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

prospect.org

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

#21

Post by forgotmyinfo »

iaoat2d wrote: post #9
margalabargala wrote: post #3

If you read this article looking for new or surprising insight, you won't find it. It is not new information that Boeing started a rapid decline shortly after the McDonnell Douglas merger, and it will be unsurprising to you to hear that shortly afterwards, Boeing began abusing its most senior employees into leaving. What this article offers is new detail into exactly how Boeing has gone about cannibalizing itself. Th…

"the lengths to which they went to ensure all prior institutional knowledge regarding how to properly build a plane was systematically destroyed." why do this intentionally?

Y'all're gonna hate this, but financialization and the relentless pursuit of profits. Every time this stuff happens, people ask why, and it's because of greed. When you focus on making money above all else, this is what happens. It's not a mystery.

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

#22

Post by pfortuny »

rjbwork wrote: post #7
proc0 wrote: post #5

> Swampy believed relying on mechanics to self-inspect their work was not only insane but illegal This sounds like the changes that have taken place in the software industry in the past 10-20 years. Engineers are meant to do much more than engineering, including testing their own software, managing project timelines, etc., however with software nobody dies, you just get crappy software that constantly breaks and need…

Great idea but how will the bean counters and schmoozers get their multi-million dollar bonuses if they can't force engineers to do 5 jobs while paying them for 1? Will never work.

quality control is most of the times unmeasurable in the short term…

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

#25

Post by margalabargala »

Cheer2171 wrote: post #17
iaoat2d wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the lengths to which they went to ensure all prior institutional knowledge regarding how to properly build a plane was systematically destroyed." why do this intentionally?

The intention wasn't to destroy institutional knowledge. The intention was to cut costs in the short term, largely through outsourcing and turnover. Why pay a senior engineer a huge salary when you could replace them with a consultant in their twenties? They just didn't think or care about the consequences.

They adopted a philosophy of management that explicitly assigned no value to institutional knowledge, and thus eliminated anyone who had it as they were not considered worth their salary. From the article:

> Boeing had come under the spell of a seductive new theory of “knowledge” that essentially reduced the whole concept to a combination of intellectual property, trade secrets, and data, discarding “thought” and “understanding” and “complex reasoning” possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce as essentially not worth the increased health care costs.

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

#26

Post by Rinzler89 »

margalabargala wrote: post #19
iaoat2d wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the lengths to which they went to ensure all prior institutional knowledge regarding how to properly build a plane was systematically destroyed." why do this intentionally?

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 amount.

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

#28

Post by Terr_ »

type_Ben_struct wrote: post #11

It baffles me how this happens time and time again in companies as they grow (albeit rarely with this level of human life consequence), and nobody ever seems to learn from it.

There's one technology where humanity's pace of progress has not been so swift: The programming and execution of organizations.

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

#29

Post by stephenhuey »

margalabargala wrote: post #3

If you read this article looking for new or surprising insight, you won't find it. It is not new information that Boeing started a rapid decline shortly after the McDonnell Douglas merger, and it will be unsurprising to you to hear that shortly afterwards, Boeing began abusing its most senior employees into leaving. What this article offers is new detail into exactly how Boeing has gone about cannibalizing itself. Th…

I learned some things reading this article from 2 days ago:

Boeing’s Dead Whistleblower Spoke the Truth

https://www.thefp.com/p/boeings-dead-whistleblower-spoke-the...

The Free Press

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

#30

Post by downrightmike »

Cheer2171 wrote: post #17
iaoat2d wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the lengths to which they went to ensure all prior institutional knowledge regarding how to properly build a plane was systematically destroyed." why do this intentionally?

The intention wasn't to destroy institutional knowledge. The intention was to cut costs in the short term, largely through outsourcing and turnover. Why pay a senior engineer a huge salary when you could replace them with a consultant in their twenties? They just didn't think or care about the consequences.

Rather: Money > consequences. And so far, they've been right. How likely will old managers that have long left, but fully participated, be held accountable?
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