Man these Indian bpo companies like Wipro Infosys HCl destroyed the future of India and gave the world the worst software ever.
Boeing's 737 MAX Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers (2019)
51–60 of 87 posts
Re: Boeing's 737 MAX Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers (2019)
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As I understand it, the software performed exactly as designed This is very likely correct. People on HN don't seem to understand how software is created in regulated industries outside the tech bubble. In a complex system such an aircraft, the behavior of the system is modeled and detailed requirements are generated. These models are created by the system engineers. The models and requirements are then handed off…
The software engineers job is also to think about what happens in corner cases. What if sensor malfunctions?, how should software act?, will it crash the plane? If yes, then raise problem and refuse to implement / avoid killing people. Then you have QA which should have the same questions and test plan to make sure corner cases are covered. QA is also responsible. Then you have management which is supposed to make su…
> If yes, then raise problem and refuse to implement / avoid killing people.
Often, software engineers are pipped, written up, berated, stack ranked - and churned via various management processes for doing exactly as asked for.
Until the culture of the company aka ALL levels of management changes to full accountability without blaming the actual engineers, nothing will change. The current corporate structure just isn't set up to incentivize good work.
Re: Boeing's 737 MAX Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers (2019)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
The software engineers job is also to think about what happens in corner cases. What if sensor malfunctions?, how should software act?, will it crash the plane? If yes, then raise problem and refuse to implement / avoid killing people. Then you have QA which should have the same questions and test plan to make sure corner cases are covered. QA is also responsible. Then you have management which is supposed to make su…
> If yes, then raise problem and refuse to implement / avoid killing people. Often, software engineers are pipped, written up, berated, stack ranked - and churned via various management processes for doing exactly as asked for. Until the culture of the company aka ALL levels of management changes to full accountability without blaming the actual engineers, nothing will change. The current corporate structure just isn…
Perhaps software engineers looking for accountability would like the same level of liability that is enjoyed by their peers in civil, mechanical, mining, and electrical engineering?
Re: Boeing's 737 MAX Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers (2019)
#54I am not surprised. When in doubt and when you have screwed things so badly, blame the people who don't look or speak or earn like you.
Boeing did have $9 software engineers working for them. They were working on the accounting and ERP softwares. But as soon as 700 people lost their lives, apparently they were working on MCAS, a core system that only NASA engineers should have worked.
I dont believe anything that Boeing says or does, the company is pure evil.
If it's Boeing, I'm not going.
Re: Boeing's 737 MAX Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers (2019)
#55The article seems to conflate engineering salaries in a low cost of living country with the quality of the software. As I understand it, the software performed exactly as designed, forcing the nose of the plane downwards to counter the upwards torque produced by the engines being offset relative to the centre of gravity of the plane. Mentour Pilot had a great episode on the two tragic accidents. It appears that Boein…
MCAS wasn't outsourced to India LOL. People here are gullible idiots hahaha.
What's the difference between a company in India, and a US company full of H1-B workers from India?
Re: Boeing's 737 MAX Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers (2019)
#56It is absolutely a Boeing failure and not due to subcontractors/outsourcing as the clickbait title seems to imply.
If you parcel out parts of your job in something as critical as Airplane Construction, it is your responsibility to validate all specifications/testing/verification/etc. If you treat "Airplane Engineering" as mere "Embedded Engineering" you need to be put out of business.
The article explicitly says MCAS and "cockpit warning light not working" problems (which were the cause of the two crashes) were NOT outsourced.
Key points;
“Boeing was doing all kinds of things, everything you can imagine, to reduce cost, including moving work from Puget Sound, because we’d become very expensive here,” said Rick Ludtke, a former Boeing flight controls engineer laid off in 2017. “All that’s very understandable if you think of it from a business perspective. Slowly over time it appears that’s eroded the ability for Puget Sound designers to design.
Rabin, the former software engineer, recalled one manager saying at an all-hands meeting that Boeing didn’t need senior engineers because its products were mature. “I was shocked that in a room full of a couple hundred mostly senior engineers we were being told that we weren’t needed,” said Rabin, who was laid off in 2015.
“Engineering started becoming a commodity,” said Vance Hilderman, who co-founded a company called TekSci that supplied aerospace contract engineers and began losing work to overseas competitors in the early 2000s.
The last point is the most damning; Airplane Engineering cannot be commodity engineering.
Re: Boeing's 737 MAX Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers (2019)
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest problem with offshore engineering teams is their dedication to delivering exactly what you ask for. One of the qualities of a good software developer is to take the requirements and interpret what needs to happen then deliver appropriately. Delivering exactly what's written without thinking about the implications is a huge problem and one of the biggest issues I've run into working with offshore teams.
I agree with you on the problem with offshoring, having done this myself in a previous role in a regulated industry. However, the offshore team are usually not intended to act as domain experts. In fact, they were very likely explicitly proscribed from interpreting the specifications handed to them to guard against them trying to act as domain experts and delivering something different from expectations. As such, the…
> However, the offshore team are usually not intended to act as domain experts. In fact, they were very likely explicitly proscribed from interpreting the specifications handed to them to guard against them trying to act as domain experts and delivering something different from expectations.
Finally! Thank you for stating this explicitly.
In safety critical systems specifications are everything and is always done by a team of domain experts to an enormous amount of detail (with optional formal methods verification). The actual coder has to just use the chosen implementation language carefully to meet the specification with no personal interpretations; everything has to be explicit and documented.
Re: Boeing's 737 MAX Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers (2019)
#58The article seems to conflate engineering salaries in a low cost of living country with the quality of the software. As I understand it, the software performed exactly as designed, forcing the nose of the plane downwards to counter the upwards torque produced by the engines being offset relative to the centre of gravity of the plane. Mentour Pilot had a great episode on the two tragic accidents. It appears that Boein…
In my experience there is a correlation there. Low-cost outsourced code is generally pretty bad.
Re: Boeing's 737 MAX Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers (2019)
#59The article seems to conflate engineering salaries in a low cost of living country with the quality of the software. As I understand it, the software performed exactly as designed, forcing the nose of the plane downwards to counter the upwards torque produced by the engines being offset relative to the centre of gravity of the plane. Mentour Pilot had a great episode on the two tragic accidents. It appears that Boein…
Experienced engineers don’t just build things to spec. They question the spec and the human experience of using the technology.
Re: Boeing's 737 MAX Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers (2019)
#60[flagged]
The country is not what counts, there are good and bad engineers in any location. The hourly rate is a much more reliable statistic, though without a good quality control feedback loop anything can happen.
You've got a point in general but I disagree in this situation. You can pay that to an outsourcing company in India expecting top talent but then get who knows. Also, there's a language barrier vs a local. Honestly, this is widely known (and really just common sense now).