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

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

#321

Post by wpietri »

pdonis wrote: post #225
HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #70

The "funny" thing to me is that I'm old enough to remember when the merger occurred that people were predicting exactly what came to pass. It just took 25 years to finally happen.

> It just took 25 years to finally happen. To me the big question is, why did it take 25 years for this to become common knowledge? Why is our system of evaluating public corporations so messed up that a public company, and one with huge government contracts to boot, could get away with this for that long?

Our major system for evaluating companies is market-driven pricing of the company. That in turn is based mostly on the views of investors and traders, that is people who want to turn money into more money and generally aren't fussy about how it happens. So the market price for a company tends to favor short-term cash extraction over long-term value creation.

That is to say, this is basically what our "system of evaluating public corporations" rewards, and it's been that way for quite some time. We're just paying more attention here because lots of us fly and airline crashes capture the attention nicely. When Facebook enshittifies to juice revenues we all just kind of put up with it, but we're not so chill about a window blowing out at 15,000 feet.

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

#322

Post by xcv123 »

benced wrote: post #132
throwaway458864 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A public hearing isn't going to change anything. Look at...well, literally any powerful organization or individual brought before Congress for excoriation. The pound of flesh they want is press and votes, and you don't have to change anything to get that. It's not like they're going to break up Boeing. They can't actually do anything to improve Boeing. All they can do is wag their finger. It's not like there's an alt…

I think culture is underrated. Acting like he did should not be considered a dignified behavior and I think that will meaningfully constrict behavior even in the absence of new laws. Think about how business culture varies across jurisdictions: there's more than just profit-maximization at work. Also, to be clear, Boeing's safety record is still good. The only recent deaths are associated with less-trained pilots in…

> Also, to be clear, Boeing's safety record is still good.

Two complete losses within a few months is a fucking terrible safety record. The carnage only stopped when regulators forcibly grounded all 737 Max globally, while Boeing criminally denied any issues with the airplane design.

> The only recent deaths are associated with less-trained pilots in the earlier days of the 737 MAX.

The recent deaths are associated with criminal management at Boeing. It was not a pilot training issue. Boeing intentionally and criminally withheld information about the MCAS system from all pilots, airlines, and regulators. Literally no one had a clue about MCAS outside of Boeing. Furthermore, the MCAS design was fundamentally broken, falling below minimum aircraft engineering standards.

> My frustration is they took this organization from an engineering leader to an organization that can't ship a plane. The 787, 737 MAX, and now 777X were/are insanely delayed.

Cutting corners and trying to ship planes quickly is partly what got them into this mess.

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

#323

Post by ClumsyPilot »

freeopinion wrote: post #289
c-linkage wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not like airlines really have a lot of choice in manufacturer. Just because the backlog is there doesn't mean airlines wouldn't prefer a different supplier. And standing up a competitor is not really an option.

> standing up a competitor is not really an option This is the part that bothers me. Why isn't it an option? Standing up a new orbital rocket company was not really an option in 2000. If Boeing can deliver 400 aircraft a year, why can't a startup deliver 6 in the next six years. I don't mean 6/year. I mean take 6 years to build your first 6. Or maybe it takes 12 years to deliver the first 6. Then aim to deliver one p…

> This is the part that bothers me. Why isn't it an option?

Because a few years ago Bombardier did just that, and US government imposed a 300% tax on their planes. [1] And then a month later complained about Chinese protectionism or some such.

1 - https://theweek.com/trade/88867/us-imposes-300-import-tariff...

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

#324

Post by golergka »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #70

The "funny" thing to me is that I'm old enough to remember when the merger occurred that people were predicting exactly what came to pass. It just took 25 years to finally happen.

Is it feasible to hold a short position on a stock for 25 years?

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

#325

Post by ClumsyPilot »

zer00eyz wrote: post #49
stephenhuey wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The entire first half of this (tfp directly above this comment) article blindly supports the spin that there is some conspiracy where someone killed him. HIs own family goes into great detail all over the press about how he had anxiety and ptsd. That he quit his job on DR orders or the stress was going to give him a heart attack. The shit Boeing did to him was awful (stress, anxiety and ptsd) and Boeing should be bla…

> They should be held accountable for that.

In what way, exactly? Because from where I am sitting, it appears Boeing would enjoy unconditional support of US government no matter what they do.

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

#326

Post by cpuguy83 »

ctrw wrote: post #249
masklinn wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It just took 25 years to finally happen. "Quality inertia" is one thing which allows for giant amounts of damage to be done long before the wheels visibly come off, as deviance gets normalised (and even mandated in cases such as Boeing) and the company eats its reserve of quality and goodwill, it starts going off-track in small ways before it falls off a cliff. It took closer to 20 years than 25 for the wheels to c…

I disagree it happened instantly, it's just that Boeing didn't make any new planes for 20 years that made it to the sky. Even the Max was a redesign of an existing design.

Was the 787 not a brand new plane? That got grounded in 2013 due to battery fires.

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

#327

Post by therealdrag0 »

malermeister wrote: post #138
forgotmyinfo wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's almost as if an economic system based on maximizing greed instead of reigning it in was not sustainable or desirable.

*for some domains.

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

#328

Post by karp773 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #302
pdonis wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not asking why Boeing continued to make money. I'm asking why the system as a whole didn't spot much sooner that their engineering had been trashed, and some kind of intervention wasn't made before two fatal airline accidents and other near misses happened. The point of the oversight we have is supposed to be to spot problems before they reach that level. If your answer is that not just Boeing, but our whole syst…

> why the system as a whole didn't spot much sooner that their engineering had been trashed Current brokenthink of the management class is that their job is to wage war on their own workforce and labour rights. In the process destroying human capital. This isn't just my conclusion based on the fact that FANG was fined for having anti-poaching agreement - country-wide, corporate spending on workforce training and upsk…

Facebook was not part of the agreement.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust...

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

#329

Post by pseingatl »

redandblack wrote: post #313
pdonis wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It just took 25 years to finally happen. To me the big question is, why did it take 25 years for this to become common knowledge? Why is our system of evaluating public corporations so messed up that a public company, and one with huge government contracts to boot, could get away with this for that long?

GE seems like another firm / conglomerate that has lost its way - although we have heard about Jack Welch's management disaster, I do not know if they lost engineers the way it happened at Boeing. Last year, I bought GE Monogram kitchen appliances and was pleased that they work so well, until I found that it is a Chinese firm that has bought the use of GE's name along with their operations. Maybe that is why the appl…

Think of all the money GE saved: no need for expensive employees or manufacturing costs in the appliances division. Just sit back and collect royalties on the use of the trademark.

Thanks, McKinsey!

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

#330

Post by peteradio »

reissbaker wrote: post #54

FWIW, "Prince Jim" McNerney, who most of the article's ire is understandably directed towards, is no longer the CEO. He directed the 737 MAX's development, but retired before the scandals; his successor, Dennis Muilenburg (a 30+ year Boeing employee who started out in engineering), was fired for the poor quality of the 737 MAX despite it being developed under Prince Jim. That being said, the current CEO — Dave Calhou…

> I hope his replacement is more like the pre-merger CEOs than the accounting-focused recent ones.

... womp womp

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