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Boeing fired midlevel executive following embarrassing emails

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Re: Boeing fired midlevel executive following embarrassing emails

#51

Post by kjs3 »

objclxt wrote: post #19
mrbonner wrote: post #8

He was a VP. I’m not aware VP is a mid level management job. I always thought director level and below would be the case.

> I’m not aware VP is a mid level management job A lot of companies ( especially finance) suffer from title inflation, and also flip Director and VP (i.e, Director is a higher rank than VP). For example, at Goldman Sachs 30% of all employees are Vice Presidents.

Yeah, I work at a bank. The VP track is often on an 'Officer of the Company' track (Officer, Associate VP, VP, Senior VP, etc). Then there's the 'Job Title' track (Manager, Senior Manager, Director, Senior Director, Executive Director, etc). Usually, you have to be a minimum job title for certain officer title, but less the other way. So you can have a Manager who is a VP and a Director that's a AVP, but not a Manager that's a Senior VP. In any case, the job title is what gives you rank, and officer title is honorary.

Other places do weirder things. I have a buddy at an insurance company who's a "Second VP" and is basically an "Assistant CIO". Never figured that out.

Re: Boeing fired midlevel executive following embarrassing emails

#52

Post by redis_mlc »

lutorm wrote: post #23
HarryHirsch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps related: https://orgprepdaily.wordpress.com/2007/04/22/on-keeping-you... This is a chemist's view from the trenches. A manager who hasn't been brought up in the engineering mindset wouldn't even be able to understand any of the points in that blogpost, which partially explains the trouble that pharmaceutical companies are finding themselves in. You cannot bribe or cheat observable reality.

As an engineer, I sort of disagree with this. Doing a shoddy job and trying to get away with it is inexcusable, but "good enough" is the gold standard in engineering. No one is helped by spending development time and money by making things better than they have to be. Sometimes you have to go with a less capable result because the alternative will take too long or cost too much to develop, or (since we're talking aer…

> but "good enough" is the gold standard in engineering

Your post does a dis-service to the 350+ who died.

Nobody agrees that using one external sensor on the 737 MAX that is subject to weather, bird strikes and ground handling damage was nearly good enough.

Re: Boeing fired midlevel executive following embarrassing emails

#53

Post by jessaustin »

onceUponADime wrote: post #25
lutorm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineer, I sort of disagree with this. Doing a shoddy job and trying to get away with it is inexcusable, but "good enough" is the gold standard in engineering. No one is helped by spending development time and money by making things better than they have to be. Sometimes you have to go with a less capable result because the alternative will take too long or cost too much to develop, or (since we're talking aer…

There are some companys who manage it though, by basically getting bi-furicated intwo two seperat internal divisions competing against one another. Basically if you have a safe seat- or monopoly, you must learn to play catch against yourself or else.. boing, and important parts go flying.

This is a great idea. Can we think of any examples where this has worked? Famously, it didn't work at Kodak when they invented digital photography.

Re: Boeing fired midlevel executive following embarrassing emails

#54

Post by bookofjoe »

mzs wrote: post #49
bookofjoe wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because most HN readers don't have access to the print edition.

I suppose I should have been clearer. Dow Jones republishes all WSJ articles that make it to the print edition. The Morningstar website shows those. It is an ad supported way for people to read these articles without a subscription which still financially supports journalism.

I didn't know that: great info which I will use.

Re: Boeing fired midlevel executive following embarrassing emails

#55

Post by bookofjoe »

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #39
bookofjoe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're most welcome. I always do this with WSJ articles I submit to HN. However, the paywall busting site I use — http://archive.is/ — doesn't have https

>However, the paywall busting site I use — http://archive.is/ — doesn't have https This seems to have changed as the following works for me: https://archive.is/hk4Cd

Excellent. It works for me too. From now on, that will be my paywall buster of first resort.

Re: Boeing fired midlevel executive following embarrassing emails

#57

Post by xiphias2 »

Mirioron wrote: post #9
ihumanable wrote: post #6

From the article: Mr. Cooper didn’t send or receive the messages, the latest batch of which Boeing disclosed to lawmakers and the news media in January, this person said. Those messages show Boeing employees mocking airline officials, aviation regulators and even their own colleagues. In one, an employee said the 737 MAX had been “designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys.” Boeing Chief Executive Davi…

This kind of an article sounds incredibly damning to me. It indicates that Boeing is essentially rotten on the inside and that anybody doing business with them should be wary.

Isn't that the main reason why people from governments want to do business with them?

If a company is not corrupt, it's not able to backchannel a big part of the money.

Re: Boeing fired midlevel executive following embarrassing emails

#58

Post by [deleted] »

nate_meurer wrote: post #50
lutorm wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineer, I sort of disagree with this. Doing a shoddy job and trying to get away with it is inexcusable, but "good enough" is the gold standard in engineering. No one is helped by spending development time and money by making things better than they have to be. Sometimes you have to go with a less capable result because the alternative will take too long or cost too much to develop, or (since we're talking aer…

> "good enough" is the gold standard in engineering. This doesn't really make sense given any common meaning of good enough . A well engineered system or product is optimized . If you want to say that good enough means solving the inherent tradeoffs between safety margins and cost with careful design and precise specs, then you're not talking about the same thing as that blog post, nor would that accurately describe…

[deleted]

Re: Boeing fired midlevel executive following embarrassing emails

#59

Post by [deleted] »

lutorm wrote: post #23
HarryHirsch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps related: https://orgprepdaily.wordpress.com/2007/04/22/on-keeping-you... This is a chemist's view from the trenches. A manager who hasn't been brought up in the engineering mindset wouldn't even be able to understand any of the points in that blogpost, which partially explains the trouble that pharmaceutical companies are finding themselves in. You cannot bribe or cheat observable reality.

As an engineer, I sort of disagree with this. Doing a shoddy job and trying to get away with it is inexcusable, but "good enough" is the gold standard in engineering. No one is helped by spending development time and money by making things better than they have to be. Sometimes you have to go with a less capable result because the alternative will take too long or cost too much to develop, or (since we're talking aer…

[deleted]

Re: Boeing fired midlevel executive following embarrassing emails

#60

Post by dylan604 »

irrational wrote: post #30
mrbonner wrote: post #8

He was a VP. I’m not aware VP is a mid level management job. I always thought director level and below would be the case.

I work for a Fortune 150 company where VP is definitely a mid-level management job. It's insane how many VP we have. Just my small part of the company has 5 VPs and they are all at least 4 levels below the President of the company.

How does that even look on an org chart?

Normal: President -> Vice-President

Common: President -> Executive VP -> VP

Guessing: President -> Platinum VP -> Exec VP -> VP (It is related to airlines, so just borrowing their classes)

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