> From a shareholder perspective, Boeing’s approach to its business has been wildly successful. The company is enduring its second worldwide grounding in recent

> From a shareholder perspective, Boeing’s approach to its business has been wildly successful. The company is enduring its second worldwide grounding in recent memory. > However, worldwide demand for airplanes is riding a high. And Boeing has diverted cash flow into dividends and share buybacks that have helped boost the company’s stock. I started my career in IBM in the early 2000s, and this sounds incredibly familiar. As the years passed, company messaging and all-hands meetings increasingly celebrated the stock price, stock buy-backs, and later earnings per share. Meanwhile, the engineering teams and products around me felt more creaky and short-staffed, and the quality of many products (and, gradually, the technical leadership) seemed to be declining. Also, layoffs appeared to be picking up steam, and my salary was stagnant. I eventually left in 2010, giving myself a big raise in the process. Right after the time I left, IBM rocketed to all-time highs and became the darling of the Dow, while everything else all around was still in shambles from the recession. I had a hard time reconciling the macro performance of the company with the facts on the ground as I experienced them. It was only much later that I think I understood what was happening, after reading a Sam Palmisano interview (having a hard time finding it). The way I rationalize what I experienced at IBM is that the company leadership decided to raid the coffers and cash out on value the company had built up over the decades. It's like cashing in your chips at the casino after deciding you've played enough. The way they did this was to cut costs relentlessly and employ "financial engineering" to inflate the stock price. It was basically a transfer of wealth from the investment in the products and the people to the owners/shareholders in the form of higher share values and dividends. I suppose one can interpret this sort of company decision as a bet against future growth, and an admission that the investment to some degree had run its course. Also, a company like IBM (and Boeing) has built so much value over the decades, that even after raiding the coffers and cutting costs, the embers still burn hot and the business is still huge, though perhaps now hamstrung and unable to grow. Of course, this creates a pretty dismal situation for us grunts on the ground, and the work product undoubtedly suffers, while the brain drain picks up its pace. The difference of course between IBM and Boeing is that the cost cutting in Boeing has ended up costing many human lives, and the consequences are much much sharper in blood and reputation, and maybe in regulation as well.