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Boeing workers vote to strike

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#271

Post by ericd »

markus_zhang wrote: post #121
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Boeing spent $43B on stock buybacks between 2013 and 2019 while paying their CEO ~$30M/year. > To support its share price, the company under McNerney poured billions into stock buybacks instead of investing profits into the kind of research and development needed to stay competitive. McNerney decided not to spend billions of dollars building a new plane to replace the 737. Instead, Boeing tweaked and updated the exis…

I have said this and I'll say this again: executives should never have a disproportionate pay comparing to their most senior trench workers (think a very senior, lead engineer). 3-5x should be the maximum. The saying of "oh if you don't give big bucks then you won't hire good talents" is only true to certain extends. Einstein doesn't figure out GR because he wants the cash from Nobel's prize, actually none of the win…

My reply to this is that the potentially outsized rewards gives Carmack de facto leadership of his next project, because he’s the one paying the bills, and it lets him work on whatever he wants, in perpetuity, without ever having to consider money again. In a system where that’s not the case, then maybe his superior skills are enough to secure a leadership spot, or maybe not, because maybe he hasn’t invested enough in developing his political skills. This is generally a failing of engineers versus business people. Many of the engineer-led companies you see these days are because they were founders.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#272

Post by toomuchtodo »

charlie0 wrote: post #265
toomuchtodo wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Have the government step in, nationalize Boeing, give the union a board seat, and keep shipping. The problem is Boeing management and their board enabling the train wreck; don't build from scratch, refactor.

SpaceX has done such a phenomenal job rebuilding from scratch. How is it not obvious to you rebuilding airlines from scratch is also the best route?

Lottery tickets are not policy. SpaceX took decades to get to the success they realize today, having been founded in 2002, and it took a lot of luck to build a rocket shop from scratch. We must realize that companies are not built out of Legos, but ecosystems that require care, feeding, and are fragile systems.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#273

Post by consteval »

FredPret wrote: post #231
schmidtleonard wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People dying due to profit-motivated corporate negligence and the corporations in question getting a slap on the wrist? Must be a day ending in "y."

There must be a billion corporations out there. What % can kill customers on the scale of Boeing and get away with it? A tiny number. And for the ones that can, it’s likely that there are strong ties to the same government that’s supposed to prosecute them. For Boeing, there are significant financial and contractual ties to the US government. Having a steady stream of ultra-reliable government cash surely reminds you…

> What % can kill customers on the scale of Boeing and get away with it?

100% of the ones that are at, or near, the top of their domain. As the US and other developed nations move more towards Oligarchy, this describes a vast majority of the economy.

If you pick a domain, any domain, there's typically Losing even just one of those companies therefore has catastrophic economic effects. So you can't lose them, or even really hurt their profit much, because what's good for them is good for you (you being the US economy).

Bayer Pharmaceutical famously gave thousands of people HIV, knowingly, instead of clearing their inventory. Who knows how many of those people went on to unknowingly spread HIV to their future children or partners. We literally can't measure how many people died of AIDS because of them.

But they're one of the most important pharmaceuticals out there. And we need drugs.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#274

Post by thinkingtoilet »

mlindner wrote: post #214

They're voting to strike right as the new CEO gets in? That's kind of the worst time possible to improve the situation at Boeing. All you're doing is creating an antagonistic environment with your boss. So dumb.

Some of us don't like the taste of dirt licked off a boot. They'll be fine.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#275

Post by ericd »

coldpie wrote: post #209
ericd wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they have a set of specialized skills with only a few potential buyers, and if they kill this one, they’ll have very limited options that use their skills without massively uprooting their lives.

The workers aren't the ones killing the company.

If you reread what I was replying to, I was saying they might want to demand changes to management because it’s in their best interest to demand those changes, focusing only on short term benefit to themselves is harmful to their long term best interest. And organized labor does have the power to severely damage the companies they’re part of it’s not all one group or the other.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#276

Post by jmyeet »

Havoc wrote: post #200

Just watched a documentary on Boeing an hour ago. It’s incredible that they avoided criminal prosecution despite two planes crashing, door popping out and then paperwork somehow going AWOL. Also Boeing knew about wiring issues since 2022 and the FAA only issues an inspection order in ‘24. Gonna try and avoid Boeings of all types going forward

Not defending Boeing here. They have lost engineering focus as everything has become financialized in the search for ever-higher profits.

But there's also a recency bias here, as in fatal defects aren't new. Example: there were several fatal accidents with the 737 rudder in the 1990s [1].

One valid area of criticism is how the FAA has essentially allowed Boeing to self-certify to safety since ~2009 [2].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues

[2]: https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/b...

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#277

Post by consteval »

Larrikin wrote: post #219
diggan wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you start thinking of Boeing as a government agency with less oversight that poses as a for-profit corporation, a lot of things start to make more sense. Including what you wrote about.

[flagged]

You're getting downvoted but you're 100% right.

The Reagan-era conservative propaganda is so unbelievably strong that even when a private corporation kills hundreds of people, people will STILL use the opportunity to point at the public sector.

No, they don't operate like the public sector because they're actually in the private sector. But the propaganda is so strong that it's literally unthinkable for a private actor to do something bad on a large scale - only the public sector can do something bad on a large scale.

Therefore, in this reasoning, Boeing must be like a public actor. It's really remarkable the mental effort people will go through to avoid any type of narrative that MIGHT imply the private sector needs more accountability.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#278

Post by Zigurd »

FredPret wrote: post #231
schmidtleonard wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People dying due to profit-motivated corporate negligence and the corporations in question getting a slap on the wrist? Must be a day ending in "y."

There must be a billion corporations out there. What % can kill customers on the scale of Boeing and get away with it? A tiny number. And for the ones that can, it’s likely that there are strong ties to the same government that’s supposed to prosecute them. For Boeing, there are significant financial and contractual ties to the US government. Having a steady stream of ultra-reliable government cash surely reminds you…

Debatable. For all the complaints about regulation, there's lead in your cinnamon and filth in your deli meats. Listeriosis kills.

The regulators are under-resourced, if anything.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#279

Post by RSHEPP »

iancmceachern wrote: post #86

Any Boeing engineers who may be looking for alternate paths, please know that I've known many great aerospace engineers who have made a pivot to medical devices very successfully and many of the best medical devices to come out in recent years are due to such. It seems very different but really it's very similar.

Consider valves or pressure regulators also! Lots of shared fundamentals with the flow of gases!

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#280

Post by dghlsakjg »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #230
Larrikin wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If you think government agencies exist to solely help the American people then how do you explain the DMV experience?

Lat time I went to an American DMV it was in a small town in Colorado to get a license renewal. I was in and out within 10 minutes.

My next license was in Canada. Made an appointment and it was about the same, maybe a bit more to get all the paperwork scanned to convert my US license.

The DMV doesn't have to suck. Government services don't have to suck, and a lot of them actually don't. Frequently they suck because they are tasked with doing far more than any similarly resourced private company could accomplish.

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