pulled the trigger and gave plenty of examples, even from a huge successful Silicon Valley company, of corporate folks doing stranger nefarious things than would be believable in film. As someone who has known multiple people who committed suicide, I'm not sure I can feel as certain as you that this wa…

After reading the story of ebay execs harassing a random completely unimportant couple, to the point of repeatedly mailing them threatening or disgusting packages, I can't discredit killing a witness for a real tangible reason.

Oh yeah, I remember that one [1]. One of the bastards got five years in prison - one of the very very few exceptions to my general line of calling for prison abolishment.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/sep/29/ebay-exec...

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

#114

Post by FrustratedMonky »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #70

The "funny" thing to me is that I'm old enough to remember when the merger occurred that people were predicting exactly what came to pass. It just took 25 years to finally happen.

Yes, large companies take a lot longer to fail than I ever imagined. A lot of time can pass riding on past excellence before the cracks start showing.

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

#115

Post by csours »

ortusdux wrote: post #42

"So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies that have no co…

Sales and marketing - and financialization and capital efficiency. I got no beef with accountants, but I think companies need just enough focus on financialization and low to medium priority on capital efficiency (ie, look out for stupid wastes of capital).

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

#116

Post by krisoft »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #70

The "funny" thing to me is that I'm old enough to remember when the merger occurred that people were predicting exactly what came to pass. It just took 25 years to finally happen.

So what you are saying is that twitter, oh sorry x, is going to break down completely in around 2048? :)

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

#117

Post by yowzadave »

margalabargala wrote: post #19
iaoat2d wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the lengths to which they went to ensure all prior institutional knowledge regarding how to properly build a plane was systematically destroyed." why do this intentionally?

Stock price gains. Fire all the longest-tenured, highest-salaried employees. Now you have a company that appears to look similar but with millions of dollars fewer per year in headcount expenses. 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.

It seems like this is the same pattern that we've seen happen more broadly in the tech industry over the past year--the big tech companies think they can juice the bottom line by reducing headcount, and the increased profitability will outweigh any negative impact on their engineering performance. It's a perverse incentive that seems very difficult to turn around once it starts happening.

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

#118

Post by truckerbill »

nyolfen wrote: post #104
forgotmyinfo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Y'all're gonna hate this, but financialization and the relentless pursuit of profits. Every time this stuff happens, people ask why, and it's because of greed. When you focus on making money above all else, this is what happens. It's not a mystery.

[flagged]

Even most economists these days would agree that this is a really bad take (invisible hand). You should read more than the punchline of that Adam Smith book and you would find that even he would agree

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

#119

Post by pyrale »

iaoat2d wrote: post #9
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…

"the lengths to which they went to ensure all prior institutional knowledge regarding how to properly build a plane was systematically destroyed." why do this intentionally?

Some people in organizations can't take no for an answer. They want to see their orders followed, and if they see you as a roadblock, you will be marginalized, sometimes with harm.

That's not always bad, sometimes employees drag their feet when they shouldn't. But in some situations (for instance, one arm of the company gaining the upper hand), the people in power are so convinced that their own perspective and goals are right, that they think they don't need to listen or understand the big picture.

Ad to this that sometimes an exec has sociopathic tendencies, and you have an explosive cocktail of harassment and destruction of valuable knowledge. The more resilient the company, the more entrenched this behaviour can get, and the more irreversible it will become.

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

#120

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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