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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

#451
post #422
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perspective: the S&M folks he's complaining about, don't even think at all about users holding products. Seriously, it's all spreadsheets and powerpoint, because they've never built anything with their hands, never worked on a team, and never worked on a "factory floor" (e.g. live server/database, etc). Steve Jobs and his generation all soldered boards that went to paying customers. Elon Musk slept on the NUMMI facto…

bill gates was a very subpar developer. that's not help, that's narcissistic meddling and micromanaging. if he was good at anything technical, or arguably business strategy, ms-dos wouldn't have been the utter garbage that it was. musk sleeping on the floor is a publicity stunt, not totally dishonest, but 98% maybe. jobs? complete a-hole and basket case. a lazy crappy worker who physically smelled bad. if he ever spe…

Sorry but you're painting bike sheds here - the point is that these guys at least APPRECIATED quality work (before then cutting corners).

The truly non-technical folks don't understand what corners they're cutting.

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

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Vienna's approach worked because it happened after WW2 It didn't though, they already started in the 1920ies! The most famous builing, Karl-Marx-Hof, started construction in 1927. And they are building new public housing to this day, making use of inner city land that comes available from old factories, storage facilities, rail yards or alongside private construction projects etc. Other austrian cities do this too.…

>And they are building new public housing to this day,

Sure, a bit yes, but the bulk was acquired/made back when property was dirt cheap, not at today's prices. Vienna couldn't replicate the same move from scratch today.

You cannot start to do today in any city what Vienna started 100 years ago. It's too late now. The fiscal policies of the last decades have made that unfeasible.

>Other austrian cities do this too.

Not even remotely as much as Viena. Graz has next to no public housing, it's mostly private.

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

#453
post #446

"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…

Engineering is not only about know what to do, but also what not to do, and imho, knowing what not to do is way more important. Those C*O without an engineering background probably could not recognize that, but even they do, they probably don't care neither. Early career staffs are not only more energetic but also much cheaper comparing to those veterans in the field. Replacing those know what not to do with younger…

"when it indeed pops, as the one made the decisions would have pocketed a big fat bonus and walked away"

And this is exactly what happened here and criminal investigations are happening, but I kind of doubt, whether they will lead to much.

Much in the article is based on hearsay, so it will depend on whether there are more people willing to testify. But one main witness already suicided, despite telling others he won't do that. Either way, that is already a strong deterrent.

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

#454
I wonder if Boeing’s institutional investors have had the foresight to get controlling stakes in business jet manufacturers to prevent them from going down the same path, just so that they can still get places by plane in reasonable safety.

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

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> streets of San Francisco smell a LOOOT better What happened to all the public toilets in US/UK? I remember there being many more, am I hallucinating this? Many 2nd world countries still have them, for good reason!

People defile them, use them for shelters, or drug ingestion stations. There's no innovative way to solve homelessness. It's an insidious problem that defies any method to redress. Any angle you try to approach it from will be abused or defeated in some way.

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

#456

I wonder if Boeing’s institutional investors have had the foresight to get controlling stakes in business jet manufacturers to prevent them from going down the same path, just so that they can still get places by plane in reasonable safety.

Money trumps even the personal safety of the person getting the money. Look at the guy with the carbon fibre submarine. He literally sacrificed his life in the pursuit of profit.

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

#457
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Just look at Google

Anecdotally, the average member of the team I'm in (in Europe) is probably mid-30s with at least 10 years of experience.

Less than 5 years of experience at Google is, to be fair, common. But the company doubled in size over that time, so it's inevitable. And higher turn over in tech is common (and I don't think that is necessarily reflective of anything other than the fact it's easy to get another job as a software engineer).

I can't state much on the layoffs because my team was not heavily affected.

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

#458

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.

This is clearly false. "He did it in the parking lot" is nothing like enough evidence to convict anyone. It isn't remotely enough even on the balance of probabilities. I have seen zero evidence for the conspiracy theory, and strong evidence against it, including the fact that his own family think his death was suicide.

Please do not casually spread conspiracy theories. They poison democratic debate, make us all stupider, and distract attention from important, evidenced realities, like the others mentioned in the article.

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

#459

"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…

I'd also blame flat hierarchy and lean management. When I started as a young engineer in aerospace in the late-nineties[1] this trend had already started, but we still had young people that tried to build a career and reputation. This culture is completely gone and replaced by move fast, break things and when you screw up start afresh somewhere else with minimal repercussions.

I don't say the old world was necessarily better and most certainly I don't want the 80s back, but something important has been lost and we yet have to find a replacement.

[1] I left aerospace after six years, got a computer science degree and built a career in IT. Never looked back.

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

#460

>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. T…

Purging elder employees is the logical result of making the employer pay for the health care of their employees.

> Purging elder employees is the logical result of making the employer pay for the health care of their employees.

The now-elder employee gave their best and healthy years to the company and its mission.

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