Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#111

Post by nabla9 » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 6:46 PM UTC

journalctl wrote: post #107

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_...

It lacks explanatory power.

It should be possible to screw workers without endangering lives or the bottom line. Boeing did that long time. So did Airbus, GE Aviation, Rolls-Royce, Bombardier.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#112

Post by rjsw » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

spaceandshit wrote: post #40

rjsw wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boeing employees don't go anywhere right now.

I love seeing these false statements on HN, where most users have no idea what the aerospace industry is like.

The Boeing people that I work with are not allowed to travel.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#113

Post by im_down_w_otp » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 7:00 PM UTC

afterburner wrote: post #101

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.

Still none of that makes it a software failure.

We're also straining the definition of "failure" here as it relates to software. Software doesn't really fail in the way considered in the realm of traditional functional-safety. It doesn't wear out like a cable or a capacitor. But, I digress.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#114

Post by sudoaza » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 7:01 PM UTC

MBAs ruining everything again, this is so familiar it ain't even funny. Putting business guys at the top is one of the biggest mistakes in companies, even if we concede that they are needed they should have very limited power not the control of the company like today's CEOs.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#115

Post by aphexairlines » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

sargram01 wrote: post #31

You see this at startups too, middle eng management were actual engineers and as the startup grows career managers creep in and skew the alignment of the engineering departments away from engineering solutions, the “product” they make, to problems they understand instead, political jockeying, manipulation, appeasing the LCD and the next managerial rung above them.

Your initial scenario is still flawed: "middle eng management were actual engineers." The problem is elevating management above other roles. At that point the course has been set.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#116

Post by BurningFrog » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 7:06 PM UTC

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…

Yeah, even the greediest executive knows that killing your passengers leads to the opposite of profit, as Boeing is surely proof of right now.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#117

Post by sargram01 » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 7:08 PM UTC

aphexairlines wrote: post #115

sargram01 wrote: post #31

You see this at startups too, middle eng management were actual engineers and as the startup grows career managers creep in and skew the alignment of the engineering departments away from engineering solutions, the “product” they make, to problems they understand instead, political jockeying, manipulation, appeasing the LCD and the next managerial rung above them.

Your initial scenario is still flawed: "middle eng management were actual engineers." The problem is elevating management above other roles. At that point the course has been set.

Yes, exactly, that’s the point I was trying to get at.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#118

Post by samcodes » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

vitaminCPP wrote: post #61

cellu_cc wrote: post #9

While I appreciate the amount of effort the author put into writing this, Matt Stoller’s analysis of the Boeing situation remains the best I’ve found so far: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout

This is short and excellent. Thanks for sharing. I wish Mr. Stoller took more time on this: > The Federal Aviation Administration, having outsourced much of its own regulatory capacity to Boeing, didn’t know what was going on, and Boeing didn’t tell airlines and pilots about the new and crucial safety procedures. This seems like big deal to me.

Regulatory capture is a common feature of policies promoted by the deregulate crowd

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#119

Post by linuxftw » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

binky wrote: post #7

dmix wrote: post #3

Has anyone considered that the MCAS bug was just simply nasty and difficult to detect in their simulator? It’s easy to look back with retrospect and make sweeping judgements about the entire company and the FAA. But fundamentally this was all over, as the author mentions, a single software bug and a lack of backup sensors to offset the risk. In addition it was the technical pilots who asked for the stick to be harder…

The bug is a symptom of bad architecture. Bad architecture is an outcome of taming loud engineers in sake of short term business outcomes.

Pretty much. If something is theoretically possible it needs to be defended against. I'm sure there's no shortage of people that could have looked at the requirements and figured out how to make it break, but Boeing outsourced.

I'm hoping we get more details so we can help build a text-book case against software outsourcing.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#120

Post by pinkfoot » Sun, Oct 20, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

hannasanarion wrote: post #84

pinkfoot wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really true that all the pension funds in USA - let alone all the foreigners (rich and poor) - together own only 16% of the shares in USA listed public companies. I call BS.

Pension funds represent less than 20% of the stock market, and 90% of households represent only 35% of pension funds, the richest 10% own the remaining 65% of pensions. Since pensions are allocated by earnings, if you're income-rich, you get a bigger pension, and most pension funds are owned by rich people. In addition, much of pension funds go into public bonds and real estate investment trusts, not the stock market…

Thanks.

PS. What am I to make of the throwaway line: ‘Some studies show its a lot more’ [than 20%]