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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

#131

Post by kjkjadksj »

isleyaardvark wrote: post #83
segasaturn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And they generally don’t tell a friend “if anything happens to me, it's not suicide”.

Unless its one last troll against boeing on the way out. Why go quietly if you are going to go when you have a shot to majorly embarrass the company one last time?

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

#132

Post by benced »

throwaway458864 wrote: post #112
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 alt…

I think culture is underrated. Acting like he did should not be considered a dignified behavior and I think that will meaningfully constrict behavior even in the absence of new laws. Think about how business culture varies across jurisdictions: there's more than just profit-maximization at work.

Also, to be clear, Boeing's safety record is still good. The only recent deaths are associated with less-trained pilots in the earlier days of the 737 MAX. My frustration is they took this organization from an engineering leader to an organization that can't ship a plane. The 787, 737 MAX, and now 777X were/are insanely delayed.

The nightmare scenario of a US-China war and Boeing being unable to ship a plane honestly haunts me. Boeing is extremely important to the West, broadly defined and this jerk didn't uphold his commensurate responsibilities.

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

#133

Post by fcatalan »

swader999 wrote: post #109
afavour wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, depressingly, the stock market is correct. Boeing is one of two manufacturers for planes of this size. The other is totally backlogged with orders. The stock market has assessed, correctly, that Boeing can withstand this loss of knowledge and keep generating profit. Does it result in shit equipment that literally kills people? Sure. But how many people are going to stop flying because of it? Not many. Throw…

I'm not getting on a Boeing plane again. More on principle than fear of my life. And yeah, I'm probably in a group that is not statistically important.

I flew this week. There were two 737 flights at about 130€ then one with an A320 at 220€. I took the Airbus. Same reason as you.

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

#134

Post by theragra »

justrealist wrote: post #95
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.

Thanks

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

#135

Post by theragra »

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…

Weird to read from a "you are holding it wrong" man

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

#136

Post by Rinzler89 »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #92
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>and that the approaches in Vienna

Vienna's approach worked because it happened after WW2 when the country was bombed and broken, land, construction materials and labor were dirt cheap, so the state built over half the city's homes and turned them into public housing cheaply no problem.

But fast forward to today where most of the land and buildings in a city are privately owned, how to you expect a city, any city, to buy up over half the buildings in the city at today's market and turn them into public housing?

The city would probably have to go broke or into huge amounts of debt and everyone would be screaming communism.

Even in the rest of Austria, this approach today would not be feasible due to how insane the cost of urban housing ahs reached no city could afford to buy up over half of it.

The monetary appreciation of housing prices and and turning it into an speculative asset is the west's biggest policy failure. You'd have to undo this first before you can think of implementing Vienna's policies.

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

#137

Post by rbancroft »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #89
Simulacra wrote: post #43

How should a company promote diversity without jeopardizing safety?

Why do you think one is at odds with the other?

If you are selecting for anything besides competence, your chances of getting competence is effectively random. It says nothing about one group of people being more or less competent than another.

I have observed that selecting for competence leads to diversity, and I believe that diversity is a strength. But it is best achieved organically.

Personally I think the shortcomings we have with achieving diversity is in the framing stage, not the hiring stage.

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

#138

Post by malermeister »

forgotmyinfo wrote: post #21
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?

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.

It's almost as if an economic system based on maximizing greed instead of reigning it in was not sustainable or desirable.

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

#139

Post by vundercind »

forgotmyinfo wrote: post #21
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?

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.

It’s this, absolutely. Professional managers trained in finance who either don’t know or don’t care about the actual business they’re managing. Work = moving money around a spreadsheet and all else is incidental at best and something to be avoided at worst, doubly so if it can’t be captured in a spreadsheet with a dollar value attached.

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

#140

Post by JackFr »

afavour wrote: post #72
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…

Because, depressingly, the stock market is correct. Boeing is one of two manufacturers for planes of this size. The other is totally backlogged with orders. The stock market has assessed, correctly, that Boeing can withstand this loss of knowledge and keep generating profit. Does it result in shit equipment that literally kills people? Sure. But how many people are going to stop flying because of it? Not many. Throw…

I think that many of the managers honestly didn’t understand where the quality and safety came from. They probably thought that they could just coast and the quality would continue.

As a counterpoint, I work at very large financial firm in technology and in general, the 20+ year veterans who’ve been here forever are terrible. They are hidebound in their actions, years behind in industry best practices and they maintain little fiefdoms simply because of their intimate knowledge of the banks arcane and idiosyncratic policies. The place would be better of without the bulk of them.

That is to say we are the complete opposite of what Boeing was. But the most charitable interpretation you could offer the Boeing management is that they thought they were in the situation of my company rather than the situation they actually had.

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