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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

#501

Post by wpietri »

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?

I think others would for the reason described in sentence directly before it. Which, as "so" indicates, is the logical predecessor.

I used to write code for financial traders. I promise you that there are a lot of people who do not give half a shit what a company's up to as long as they can buy it for $100 and sell it later for $101. And based on infinite news reports, we can all see there are plenty of CEOs who will do pretty much anything that will boost the stock price in the short term so that they get to keep their jobs longer.

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

#502

Post by makerdiety »

singleshot_ wrote: post #278
makerdiety wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stress and anxiety make you more vulnerable to bad decisions like suicide. Stop trying to turn stress and anxiety into an aesthetic personality trait and fashionable dress. Mental illness is not a dress that you can wear. It's toxic stuff to get rid of or at least mitigate.

Stress and anxiety are foundational to high performance. Imagining that stressed anxious people are mentally ill is ridiculous.

Then maybe stressed anxious people who are both high performing and mentally ill isn't ridiculous? Which makes sense because mediocre people have no stress, anxiety, or mental illness. They're "sane and healthy" instead.

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

#503

Post by wpietri »

imperfect_light wrote: post #417
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. Then why did markets favor companies that literally made no profits for years, Amazon and Uber being examples?

If your point is that generalizations aren't universals, I agree. That's why I said "tends to". I further agree that markets like more than one thing, and you can see that with things like "growth stocks", "meme stocks", and "pump and dumps".

Amazon is particularly notable for how long and how energetically they resisted investor pushes to take short-term gains. They were famous for it, or perhaps notorious. So although it's a counterexample to my point, it's also great proof of it.

Opinions differ on Uber, but personally I think of it (and WeWork) as pump and dumps. After Facebook and Google ended up with quasi-monopolies, investors were hungry for another "to the moon" technology stock. I should say that was true of both VCs and retail investors. The VCs saw an opportunity to make things that looked vaguely Google-shaped, which they did, trying to sell them off to the general public before anybody caught on. They succeeded with Uber and failed with WeWork. But in both cases, it's still VCs favoring short-term cash extraction over long-term value creation.

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

#504

Post by ProllyInfamous »

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…

>...irreplaceable and yet they were actively trying to get rid of them... There are no words.

Best response I can offer is Kurt Vonnegut's quote:

"We'll go down in history as the first society that wouldn't save itself because it wasn't cost-effective."

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

#505

Post by ClumsyPilot »

bilvar wrote: post #496
mplewis wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%.

Excuse me, I am a European and Czechia consistently has clean public bathrooms and baby changing rooms!

And we have human rights, and so does India

Why do you need to come up with wild excuses?

western-est west has decided they can’t be bothered to deal with some issues, like hygene, or, in case of UK, human waste in rivers

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

#506

Post by FeloniousHam »

ignoramous wrote: post #460
gostsamo wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The now-elder employee ~~gave~~ freely sold, for an excellent wage and benefits, their best and healthy years to the company and its mission.

FTFY

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

#508

Post by amtamt »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #444
amtamt wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Are you (ironically) new? Software has been like that for st least three decades.

I am not new, nor the trend. Just that trend has accelerated alarmingly.

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

#509

Post by amtamt »

ForHackernews wrote: post #491
amtamt wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Of course not, but even by that analogy airplanes manufacturing is That 1% of the time software is critital, it is messing too many lives... things like royal mail and what not.

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

#510

Post by fargle »

asah wrote: post #451
fargle wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

indeed, don't disagree. still toxic and more lucky than good (in the bill/jobs/musk) cases. don't even get me started on the non-technical CEOs. they suck even far worse.
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