4 ms·

Boeing Max 8 Lesson

8 points by midef 7y ago

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
Despite the conclusion and the source being biased in a direction that will probably make steam come out of the ears of many a HN reader, this is a very succinct and decent explanation of why complex engineering efforts tend to have a high risk of going wrong.
acqq 7y ago
"American Greatness" blames the software and Indian subcontractors. Wrong. The problems is in management of Boeing, and managerial decisions about selling the technically impossible plane (impossible to fulfill the specifications with which it was sold): https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-05-06 https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-05-06
redleggedfrog 7y ago
Any solid arguments in there are just lost with the slant. You could replace "Indian" contractors with "Floridian" contractors and you have the same problem. It's not what they're paid (cause we all know developers are more less equal around the world - right?) it's that they are outside the company and communication adds overhead and potential for error. Using subcontractors is a hard problem for any complex endeavor. Even the best companies struggle with it.
woliveirajr 7y ago
> Even if we assume that the Indian subcontractors were just as competent as their American counterparts, hiring them was a mistake simply because they added an extra link to the production chain. The problem is how many links you have. Anyone who works with projects knows that every extra person adds problems to communication, and communication happens to be the worst aspect to deal with everytime humans are in the loop. Afterall, it isn't easy to clearly communicate. For every extra channel, harder it gets to clearly state what has to be done. And that's why engineering of complex things is hard and sometimes you have much more people "doing control" than doing the actual work.
cameldrv 7y ago
I agree with the point about the difficulty of making complex high performance products, and that overseas outsourcing can sometimes lead to problems. As far as anyone knows at this point though, all of the business decisions, designs, coding, QA and flight testing that led to the two crashes was done in the U.S. by Boeing employees.

8 points by midef 7y ago

Despite the conclusion and the source being biased in a direction that will probably make steam come out of the ears of many a HN reader, this is a very succinct and decent explanation of why complex engineering efforts tend to have a high risk of going wrong.

acqq 7y ago

"American Greatness" blames the software and Indian subcontractors. Wrong. The problems is in management of Boeing, and managerial decisions about selling the technically impossible plane (impossible to fulfill the specifications with which it was sold): https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-05-06 https://dilbert.com/strip/1998-05-06

redleggedfrog 7y ago

Any solid arguments in there are just lost with the slant. You could replace "Indian" contractors with "Floridian" contractors and you have the same problem. It's not what they're paid (cause we all know developers are more less equal around the world - right?) it's that they are outside the company and communication adds overhead and potential for error. Using subcontractors is a hard problem for any complex endeavor. Even the best companies struggle with it.

woliveirajr 7y ago

> Even if we assume that the Indian subcontractors were just as competent as their American counterparts, hiring them was a mistake simply because they added an extra link to the production chain. The problem is how many links you have. Anyone who works with projects knows that every extra person adds problems to communication, and communication happens to be the worst aspect to deal with everytime humans are in the loop. Afterall, it isn't easy to clearly communicate. For every extra channel, harder it gets to clearly state what has to be done. And that's why engineering of complex things is hard and sometimes you have much more people "doing control" than doing the actual work.

cameldrv 7y ago

I agree with the point about the difficulty of making complex high performance products, and that overseas outsourcing can sometimes lead to problems. As far as anyone knows at this point though, all of the business decisions, designs, coding, QA and flight testing that led to the two crashes was done in the U.S. by Boeing employees.