4 ms·

I think this is just rabble-rousing. For all the flack outsourcing gets, if you hire an incompetent person, and they fuck up, you're still responsible for hirin

I think this is just rabble-rousing. For all the flack outsourcing gets, if you hire an incompetent person, and they fuck up, you're still responsible for hiring an unqualified person. I don't think it matters if that person was outsourced or not. I haven't worked with any offshore teams, but friends tell me you can do what are called "client interviews" where the client, in this case Boeing, has the option of interviewing the actual people who will be assigned to work on your project.

iamnotacrook 7y ago
"but friends tell me you can do what are called "client interviews" where the client, in this case Boeing, has the option of interviewing the actual people who will be assigned to work on your project." LOL! Ahem. You'll discover that they get someone competent in for the phone interview and you'll later discover that the story is now that the person you spoke to was representative - in terms of skills, experience and competence - of the sort of person who'll actually doing the work, and is not the one doing it. Later still you'll discover that this is not the case. Still, they're very cheap, aren't they?
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  If they're in offices right across from Boeing Field, you'd think that Boeing might be able to do actual face-to-face interviews with the real (not just representative) people. You also might think that anything less is definitively a management fail.
  - nonamechicken 7y ago
    This is what typically happens to h1bs: if someone comes from India to work at the client location (Boeing office in this case), and if the customer is not happy with them for whatever reason, they get send back within a month or 2.
- ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
  "client interviews" don't happen for such massive projects. Most of the time the "host" even lacks the technical capability to interview and it's time consuming. In all my years consulting for the companies I have never been "client interviewed"
- nonamechicken 7y ago
  I don't like Indian IT companies because they pay us less and some managers exploit us a lot. But one thing they deeply care about is the customer. They would go to any length to keep the customer happy. There is no way they would risk loosing business playing such games.
ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
Absolutely rabble rousing. Given that it was the angle of attack hardware sensor which was stuck in the wrong position and giving out the wrong reading. The software got the reading that the nose was too pitched up and to prevent stall it pitched the nose down. The software could handle reading from multiple sensor which Boeing sold separately. It's an American management decision to make more money, not a $9 an hour software engineer's job to decide how to fly the plane. Coming up after the break: How EA loot boxes are programmed by $10 an hour cheap software engineers from India. Grab your pitchforks on aisle #3
- ranci 7y ago
  Yeah, it was a hardware failure! God forbid the software engineers write defensive code in the case that hardware fails................
ranci 7y ago
"I'm going to dismiss this because I don't like it"
atpalmer 7y ago
The article you just read told you that the teams working on critical software have to be cheap, not good. That's not "just rabble-rousing." That's a scandal. As you say, you're commenting without having any experience with the issue, but, as you can imagine, there's very little overlap between cheap and good.
- la_barba 7y ago
  Actually, the article just broadly mentioned that they worked on some aspect of the software. There is no evidence (in the article) that they were working on critical software, and it was their piece of software that caused the current problem. You can't blame the notepad team because the windows kernel crashed. In any case, even if we accept your premise, my point was that assigning blame to the person you hired rather than your process of hiring that let a large team of unqualified people work on your critical software is odd. (Not saying you personally are blaming them, but that was my general point) >but, as you can imagine, there's very little overlap between cheap and good. Why? Even outside of software, for e.g. my wife is a post doctoral scientist and she gets paid a pittance for working 9 sometimes 10 hour days doing critical research. Somebodys wage being associated with the quality of their output only happens in a small cross-section of industries. I work in pharma and while I'm happy with my compensation, its a fraction of SV startup salaries. I know.. this might come across as super salty, but I don't think their wage is in anyway co-related with the quality of their output.

iamnotacrook 7y ago

"but friends tell me you can do what are called "client interviews" where the client, in this case Boeing, has the option of interviewing the actual people who will be assigned to work on your project." LOL! Ahem. You'll discover that they get someone competent in for the phone interview and you'll later discover that the story is now that the person you spoke to was representative - in terms of skills, experience and competence - of the sort of person who'll actually doing the work, and is not the one doing it. Later still you'll discover that this is not the case. Still, they're very cheap, aren't they?

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
If they're in offices right across from Boeing Field, you'd think that Boeing might be able to do actual face-to-face interviews with the real (not just representative) people. You also might think that anything less is definitively a management fail.
- nonamechicken 7y ago
  This is what typically happens to h1bs: if someone comes from India to work at the client location (Boeing office in this case), and if the customer is not happy with them for whatever reason, they get send back within a month or 2.
ganeshkrishnan 7y ago
"client interviews" don't happen for such massive projects. Most of the time the "host" even lacks the technical capability to interview and it's time consuming. In all my years consulting for the companies I have never been "client interviewed"
nonamechicken 7y ago
I don't like Indian IT companies because they pay us less and some managers exploit us a lot. But one thing they deeply care about is the customer. They would go to any length to keep the customer happy. There is no way they would risk loosing business playing such games.

ganeshkrishnan 7y ago

Absolutely rabble rousing. Given that it was the angle of attack hardware sensor which was stuck in the wrong position and giving out the wrong reading. The software got the reading that the nose was too pitched up and to prevent stall it pitched the nose down. The software could handle reading from multiple sensor which Boeing sold separately. It's an American management decision to make more money, not a $9 an hour software engineer's job to decide how to fly the plane. Coming up after the break: How EA loot boxes are programmed by $10 an hour cheap software engineers from India. Grab your pitchforks on aisle #3

ranci 7y ago
Yeah, it was a hardware failure! God forbid the software engineers write defensive code in the case that hardware fails................

ranci 7y ago

"I'm going to dismiss this because I don't like it"

atpalmer 7y ago

The article you just read told you that the teams working on critical software have to be cheap, not good. That's not "just rabble-rousing." That's a scandal. As you say, you're commenting without having any experience with the issue, but, as you can imagine, there's very little overlap between cheap and good.

la_barba 7y ago
Actually, the article just broadly mentioned that they worked on some aspect of the software. There is no evidence (in the article) that they were working on critical software, and it was their piece of software that caused the current problem. You can't blame the notepad team because the windows kernel crashed. In any case, even if we accept your premise, my point was that assigning blame to the person you hired rather than your process of hiring that let a large team of unqualified people work on your critical software is odd. (Not saying you personally are blaming them, but that was my general point) >but, as you can imagine, there's very little overlap between cheap and good. Why? Even outside of software, for e.g. my wife is a post doctoral scientist and she gets paid a pittance for working 9 sometimes 10 hour days doing critical research. Somebodys wage being associated with the quality of their output only happens in a small cross-section of industries. I work in pharma and while I'm happy with my compensation, its a fraction of SV startup salaries. I know.. this might come across as super salty, but I don't think their wage is in anyway co-related with the quality of their output.