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With two planes down and hundreds of people dead, all the ugly stuff is coming out now, regardless. It's not necessary for a whistleblower to step out and sacr
by rectang 8y ago
With two planes down and hundreds of people dead, all the ugly stuff is coming out now, regardless. It's not necessary for a whistleblower to step out and sacrifice their life to bring us that information.
And I'm skeptical whether there was ever enough certainty with regards to the deadliness of MCAS which could have justified a whistleblower level of personal sacrifice. It's easy for me to believe that people thought it would be good enough, or that at least that no one felt sure that it would fail.
We should treat whistleblowers better, but our safety and regulatory regimes should be designed to function without them.
- bumby 8y agoI think you hit a good point. I'm fairly confident that most engineers/people will make the call if it's a clear-cut case of "this will inevitably lead to catastrophe" But in the real-world, everything is shrouded in a level of uncertainty. For most bad scenarios, people are really good at rationalizing why it's not going to happen. Unfortunately, it seems the level of rationalization is directly proportional to their incentives against admitting that bad outcome is a real possibility.
- specialist 8y ago"...our safety and regulatory regimes should be designed to function without them" As I understand it, subverting the oversight regimes, allowing Boeing to sign off on their own work, is a big part of this story. I was a SQA Manager for a while. Every writer needs an editor. It blows my mind that we still believe people can catch their own mistakes. Source: My neighbor and bestie was a Boeing lifer, mostly working in QC/QA. I get to hear all about this stuff.