Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boeing workers vote to strike

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 578 posts

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#461

Post by infamouscow »

jandrese wrote: post #303
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.

On one hand I can't blame any engineer that wants to flee, but on the other Boeing really can't afford any more brain drain. We are already seeing the results of years of forcing experienced but well paid engineers out and outsourcing their jobs. Planes literally falling out of the sky, but some nice fat executive bonuses.

There is literally nothing actually preventing Boeing from:

1. Firing 100% of management between CEO and lowest level supervisors that make things happen. All of middle management should go.

2. Promote supervisors into middle management.

3. Promote ground level employees into supervisor roles.

4. When human problems happen (and they will), spare no expense with resources and training. Remember, the reason for firing management is because they had the interpersonal talent, but fundamentally lack aeronautical talent. Interpersonal talent is of minimal value at Boeing.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#462

Post by ghaff »

behringer wrote: post #426
eddd-ddde wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious. So this company basically only hires newbies and trains them from zero to any role they might need? That's kinda cool.

Except for the worker that will see stagnant wages.

I suppose the theory is that people won't see significant pay increases if they stay with the same company (but also presumably that if everyone leaves after training, the company will just stop training workers).

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#463

Post by mensetmanusman »

eddd-ddde wrote: post #415
Balgair wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll echo this and have done something of this path. It's a very similar field surprisingly. Quite rewarding too. The timelines for products are also about the same (years-decade). The one tip is to not bother applying to Medtronic. They don't actually hire anything outside of interns. All the job postings are for internal roles (but required by federal law to be ... blah blah blah). Suffice to say, don't bother.

I'm curious. So this company basically only hires newbies and trains them from zero to any role they might need? That's kinda cool.

It’s not true, I have many colleagues that have made lateral movements into Medtronic (and out… and back).

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#464

Post by mensetmanusman »

noisy_boy wrote: post #398
deepsun wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a feature of capitalism and effective market. If a company falls a little bit below competition -- market forces it do dive even deeper, die quicker. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I've seen communism, and it's much worse to help failing companies -- they tend to fail even more instead of improving. The problem now is that international market is not really fair, trade treaties help too little.

> If a company falls a little bit below competition -- market forces it do dive even deeper, die quicker. Feature of nature too, the jungle forces the weak to die quicker. One more argument for companies != people: we will be a lot more ok for this to happen to companies vs it happening to people.

Companies = people + assets + organizing structure

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#465

Post by goda90 »

hosh wrote: post #457
kedean wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not totally clear to me, but it is telling that the union members specifically say boeing needs to "stop breaking the law" and that the rejected deal included an allegedly large pay increase. 96% turning that down doesn't feel like the increase just wasn't enough to me

It goes with the perception of corporate greed. Boeing stocks have shot up, profits are not being shared, and those profits came at a cost of safety, and it isn't as if market share had not still declined against Airbus. I wouldn't be surprised if a machinist used to be able to go home, proud of the work they have done, and now, it is not so.

And if the culture destroys Boeing and its reputation in the end, the machinists are going to be struggling to find new jobs. "Sorry, we don't want someone who built bad airplanes to work on this other safety critical thing."

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#466

Post by ghaff »

spratzt wrote: post #436
Der_Einzige wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder who these folks who graduate with excellent STEM degrees are who can't land a job. I had a similar experience with my graduating class in undergrad computer science at a no-name state university. Of the graduating class (significantly smaller than when we started), I don't know of a single person who couldn't find some kind of gainful tech related employment - including the few folks who somehow could…

I suggest you come over to the UK. I know several guys with postgraduate STEM degrees and 10 years of development experience who can’t even get interviews. It’s very bad here.

Things are a bit sketchy at the moment. Had a recent get-together including a former co-worker who was an obvious hire-this-person. They got hit in a layoff and they're still essentially out of work after a year.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#467

Post by mensetmanusman »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #272
charlie0 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you think engineering is like a lottery, you may want to stop buying lottery tickets.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#468

Post by carabiner »

benced wrote: post #445

A lot of people here seem justifiably angry at Boeing management's total destruction of an engineering corporate culture. It's unclear to me if fixing that is what the machinists are demanding or if they just want normal union things like being paid more and working less. No hate if they are optimizing for that, unions don't exist to serve corporate culture. Just want to be clear-eyed about what the union is seeking…

It's the latter. They want normal union things (nothing wrong with that). Engineering is a whole different world, white collar vs. blue collar.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#469

Post by mensetmanusman »

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

Didn’t the door of the flight land on the lawn of one of the universe’s lawyers suing them?

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#470

Post by LargeWu »

deepsun wrote: post #356
jandrese wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand I can't blame any engineer that wants to flee, but on the other Boeing really can't afford any more brain drain. We are already seeing the results of years of forcing experienced but well paid engineers out and outsourcing their jobs. Planes literally falling out of the sky, but some nice fat executive bonuses.

That is a feature of capitalism and effective market. If a company falls a little bit below competition -- market forces it do dive even deeper, die quicker. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I've seen communism, and it's much worse to help failing companies -- they tend to fail even more instead of improving. The problem now is that international market is not really fair, trade treaties help too little.

The problem is that the "competition" aspect assumes low barriers to entry. We're not talking about the corner diner or a bank or even a large insurance company. There's very little substitute for what Boeing does, and the barriers to entry for new competition are (quite literally?) astronomical. Boeing can't just be replaced; even to allow it to fail would be a major problem for the western economy.
Post reply on HN