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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

#201

Post by astrange »

rbancroft wrote: post #160
astrange wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pournelle's Iron Law is just him saying "I am a Republican". You are not required to listen to him. For balance, I stopped reading this article at the end of the first page because it called Boeing "neoliberal", which doesn't mean anything except that the writer is a snotty humanities grad.

Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within…

Yes, he's a Republican.

Typical engineering humor of that era where they'd make up "rules of the universe" that were just them saying something vaguely cynical.

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

#202

Post by mikewarot »

>Boeing had come under the spell of a seductive new theory of “knowledge” that essentially reduced the whole concept to a combination of intellectual property, trade secrets, and data, discarding “thought” and “understanding” and “complex reasoning” possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce as essentially not worth the increased health care costs.

So they devalued Wisdom, and Elders... and things fell apart. This seems to be a pattern repeated all over the modern world.

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

#203

Post by layer8 »

metabagel wrote: post #190
layer8 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From TFA, it seems that it was someone else (still alive) who said that.

From "the f..ing article"?

See https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=39488667 .

It’s commonly used on HN.

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

#204

Post by ethbr1 »

YeBanKo wrote: post #189
masklinn wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt xitter has as much quality buffer as Boeing had in '97, and Elon's brutalisation of it was a lot less gradual.

Does quality matter as much for X as it does for Boeing? A closer example to Boeing is Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla is a mixed bag of good and bad stuff. But SpaceX is a marvel and essentially has no competitors. Compare X to media. Since the bridge collapse in the Baltimore I have read interesting analysis on X and reddit, not the best medium, but yet did not come across a single decent article about it in the media.

SpaceX is a much better analogy than Tesla.

Tesla accepts that there will be some accidents at the cost of progress.

SpaceX does not. (Or specifically lines up launches so that accidents have negligible consequences)

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

#205

Post by masklinn »

MilStdJunkie wrote: post #164
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.

Remember the big rollout of the Dreamliner in 2014 to show it was all done, but it was actually an empty metal tube with landing gear duct taped on it? And remember the venom that people got for bringing up the fact that, you know, you could see the sky from the wheel wells? Or the second rollout, when they had to strap the fuse segments together because no one knew where the fasteners were? Oh we could go on and on,…

> Remember the big rollout of the Dreamliner in 2014 to show it was all done, but it was actually an empty metal tube with landing gear duct taped on it?

It was in 2007 (on July 8th, a date obviously picked for the memes). Maiden flight was supposed to be two months or so away with introduction in 2008.

Maiden flight was on December 15, 2009. Commercial service started October 2011.

> name a commercially successful Boeing-designed product from the 21st century

The MAX was commercially successful before it started falling out the sky. Orders even picked back up after the dip and cancellations from the MCAS crisis.

It's not like customers have much of a choice if they need a new frame, there are 7000 outstanding orders for the A320neo family and in 2023 Airbus built 45 a month, with plans to eventually reach 75 a month (and stabilise there) circa 2026.

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

#206

Post by partiallypro »

zer00eyz wrote: post #49
stephenhuey wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned some things reading this article from 2 days ago: Boeing’s Dead Whistleblower Spoke the Truth https://www.thefp.com/p/boeings-dead-whistleblower-spoke-the... The Free Press

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…

I don't really even get the conspiracy theory that he was murdered, if Boeing etc are all so knowing and powerful why didn't they kill him years ago, well before he could tell his tale? Now they kill him because he already spoke out and they want to put the spotlight on themselves? The whole thing doesn't really make a lot of logical sense.

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

#207

Post by YeBanKo »

ethbr1 wrote: post #204
YeBanKo wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does quality matter as much for X as it does for Boeing? A closer example to Boeing is Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla is a mixed bag of good and bad stuff. But SpaceX is a marvel and essentially has no competitors. Compare X to media. Since the bridge collapse in the Baltimore I have read interesting analysis on X and reddit, not the best medium, but yet did not come across a single decent article about it in the media.

SpaceX is a much better analogy than Tesla. Tesla accepts that there will be some accidents at the cost of progress. SpaceX does not. (Or specifically lines up launches so that accidents have negligible consequences)

Tesla can cause injuries and casualties to general public, so can Boeing. SpaceX much less likely.

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

#208

Post by zer00eyz »

ladzoppelin wrote: post #128
dralley wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right... defamation is a good analog for this. Its under AIR21...

This case was him suing Boeing for money. The claim was that his whistleblowing was the reason he didn't get promoted and was forced to retire early. Thats whistleblowing past tense, the FAA already said the things he was whistleblowing on were in fact true, and Boeing was at fault.

He had lost this case once, but his lawyers felt that he could win this 2nd time around as there was a preponderance of evidence. The table stakes for this were in the 10's of millions at best, a trivial sum of money.

>>> I am not saying your wrong but who were the faulty suppliers for all these claims?

It was all, already, long ago, unraveled:

https://archive.is/iUzxR#selection-1111.393-1111.775

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

#209

Post by rybosworld »

U.S. companies have a management problem. I specifically mean that the terminal career path for most professions is "management". Depending where you work, management can mean:

- giving orders

- delegating work (usually this is work the manager specifically doesn't want to do themselves)

- clearing blockers in front of your employees

That the third one is the rarest is a problem.

American corporate culture has devolved into: get promoted into management and coast.

There are obviously exceptions. But a lot of people will agree they've had their fair share of terrible managers. I dare say that's the norm.

Boeing is just the most current example of what happens when a company fetishizes management. That is, there comes a time when the leeches have sucked the body dry.

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

#210

Post by lyu07282 »

zer00eyz wrote: post #192
lyu07282 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like we know or will ever know the details of and the extend of the investigation, the note was actually reported as a "white piece of paper that closely resembled a note,", what was on the note? Were his fingerprints on the note? Was handwriting analysis done? Did the gun belong to him? That wasn't reported either. Was it registered to him/ when/where did he buy it? Was there gunpowder residue on his hand?…

Sure: What we do know: this was an AR21 case. It was him suing boeing for forcing him to retire early and not promoting him because he was "whistle blowing". This is a case that had already been dismissed once. On the matter of that, the FAA already got his reports and agreed with him. The harm to Boeing from his wistle blowing was finished. They were probably paying more for lawyers to fight this than it was going t…

I care infinitely more about the questions I asked than whatever the family had to say. Because questions about fingerprints and gunpowder residue are concerning the physical evidence that could prove suicide to a reasonable degree.

I don't really care about talking about circumstantial evidence when the physical is right there.

The reason why people aren't convinced by the “this wasn't even about his whistleblowing, he already disclosed everything, so Boeing has no motive“ argument is because it isn't just about stopping whistleblowers, it's about the chilling effect for other potential, current employees.

We can brush it all aside as crazy conspiracy theories, but I think that's actually very harmful to society. Conspiracy thinking is very damaging, our response shouldn't be “shut up and trust authority“ when somebody asks about forensic evidence.

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