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

151–160 of 234 posts

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#151

Post by hannasanarion »

lumost wrote: post #142
hannasanarion wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that it would be a lot harder for "Engineers to Lose Control of the Comapany" if engineers had a vote more powerful than the bankers, billionaires, and equity funds who own all the stock.

Do companies with high employee ownership typically outperform those that do not?

How do you define "performing"? Profits for shareholders? Employee satisfaction? Safety record? Market share?

It is clear that companies that prioritize profits and market domination do so at the expense of their employees, customers, and safety.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#152

Post by booblik »

While it is nice to think that this is all a beancounter fault, and to an extent it is, there must be an engineer in Boeing who was tasked with this difficult and challenging mission how to avoid the expensive recertification of the airplane. They must have spent many sleepless nights thinking how to make that happen, until finally reaching a eurika! moment. And I want to believe that they thought the solution they proposed was both sound and economical, yet the execution was lacking. In the end there must be an engineer behind every feature, even if they were pressured by non engineering manager to compromise.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#153

Post by hannasanarion »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #147
hannasanarion wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nationalization isn't the only type of worker control. What if Boeing's CEO was elected by people who work for the company, instead of by rich board members with profit interest and no expertise? (making this kind of worker-democracy corporate governance the norm is a long-term goal of the Sanders plan)

> What if Boeing's CEO was elected by people who work for the company, instead of by rich board members with profit interest and no expertise? And how are you (or Sanders) going to make that happen? By taking away the ability to appoint the CEO from the board members, and/or taking away the ability to appoint the board from the stockholders. But that's a big chunk of what ownership of a company means . How is this no…

Because the owner isn't the state, it's the employees. That's not nationalization, that's cooperative-ization. Corporations aren't dictated on what to do from above, they are organized democratically from below.

My understanding of the Sanders plan is to require that all quarterly dividends include a stock issuance to employees of a company, with the eventual requirement that all corporations above a certain size must be 50% worker owned by some date.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#154

Post by Guthur »

evan_ wrote: post #102
slededit wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are many thousands if not millions of humans involved. Successful business affects so many even far removed from the company. Large companies like these are often heavily invested by institutional investors covering many of the populations pensions.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#155

Post by salawat »

WalterBright wrote: post #144
salawat wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MD-11 and now MAX raise questions on the execution of that. Pilots have to understand the how and why the different thing can fly like the old thing so that when something goes wrong and that invariant is inevitably violated, they aren't caught off guard.

Since the advent of powered flight controls, they've been shaped to give desired handling characteristics. For example, in the 70's control forces were lightened considerably to accommodate female pilots, though many were concerned this would lead to overcontrolling the airplane by the male pilots. Human factors design is nowhere near easy or settled science, not in iphone design nor in flight controls design.

>Human factors design is nowhere near easy or settled science, not in iphone design nor in flight controls design.

Given.

The issue I keep coming back to is the flawed regard for human factors in MCAS. They paid enough attention to squeak by the artificial feel, but then completely ignored the fact that a pilot can't react or stay ahead of something on a plane that no one tells them even exists. Then when it became evident it might be a problem, they back pedaled, putting as much blame on the operators as they could.

They thought about it. They decided "Nah, they don't need to know." At some point the tech pilot even expressed concerns over the system, yet was still pressured to keep it out of the manual...why?

No one in good faith has anything to gain from that system's implementation details seeing the light of day. Unless of course, there was some other motivation, like avoiding the costs of compliance at some point.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#156

Post by anon1m0us »

pytester wrote: post #103
slededit wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Interesting. I see the same default response to accidents in self-driving cars. It's because the driver didn't have their hands on the wheel. It's because the driver fell asleep.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#158

Post by K0SM0S »

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.

Indeed. Meet accidentology, “the study and analysis of the causes and effects of accidents”, which became a huge applied field during the second half of the 20th century — notably driven by air traffic (also championned by medical care among other sectors).

The gist of it is extremely simple: most fatal accidents happen because of a sum of mistakes, a chain of more or less important errors which, taken individually, would seldom lead to an accident, but together form "the perfect storm". This is btw the true meaning of Murphy's famous quote (especially the 'worst possible time' part, e.g. software failing in-flight as opposed to during tests), and how we avoid such outcomes.

The beauty of accidentology, beyond engineering / repairing honesty, beyond tons of carefully written procedures and double checklists, is also quite simple: to systematically track the origin of mistakes, to reward people who were involved in finding the issue, and fix the problem once and for all through better practice, better documentation, changing procedures.

It contributed to make air travel statistically the safest means of transportation for human beings (the rationale was that plane crashes were so traumatising to the general public that it wasn't enough to be "better" than cars or trains or ferrys; air travel had to be 99.99...% safe to succeed).

In this case, we indeed have multiple failures which form a chain of events: the manufacturer (Boeing) cutting corners on safety, the regulator (FAA) also cutting corners in what looks like plain and simple corruption here, and somehow everyone else (companies, pilots) taking for granted what Boeing/FAA said. All in the name of more profit, for a ridiculously tiny part of the population. The results are the tragedies we witnessed. And while the first crash should have been a wake-up call, the fact that Boeing themselves didn't come forward and did let a second crash occur is borderline criminal (for courts to decide, anyway, but the question seems salient in this case).

It's all extremely worrying and sets a dire precedent for the USA as a lax or incompetent regulator, and a champion of big corporations now apparently digging way too far down the 'profit hole' — it has literally become a grave by that point.

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#159

Post by bumby »

briandear wrote: post #47
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.

My comment is being misread — I said they don’t make decisions with the intent to compromise safety. I am not defending the decisions, but they aren’t actively trying to make unsafe planes in order to save money. It isn’t like they are doing what some car makers did where they judged the expense of a recall as cheaper than the litigation from deaths.

I read your comment and interpreted it as a misalignment of incentives in the context of informed decisions about risk.

The second part is key to me. Inadequate system safety analysis seemed to give them the green light in decisions to save money (or make more money with safety critical 'options'). It's not like they knew MCAS would have an out-sized chance of downing a plane. My guess is they didn't know what they didn't know and it led them to have overconfidence in their ability to properly gauge business/safety trade-offs

Re: Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

#160

Post by salawat »

na85 wrote: post #74
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…

>The mixing of explanation with moralism in every sentence is grating. At the fundamental level, Engineering is a social/ethical process, not a technical one. Yes, engineers tend to have technical skills but when you use those skills to design a bridge you must always keep society (the users of your product) at the forefront of your mind. What separates engineers from "skilled people" is professional ethics. An engin…

I absolutely concur with your viewpoint. Then again, I've always bought into the Iron Ring mentality anyway.

Right now I feel like there is a lot of hostility aimed at the "ethically active engineer". I've seen time and time again people pushed to back down because they're "rocking the boat."

On the other hand, I look at stuff going on in the Free Software movement where cancel culture seems to be being weaponized (by whom, and to whose ultimate benefit I can't really tell)as well.

There is a balance, but I really do agree that if you aren't actively engaged with the ethics of the process you're facilitating, you can't really call yourself an Engineer. I have lists of projects I won't do, and I have fewer qualms with letting an employer know they're crossing them as I get older.

Unfortunately for me the point is a little moot, as there is no PE for Software fellas anyway, and I'm a few years away from being able to work my way educationwise into a field that has a program for it.

Just wanted to let you know you aren't alone in your sentiment.

Post reply on HN