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

Post by mrbadguy » Fri, Mar 29, 2024, 7:27 AM UTC

justrealist wrote: post #95

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…

> It's worth reading, perhaps unless you're going to be flying on a Boeing plane anytime soon. This is all bad for Boeing, but at the end of the day, nobody has died on an American carrier in a Boeing plane in a very long time. Aircraft safety is layers on layers on layers. Let's not FUD people into thinking that flying on the worst plane Boeing has ever put out is anywhere comparable to the daily risks of driving.

Post by teleforce » Fri, Mar 29, 2024, 7:29 AM UTC

donmcronald wrote: post #423

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…

> the current CEO — Dave Calhoun — is an old exec from from GE, where McNerney started out From the article. > None of the names floated thus far for the spot have been aerospace engineers, and the shoo-in for the position, GE’s Larry Culp, is not an engineer at all. Maybe they should start bundling life insurance with flights on Boeing planes.

Post by masklinn » Fri, Mar 29, 2024, 7:35 AM UTC

teleforce wrote: post #433

donmcronald wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the current CEO — Dave Calhoun — is an old exec from from GE, where McNerney started out From the article. > None of the names floated thus far for the spot have been aerospace engineers, and the shoo-in for the position, GE’s Larry Culp, is not an engineer at all. Maybe they should start bundling life insurance with flights on Boeing planes.

It's a strange anomaly when most of the current top Fortune 500 (US) companies have engineers as their CEO [1]. You would have expected that Boeing to be led by engineers due to the scale of engineering involved in the plane constructions but apparently it's not always the case. [1] Top CEOs have this degree: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39680613

Post by sooheon » Fri, Mar 29, 2024, 7:45 AM UTC

gostsamo wrote: post #430

mikewarot wrote: post #202

>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. So they devalued Wisdom, and Elders... and things fell apart. T…

Purging elder employees is the logical result of making the employer pay for the health care of their employees.

Post by holografix » Fri, Mar 29, 2024, 7:58 AM UTC

amtamt wrote: post #406

class3shock wrote: post #269

"But the average employee assigned to the 737 program has been at Boeing just five years, according to a longtime Boeing executive who is involved in various efforts to save the company; for comparison’s sake, he says the average employee assigned to the 777 program had between 15 and 20 years under their belt." It don't think it's possible to overstate how bad, and sad, of a state of affairs that is. I've never seen…

Something very similar is happening, at a very rapid pace, in software development.