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

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

prospect.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 568 posts

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

#121

Post by mateus1 »

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.

Monsanto also did some pretty awful persecution to scientists… there are plenty of examples in American contemporary businesses

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

#122

Post by FrustratedMonky »

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?

"intentionally" is too strong a word here.

More -> intentionally cut cost by eliminating experienced people.

Not -> intentionally getting rid of knowledge. even the worst managers wouldn't admit to wanting to loose knowledge.

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

#123

Post by Rinzler89 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #114
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.

It's not about the size of the company, it's about the barrier to entry of the market they're in, how much competition they have and the amount of vendor lock-in.

And civil aviation in general scores top marks in all those fields. It's a duopoly with an insane barrier to entry both technical, legal and financial with very long and complex vendor lock-in.

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

#124

Post by jandrese »

trilobyte wrote: post #103
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.

This is where regulation steps in. A regulatory body should make the cost of certain failure scenarios so painful that companies are incentivized to make better choices. We probably don't need regulations about the color choices of t-shirts, but safety & testing for mass-transit vehicles might be warranted.

That's the future guy's problem. So long as it is possible to cash out before the consequences happen that sort of regulation won't move the needle much.

Making it illegal to be a bad CEO is one of those things that sounds intriguing on paper, but would be a nightmare to implement in real life.

Prosecutor: "You inflated investor returns by sabotaging the future survival of the company and made shoddy products that killed people."

Former CEO: "So what?"

The worst part is that this is a real problem. So many formerly strong companies have been brought down by this behavior that it is becoming notable when it doesn't happen. We are allowing these guys to destroy the American economy slowly just because it makes them and their close buddies ridiculous money. And of course the government is largely captured by these same people, so Washington isn't going to help. Just so frustrating.

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

#125

Post by FrustratedMonky »

bumby wrote: post #77
swader999 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, they also cut costs by 'finding' less defects in QA, deferring them to production deployment several quarters out.

This is the irony of good QA. 1) Company starts to notice a lot of quality problems. 2) Company institutes a good QA program. 3) Company notices less quality problems. 4) Company cuts QA program because there seems to be less need for it. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. (The same can be said for safety when dealing with low probability events).

Yes.

It is raining.

I use an Umbrella.

Still raining, but I am no longer getting wet.

I must not need the umbrella.

Close the Umbrella

Get wet again.

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

#126

Post by kjkjadksj »

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.

On the other hand, he might have wanted to go out leaving exactly this sort of mess of optics for boeing PR to deal with. Most people who commit suicide probably aren’t in the national spotlight against the very thing that brought them this point beforehand.

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

#127

Post by api »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #26
margalabargala wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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…

Few stock market investors bother to look beneath top line numbers like profits, revenue growth, etc. Number go up, so stock goes up.

They're exploiting the uninformed, which in this case are retail investors.

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

#128

Post by ladzoppelin »

dralley wrote: post #86
whythre wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems pretty convenient to the people in power that he had the courtesy to off himself before he could hurt them in court.

It. was. a. defamation. lawsuit. The second of two, because he lost the first one. People act like this was a criminal proceeding. It was not. He'd already been testifying and speaking publicly about Boeing for more than 5 years. He sued them because of Boeing's attempts to defame his character to downplay the allegations which have been public for a long time.

I am not saying your wrong but who were the faulty suppliers for all these claims? Is it possible things would start unraveling for something much bigger than it already has? The other motive would also be to send a message which it definitely did. I find it weird that he would ruin the chance of future whistle blowers coming forward by doing this the day after the court appearance, its strange.

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

#129

Post by swader999 »

ljsprague wrote: post #65
buildsjets wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have zero patience for fools who are allegedly knowledge workers, yet complain about popups and ads in the year 2024. The ads are obnoxious, but they are there for the plebs, and we need to put obnoxious ads the faces of plebs to fund the internet. If you are not a pleb, you already have an adblocking solution installed, so please use it. If however, you are a pleb, please consume mass quantities of the product whi…

Or how about pop-ups not take over my screen? I'm on a work computer without an ad blocker.

Get back to work Brian.

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

#130

Post by [deleted] »

krisoft wrote: post #116
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? :)

[deleted]
Post reply on HN