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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

#401

Post by WalterBright »

diputsmonro wrote: post #339
pdonis wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not asking why Boeing continued to make money. I'm asking why the system as a whole didn't spot much sooner that their engineering had been trashed, and some kind of intervention wasn't made before two fatal airline accidents and other near misses happened. The point of the oversight we have is supposed to be to spot problems before they reach that level. If your answer is that not just Boeing, but our whole syst…

There is no comforting answer. Welcome to unchecked capitalism, it's short-term-profit-driven thinking all the way down. In every industry it's the same. The guard rails have been systematically dismantled for decades by opportunists just like this, hoping to make some quick cash and jump ship before it falls down. Whenever anyone points this out, they get labeled as cynics who hate capitalism and industry, and their…

> Welcome to unchecked capitalism, it's short-term-profit-driven thinking all the way down

Then why do companies' value go up long term? I own many stocks that have increased 10-fold in value over the last 10 years.

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

#402

Post by WalterBright »

constantcrying wrote: post #226
MilStdJunkie wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

>name a commercially successful Boeing-designed product from the 21st century. Something that can legitimately be called "Successful", and "Boeing" Boeing is still able to sell planes to customers, they still have a lot of orders in their backlog. This would only change if their are mass cancellations by their customers. There is a massive demand for planes right now, airlines rather would own a "good enough" plane f…

> absolutely no punishment

You might consider that Boeing's stock is down by half.

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

#403

Post by brailsafe »

smackeyacky wrote: post #143
twojobsoneboss wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Control via emotional abuse. I've currently got a middle manager who is perhaps the most clueless person I have ever worked for (we gave him the nickname "Bumble" which is short for what we actually call him). He has no leadership abilities, doesn't understand the tech, can't mentor us, can't pathfind for us and every vendor we deal with he has managed to upset. To make up for all these shortcomings, he is manipulati…

My last manager wasn't quite to this level, but close. The only way I protected myself from burnout was by realizing early enough that I was definitely going to get laid off, but that largely it was out of my hands, because my manager/director was mental. At one point I posted an Ask HN simply asking how can I tell my manager to back off in a way that doesn't get me fired, because he was so destructive. I'm lucky to have lost that job with my sanity intact. Lunatic.

After I did get laid off, he either blocked me very effectively, or exercised his EU right to be forgotten, because I can't find a public record of him. Although it would be funny to start shitposting his name around out of spite, since those would be the only records that show up.

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

#404

Post by avidiax »

npk wrote: post #364

I have a serious question that might sound not serious. The articles I read about boeing seem to focus on assembly line issues. As someone who flies a lot, assembly problems scare me, but so far assembly qv hasn’t been catastrophic (right?). It seems the real issue is a design flaw in the 737max pilot interface. Aside from some articles that feel vague (like competition with airbus led to some poor decision making);…

> assembly qv hasn’t been catastrophic (right?)

The door plug that blew out of a plane because the screws weren't installed didn't kill anyone, but only because the nearest passengers had their seatbelts fastened.

Is there any reason to think that a plane that's missing screws on a door plug doesn't have improperly torqued fuel lines or defective emergency oxygen generators or metal burrs rubbing on the control lines to to tail, or a software crash in all three "triple-redundant" computers?

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

#405

Post by refulgentis »

pdonis wrote: post #372
refulgentis wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're sort of assuming it happened in some sort of explicit clear way. It doesn't and didn't. I've participated in this process and shrugged it off as kind of their fault and not my place. Until it was my turn. When it's not you, it's just training data on the "wrong thing to do", and it's usually described as "being disagreeable" which accelerates the collapse - this seems perfectly reasonable at the time, they wer…

> Without explicit intent or some sudden accident, there's nothing to point at I disagree. As the article shows, there were plenty of technically competent people who did point at specific things. But management did not listen to them, and indeed actively suppressed them and drove them out. And since the FAA had outsourced all of its "independent" inspection responsibility to Boeing, there was no effective third part…

Right. corporate America in a nutshell. And I'm not being glib: there is no external check on a slow drip of firings, and people will write you off.

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

#406

Post by amtamt »

class3shock wrote: post #269

"But the average employee assigned to the 737 program has been at Boeing just five years, according to a longtime Boeing executive who is involved in various efforts to save the company; for comparison’s sake, he says the average employee assigned to the 777 program had between 15 and 20 years under their belt." It don't think it's possible to overstate how bad, and sad, of a state of affairs that is. I've never seen…

Something very similar is happening, at a very rapid pace, in software development.

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

#407

Post by jhummel »

WalterBright wrote: post #401
diputsmonro wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no comforting answer. Welcome to unchecked capitalism, it's short-term-profit-driven thinking all the way down. In every industry it's the same. The guard rails have been systematically dismantled for decades by opportunists just like this, hoping to make some quick cash and jump ship before it falls down. Whenever anyone points this out, they get labeled as cynics who hate capitalism and industry, and their…

> Welcome to unchecked capitalism, it's short-term-profit-driven thinking all the way down Then why do companies' value go up long term? I own many stocks that have increased 10-fold in value over the last 10 years.

Did you read the article?!

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

#408

Post by dbg31415 »

amtamt wrote: post #406
class3shock wrote: post #269

"But the average employee assigned to the 737 program has been at Boeing just five years, according to a longtime Boeing executive who is involved in various efforts to save the company; for comparison’s sake, he says the average employee assigned to the 777 program had between 15 and 20 years under their belt." It don't think it's possible to overstate how bad, and sad, of a state of affairs that is. I've never seen…

Something very similar is happening, at a very rapid pace, in software development.

https://www.wired.com/story/ageism-haunts-tech-workers-layof...

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

#409

Post by chii »

WalterBright wrote: post #400
wpietri wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our major system for evaluating companies is market-driven pricing of the company. That in turn is based mostly on the views of investors and traders, that is people who want to turn money into more money and generally aren't fussy about how it happens. So the market price for a company tends to favor short-term cash extraction over long-term value creation. That is to say, this is basically what our "system of evalu…

> So the market price for a company tends to favor short-term cash extraction over long-term value creation. Would you buy stock in a company that does this? Why do you think others would?

if you buy stock, but sell before others realize, then may be? If you could sniff out the quality momentum/inertia that the company is deriving revenue from, and sell shortly before it starts dropping, you'd have made profit.

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

#410

Post by chii »

mnau wrote: post #218
skeptrune wrote: post #193

Tremendously detailed for how short it is. I struggle to understand how outsourcing the engineer was sold as good for shareholders. Anyone watching someone write a longer book on this publicly?

It's not about being good for shareholders. They are far away and generally know nothing about what is good or bad decision in long run. We have replaced human QC with computers in many industries. C-suite cares about company profit, middle management cares about KPI. It's about maximizing individual management KPI despite being wrong for a company as a whole. Problems are for other guys/gals down the line.

> It's about maximizing individual management KPI

so you could argue that those people setting the KPI is either incompetent, or they themselves benefit from such a KPI (at the cost of the company going down).

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