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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

#491

Post by ForHackernews »

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.

Writing software is nothing like building airplanes.

99% of the time it doesn't matter because most software is worthless or trivial. A sibling thread highlights the decline of Google: What a horror if someone were to receive subpar search results or view an advert that hadn't been auctioned at the most profitable rate.

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

#492

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

wpietri wrote: post #315
galangalalgol wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do companies not have a defense against this? It seems rampant. Is it just more visible for some reason?

Which companies? The ones who had quality and lost it? There's not a lot of defense against being purchased on the open market, as happened with Boeing. Or Simmons is another good example: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/business/economy/05simmon... The real problem here is the US's dominant business culture, which tends to value short-term cash extraction over long-term value creation. There are a lot of practica…

Stockholders always want the company to survive, over short term profits. The problem is that stockholder interests are not the same as the custodian interests.

Custodians get paid on the basis of inmediate performance.

Thats the broken link.

Custodians are thus nominating board members that are incentivized by short term decision making. The nomination is based on relationships and based on trust.

And then you get in trouble.

If board members were elected as a sort of election by ultimate stockholders (which include actual employees, in fact) you would see a different board. Therefore different CEO.

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

#494

Post by gosub100 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #475
gosub100 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I am sorry but I don’t think you realise how ridiculous this sounds to someone not from the west. See, while India is building public toilets and becoming more civilised, we, with this attitude, are moving in the opposite direction. If we can manage to maintain a toilet in Russia and India, 1st world countries somehow cannot - that’s just a statement of social distinction. > use them for shelters, or drug ingestion s…

Comparing Indian culture to US is like comparing auto parts to aircraft parts, there's no point in continuing the discussion.

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

#495

Post by mplewis »

bilvar wrote: post #480
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry but I don’t think you realise how ridiculous this sounds to someone not from the west. See, while India is building public toilets and becoming more civilised, we, with this attitude, are moving in the opposite direction. If we can manage to maintain a toilet in Russia and India, 1st world countries somehow cannot - that’s just a statement of social distinction. > use them for shelters, or drug ingestion s…

Well, you can either have human rights (non-authoritarian states who won't use the police to crack down on this behaviour) or clean public toilets. Of course Singapore for instance has the cleanest public toilets, but you can also pay a 2k fine for chewing gum.

You don’t need authoritarianism to have clean public facilities. Americans truly have a learned helplessness about what is achievable in this world.

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

#496

Post by bilvar »

mplewis wrote: post #495
bilvar wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can either have human rights (non-authoritarian states who won't use the police to crack down on this behaviour) or clean public toilets. Of course Singapore for instance has the cleanest public toilets, but you can also pay a 2k fine for chewing gum.

You don’t need authoritarianism to have clean public facilities. Americans truly have a learned helplessness about what is achievable in this world.

I'm European mate. I haven't been to a single country over here that consistently (let's say 50%+ chance) had clean public bathrooms.

Singapore on the other hand was close to 100%.

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

#497

Post by justrealist »

mrbadguy wrote: post #431
justrealist wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I’m sorry, why does it matter that no one has died on an American carrier for a while? Not so long ago, Boeing sent over 300 people to their deaths with their shoddy MCAS scheme. It’s pure chance that this didn’t happen in the USA so I’m not sure I understand the relevance of the nationalities of the deceased.

It's not pure chance. It was a plane error, but trained pilots following procedure would have responded appropriately and avoided a crash. In response to a plane malfunction, the pilots panicked, did the wrong thing, and everyone died.

This does not excuse Boeing, but it's just the way it is. Training standards are higher in the US than, for example, Ethiopian airlines.

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

#498

Post by nebula8804 »

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…

SpaceX manages to make things work despite rampant burnout induced quitting so its not impossible. Shorts used to make fun of Tesla and how any experience walks out the door with all the turnover but they seem to have a handle on things as well (less so than SpaceX).

If management is checked out I agree that it is less likely to turn out good which is what I think happened here.

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

#499

Post by berniedurfee »

As I was reading this it reminded me 100% of GE. Another manufacturing giant that put profit above all else and many people suffered for it as the company collapsed under the weight of its own incompetence... though many also became staggeringly wealthy.

GE is absolutely a place where leadership is the only “skill” that matters. Leaders are all that’s needed and everyone else is a commodity. Leader worship and success theater killed GE.

I could only shake my head when I got to the part where a former GE leader is in the running to be the new CEO.

Make sure your affairs are in order before boarding a Boeing aircraft.

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

#500

Post by berniedurfee »

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…

For the same reason that Ponzi schemes are so successful.
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