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Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

cnbc.com

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Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#431

Post by balls187 »

quasse wrote: post #392
tsunamifury wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really want the engineer who was last on the line of decisions to go to jail? Because that’s how this will go.

Yes. This might be unfamiliar to software engineers, but there's a reason mechanical engineering and architecture (there might be more, but these are the ones I'm familiar with) schools put students through at least a semester of ethics classes. We are literally the last line of defense in a lot of industries. From the first line of the ASME code of ethics: > Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welf…

I went to a Science and Engineering school, and everyone had to take ethics: ME's, ChemE's, CompEng, Civs, etc.

This is such an important part of engineering as a profession.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#432

Post by sureIy »

abeppu wrote: post #405
abeppu wrote: post #399

> If the deal is accepted, it could complicate Boeing’s ability to sell products to the U.S. government as a felon, though the company could seek waivers. About 32% of Boeing’s nearly $78 billion in revenue last year came from its defense, space and security unit. My understanding is that getting security clearance involves a bunch of checks and statements about your character, and having a federal felony conviction…

Also in the "corporations as people" x "criminal justice system" vein, I would be in favor of moving towards a standard where, if a person convicted of the same crime would receive a prison sentence, a company should be forced to cease operations for an equivalent period, and put all its assets into frozen fund which can only be used to pay out debts/obligations, and which earns no interest.

As bad as this is, nobody wants an Airbus monopoly, so let’s hope that individuals are arrested and Boeing continues to exists instead.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#433

Post by ssklash »

mlekoszek wrote: post #427
diob wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, it's now legal for the judge and everyone else involved to get a nice present from Boeing, as long as it happens afterwards! :(

Wait... explain.

A recent Supreme Court ruling allows pretty much exactly this...

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#434

Post by marcosdumay »

constantcrying wrote: post #36
supernova87a wrote: post #25

Our governmental methods of punishment for corporations strike me as lacking. This seems similar to Wells Fargo, where ok, the company was fined, sued, made to pay restitution (somewhat) to victims. But underlying it all, the culture and incentives at the company that produced the situation didn't get fundamentally changed. Which often perpetuates across specific leaders, boards, and is a part of what a company is --…

The problem is that finding the people responsible can be extremely hard, so you have to go against the corporation itself. Punishing a corporation is easy, but the government hates doing it for obvious reasons. It means ruining something which is useful to you and punishing tens of thousands of completely innocent people, with inevitable layoffs. What Boeing really needs is a complete change in management culture, a…

> It means ruining something which is useful to you and punishing tens of thousands of completely innocent people, with inevitable layoffs.

There are no layoffs of you apply the punishment into the shareholders. Confiscate enough of the company proportionally to the fine value.

Shareholders are, of course, free to sue the actual decision makers afterwards to pin down any non-mandated illegal behavior and recover their losses.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#435

Post by lolinder »

kingofheroes wrote: post #411
deeth_starr_v wrote: post #298

From the article: Paul Cassell, a lawyer for victims’ family members, said he plans to ask the federal judge on the case to reject the deal and “simply set the matter for a public trial, so that all the facts surrounding the case will be aired in a fair and open forum before a jury.” Hard to disagree

Juries can be manipulated. Allowing this to go to public trial risks the danger of Boeing getting off lighter or not facing punishment at all.

The punishment in the plea deal isn't even a wrist slap. $244 million is not even a half a percent of their annual revenue of $77.8 billion—it's literally a rounding error.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#436

Post by swozey »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #364
tsunamifury wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really want the engineer who was last on the line of decisions to go to jail? Because that’s how this will go.

Yes! Even as an engineer. I've quit jobs over ethics / safety concerns and I want that pushback to be the norm. When I need to convince other engineers I want to be able to point to such consequences as to why we shouldn't be dangerously cutting corners. And even if you only punish engineers it will decrease the pool of talent / cost effectiveness of workers available to the unscrupulous managers such that cutting co…

You had the privilege of being able to quit the job over ethics / concerns. I'm assuming you didn't wind up homeless with starving children. I have definitely not always had that in my career and many people don't.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#437

Post by underlipton »

tsunamifury wrote: post #394
quasse wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. This might be unfamiliar to software engineers, but there's a reason mechanical engineering and architecture (there might be more, but these are the ones I'm familiar with) schools put students through at least a semester of ethics classes. We are literally the last line of defense in a lot of industries. From the first line of the ASME code of ethics: > Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health and welf…

This is a noble goal but unrealistic and unfair at scale. Also it belays just a wildly unrealistic understanding of how risk distribution works in corporations. It’s as if in your mind one engineer makes the singular call and sees the entire picture of the project and its risks. Where as more likely a downstream worker who very likely had an incomplete picture will be blamed. Also the personal insult is not needed. I…

I don't see a personal insult, but maybe SWEs should take the ethics of their work more personally. Maybe the shape of our epidemic of social and psychological dysfunction would be different (if not smaller).

When I worked at a retailer, we were told to push buy-now-pay-later schemes on our customers (on top of the corporate credit card, and insurance plans, and service plans). Most of my coworkers simply decided that they weren't going to - in part, because such schemes are nakedly predatory, but also because it was yet another dumb metric we knew we'd be held to if it were successful. I don't know of anyone who was fired or docked pay or denied a promotion because of it, and it's not worth luring someone into financial ruin over a TV and an entry-level sales position. Which leads me to another thought: if you're so low in the chain that you have no say in how and what you work on, is it a job that's worth sacrificing your morals for? Maybe take advantage of that increased earnings potential from job-hopping and get out of dodge.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#438

Post by lenerdenator »

cellis wrote: post #345
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Great risk should come with great reward. In today's culture, I often hear C-suiters talking about how much "risk" they are taking, to justify their outrageous salaries and stock holdings, but I almost never see them pay much, in the way of penalties, except for the very smallest, most "raw" companies, where they have, literally, sunk their entire net worth into the endeavor. It seems that, once a company has reach…

Boeing employs millions (mostly indirectly via downstream cottage industries) of people and I think is the leading net exporter by revenue of the US. Politicians don’t want to hurt them too badly because all those employees vote.

That's why you limit the liability of the company as a whole, but create great risk for the actual executives who decided that safety came second to the profit margin. Again, you can imagine what that would be, but when you compensation is in the tens of millions and there are hundreds dead, well... the risk has overcome the reward and the punishment should match.

Boeing's problem is its management. If you tell the rank-and-file worker to use the company's billions of dollars worth of production capital to build a quality airplane and hold them to it, they've shown they have the ability to do so in the past.

Re: Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 MAX crashes

#439

Post by lolinder »

Criminal charges against the company aside, aren't there licensed engineers inside of Boeing who signed off on all of this? Where are they in this discussion? Isn't the whole premise of having a licensed engineering discipline that the buck stops with you and you lose your license if you let something like this happen?

If we don't revoke licenses and permanently end careers over something like the MAX crashes, the incentives of engineers require them to say yes to the company at all costs, because it's not worth their job to say no. The consequences of saying yes to a bad plan have to be worse than being fired.

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