Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

perell.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 234 posts

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#101

Post by afterburner »

im_down_w_otp wrote: post #39

I don't understand how this was a software failure. From everything I've ever read about this issue, including this piece, the failure seems very much like a model & design failure. It seems like a systems & human factors engineering failure. Not a software failure.

The software fix was the stopgap solution to a design side effect. The stopgap solution was also not that well designed, and ultimately confused the pilots, who were deliberately untrained in the changes.

Why deliberately untrained? Because the whole selling point of the design was that you wouldn't have to retrain your pilots because it would handle just like the old plane.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#102

Post by evan_ »

slededit wrote: post #57
brojonat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives To play devil's advocate, this isn't a moral statement. The author is saying this is true based on actual events.

I'm almost certain "expense of human lives" didn't come up as a factor on any of the merger pitch decks. Frankly its a huge leap to see that a merger of two successful and relatively safe aircraft manufacturers would be intentionally at the expense of human lives.

Of course it did, but it was probably spelled differently, like “a merger would enhance our ability to fight regulation”. The regulations being things like “you have to have planes that don’t rapidly fly into the ground for no reason” etc.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#103

Post by pytester »

slededit wrote: post #57
brojonat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives To play devil's advocate, this isn't a moral statement. The author is saying this is true based on actual events.

I'm almost certain "expense of human lives" didn't come up as a factor on any of the merger pitch decks. Frankly its a huge leap to see that a merger of two successful and relatively safe aircraft manufacturers would be intentionally at the expense of human lives.

It didn't have to be on any pitch decks for safety to be downplayed. Its presence or absence on pitch decks is quite irrelevant.

You can tell how seriously they took human lives by their default reaction a plane crash. It's always "pilot error": https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/sd9LGK2S9m/battle_over_blam...

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#104

Post by danharaj »

DuskStar wrote: post #98
lovich wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it have to be intentional? They are pursuing profit. Human lives were ended as a result of their actions in the pursuit of profit. Is that not pursuing profit at the expense of human lives?

If I drive to the store to get milk and end up getting in a fatal accident along the way, am I pursuing milk at the expense of human lives?

Yes. Driving is dangerous. Our society has just deemed its danger acceptable even though we know how many people die because we are so dependent on cars. This is the grim fact of the matter.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#105

Post by WalterBright »

nabdab wrote: post #41
briandear wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a hyperbolic statement. Boeing employees and engineers also fly on those planes with their families. It isn’t like they are making decisions with the intent of compromising safety.

> It isn’t like they are making decisions with the intent of compromising safety. That really is actually exactly what they did and are doing. When you don’t do tests because you are confident something will pass, that doesn’t change that you aren’t testing, and you are compromising quality on the basis of productivity. Here Boeing decided to go against the safe practice because that would have classified the plane a…

On the other hand, making X behave like Y, where Y is something pilots are very used to, is safer.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#106

Post by pytester »

downrightmike wrote: post #89
jl2718 wrote: post #44

Note two contradictory popular trends: 1. AI is going to replace cheap labor 2. Engineering companies are outsourcing because of cheap labor The reality is that trend #2 is orders of magnitude larger. Any reversal of that by ‘AI’ would be the biggest jobs boom in decades for western nations, and according to this article, would increase quality and therefore trade balance as well. The other reality is that manufactur…

Unless you look at long term focused companies like Amazon, which is creating all kinds of value without bowing down to short term market analysts. Had Boeing looked beyond the immediate future and planned to upgrade the 737 frame, or make a new one so it could support the much larger engines, they wouldn't be in this situation. But short term costs and profits, outsourcing and negligence is running the company. Brea…

If Boeing hadn't subscribed to the view that pilots were an inconvenient expense to be slowly dispensed with with ever more "sophisticated" automation like MCAS they also wouldn't be in this situation.

It's uncomfortable to think about but a management fashion that silicon valley helped promulgate killed those 600 people.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#107

Post by journalctl »

platz wrote: post #2

> Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas? Because the airplane manufacturing industry is consolidating, and Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives. Was it really necessary to add the second part to explain why the merger occured? 'industry is consolidating' seems reason enough. The mixing of explanation with moralism in every sentence is grating. Put the moralism and ethics in it's own paragraph so we…

Screwing over workers for profit is nothing new [1]. You’d think after more than a hundred years we could start calling a spade a spade.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_...

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#108

Post by tw04 »

DuskStar wrote: post #98
lovich wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it have to be intentional? They are pursuing profit. Human lives were ended as a result of their actions in the pursuit of profit. Is that not pursuing profit at the expense of human lives?

If I drive to the store to get milk and end up getting in a fatal accident along the way, am I pursuing milk at the expense of human lives?

If you drove to the store in a car you knew had faulty brakes and killed someone: yes you would be pursuing milk at the expense of human lives. And I guarantee you if they could prove you knew your brakes were bad, the punishment would absolutely be worse than if you just had an unpreventable accident.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#109

Post by pfortuny »

slededit wrote: post #57
brojonat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives To play devil's advocate, this isn't a moral statement. The author is saying this is true based on actual events.

I'm almost certain "expense of human lives" didn't come up as a factor on any of the merger pitch decks. Frankly its a huge leap to see that a merger of two successful and relatively safe aircraft manufacturers would be intentionally at the expense of human lives.

“At whatever costs” easily becomes a moral stance even if nothing strictly immoral was supposed to be assumed.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#110

Post by gist »

I don't flag articles but this is one that I would flag. Why? It's typical HN 'red meat'. Well presented and (seemingly) well written and thoughtful. But the writer not only has no expertise (he did research?) but offers no backup (other than things that other news outlets have written) for most if not all of his statements. Now it's on thing if you are a major news outlet (NYT, WSJ or online well know publication) and it's another thing if you are just 'some guy, writer with a 'media company'' (what he does) and you do this and post your own articles.

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=davidperell

Why bother to read this exactly? There is always a question of what you read being true and sure it's fun to poke positive or negative. But honestly having a flashy website or blog is not enough.

(Kudos David for being opportunistic (I really mean that btw) pulling this off).

Post reply on HN