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Boeing Engineers Lost Control of the Company

352 points by davidperell 7y ago

platz 7y ago
> Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas? Because the airplane manufacturing industry is consolidating, and Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives. Was it really necessary to add the second part to explain why the merger occured? 'industry is consolidating' seems reason enough. The mixing of explanation with moralism in every sentence is grating. Put the moralism and ethics in it's own paragraph so we can understand the explanation first. If it's all mixed up, then I have to evaluate every claim in the article as if it might be ethical statements by the author instead of focusing on understanding first, and then considering the ethical outcome after having attained the understanding.
- deleted 7y ago
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- briandear 7y ago
  It’s a hyperbolic statement. Boeing employees and engineers also fly on those planes with their families. It isn’t like they are making decisions with the intent of compromising safety.
  - hannasanarion 7y ago
    Boeing executive decision makers don't. They never fly commercial, they have private jets.
    - tyingq 7y ago
      Including BBJs, which are 737s. Note there's a BBJ MAX.
    - yourapostasy 7y ago
      General aviation (private jets included) has a higher fatality rate than commercial aviation [1]. Even after backing out amateur general aviation, it is still more dangerous [2], though not egregiously so like personal planes, and helicopters make a sizeable chunk of fatality rate that is lumped into the same category as private jets. But it is still poor optics to rarely dog food your own products. [1] https://qz.com/work/1169517/executives-are-dying-in-private-planes-while-commercial-flights-have-never-been-safer/ https://qz.com/work/1169517/executives-are-dying-in-private-... [2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/corporate-jets-commercial-aircraft-christophe-de-margerie/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/corporate-jets-commerci...
      - beatgammit 7y ago
        I think there are a few other factors to take into account, such as private jets flying faster on average, no layovers, etc. Looking only at flight hours doesn't really show the risk for an individual (e.g. an exec choosing between commercial flights and private flights). My guess is that the average exec is about as likely to die from one vs the other since the exec would spend more time flying in the commercial jet. So it's really not a fair comparison and I wouldn't be surprised if they're functionally equivalent after taking into account all major variables.
    - desdiv 7y ago
      Interesting side note, Boeing does make private jets - the Boeing Business Jet family[0]. But Boeing executives doesn't fly on these, since they're too large for even CEOs. Boeing executives fly on one of the three Boeing owned Bombardier Challenger 650s [1][2][3]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Business_Jet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Business_Jet [1] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N541BA/908966 https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N541BA/908... [2] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N543BA/908968 https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N543BA/908... [3] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N544BA/884121 https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N544BA/884...
      - therockspush 7y ago
        Former CEO James McNerney used to fly in the BBJ all the time. Sometimes he was the only passenger.
  - nyolfen 7y ago
    i have quite the video for you (timestamped, but the whole thing is worth watching): https://youtu.be/rvkEpstd9os?t=2499 https://youtu.be/rvkEpstd9os?t=2499
    - TylerE 7y ago
      Seems like a totally unbiased source. /s I mean, do you really not understand how that sort of thing is done? They ask 100 people and then edit it down to the 5 most extreme responses.
      - pushswap 7y ago
        While that's a reasonable suspicion to have, the reporting in this case is accurate. I'm from Charleston, where the plant is located, & I have several friends that work at Boeing in assembly and quality inspection. What you see in the video is exactly the same sentiment I've heard for years.
      - Enginerrrd 7y ago
        While I always remain skeptical, they said that they asked 15 and 10/15 wouldn't fly on it.
    - starpilot 7y ago
      That documentary is very naive. This is a good review: https://www.forbes.com/sites/airchive/2014/09/10/review-al-jazeeras-787-report-misses-the-mark/#7f1a2bd44c7a https://www.forbes.com/sites/airchive/2014/09/10/review-al-j...
      - deleted 7y ago
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      - nyolfen 7y ago
        this is weak industry pr. the fact is that boeing did not have safety issues before finance took over, and that opening a non-union shop for the purpose of labor fungibility is going to result in less experienced workers with a lower stake on average. it doesn't even bother mentioning what i linked, which is that 2/3 of the informally surveyed employees lack confidence in the final product to the point that they wouldn't want their families to fly on the planes.
  - rjsw 7y ago
    Boeing employees don't go anywhere right now.
    - spaceandshit 7y ago
      I love seeing these false statements on HN, where most users have no idea what the aerospace industry is like.
      - deleted 7y ago
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      - rjsw 7y ago
        The Boeing people that I work with are not allowed to travel.
        AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        Not allowed to? How does that work? Boeing thinks they control what people do on their vacation time?
        rjsw 7y ago
        They are American, they don't get significant vacation time. I was really writing about work travel though.
        AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        Ah, I see. Yes, that Boeing can legitimately control.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        spaceandshit 7y ago
        Some still do. I suspect you only know a very small percentage of the total number of employees.
  - nabdab 7y ago
    > It isn’t like they are making decisions with the intent of compromising safety. That really is actually exactly what they did and are doing. When you don’t do tests because you are confident something will pass, that doesn’t change that you aren’t testing, and you are compromising quality on the basis of productivity. Here Boeing decided to go against the safe practice because that would have classified the plane as a different plane and incurred huge costs, but it would have increased safety and likely avoided the accidents. They did compromise safety, they did so thinking that it wouldn’t matter because the overall safety would be good enough for no one to notice, but that gamble failed and others paid their lives to cover the bet.
    - kingkongjaffa 7y ago
      There's a level of engineering judgement involved here though. If product A has passed testing and I made minor changes and made a product B if I can avoid running the whole battery of tests as if product B is brand new and not derivative then I totally will and Aerospace and Automotive operate like this all the time in every country in the world it's not poor practice.
    - WalterBright 7y ago
      On the other hand, making X behave like Y, where Y is something pilots are very used to, is safer.
      - salawat 7y ago
        MD-11 and now MAX raise questions on the execution of that. Pilots have to understand the how and why the different thing can fly like the old thing so that when something goes wrong and that invariant is inevitably violated, they aren't caught off guard.
        WalterBright 7y ago
        Since the advent of powered flight controls, they've been shaped to give desired handling characteristics. For example, in the 70's control forces were lightened considerably to accommodate female pilots, though many were concerned this would lead to overcontrolling the airplane by the male pilots. Human factors design is nowhere near easy or settled science, not in iphone design nor in flight controls design.
  - briandear 7y ago
    My comment is being misread — I said they don’t make decisions with the intent to compromise safety. I am not defending the decisions, but they aren’t actively trying to make unsafe planes in order to save money. It isn’t like they are doing what some car makers did where they judged the expense of a recall as cheaper than the litigation from deaths.
    - bumby 7y ago
      I read your comment and interpreted it as a misalignment of incentives in the context of informed decisions about risk. The second part is key to me. Inadequate system safety analysis seemed to give them the green light in decisions to save money (or make more money with safety critical 'options'). It's not like they knew MCAS would have an out-sized chance of downing a plane. My guess is they didn't know what they didn't know and it led them to have overconfidence in their ability to properly gauge business/safety trade-offs
- brojonat 7y ago
  > Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives To play devil's advocate, this isn't a moral statement. The author is saying this is true based on actual events.
  - platz 7y ago
    It's retroactively true with knowledge current events, but does not answer the question 'Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas?' at that point in history with respect to "at the expense of human lives"
    - throwaway2048 7y ago
      Lets do a thought experiment, what would Boeing do about this situation if their feet weren't being held to the fire, what did they do with their initial knowledge of it?
  - slededit 7y ago
    I'm almost certain "expense of human lives" didn't come up as a factor on any of the merger pitch decks. Frankly its a huge leap to see that a merger of two successful and relatively safe aircraft manufacturers would be intentionally at the expense of human lives.
    - bashallah 7y ago
      Nice of you to think facts only exist at the corporate level
    - buddylw 7y ago
      If they aren't considering human lives in the process, that may be the real problem.
    - lovich 7y ago
      Why would it have to be intentional? They are pursuing profit. Human lives were ended as a result of their actions in the pursuit of profit. Is that not pursuing profit at the expense of human lives?
- KoenDG 7y ago
  Though perhaps not the case, it sounds to me like you're saying "let's not consider the morality of the situation". Moving it to a later part of the text is a great way to get people to ignore it.
- na85 7y ago
  >The mixing of explanation with moralism in every sentence is grating. At the fundamental level, Engineering is a social/ethical process, not a technical one. Yes, engineers tend to have technical skills but when you use those skills to design a bridge you must always keep society (the users of your product) at the forefront of your mind. What separates engineers from "skilled people" is professional ethics. An engineer (structural, software, aerospace, chemical or whatever) who does not consider the ethics of their work cannot credibly claim to be an engineer at all. To "put the moralism and ethics in its own paragraph" is to sequester the ethical considerations somewhere where they can be conveniently ignored in service of the cult of CEO worship. edit: Instead of anonymous downvotes, would anyone care to let me know why they find this comment so inappropriate for HN?
  - salawat 7y ago
    I absolutely concur with your viewpoint. Then again, I've always bought into the Iron Ring mentality anyway. Right now I feel like there is a lot of hostility aimed at the "ethically active engineer". I've seen time and time again people pushed to back down because they're "rocking the boat." On the other hand, I look at stuff going on in the Free Software movement where cancel culture seems to be being weaponized (by whom, and to whose ultimate benefit I can't really tell)as well. There is a balance, but I really do agree that if you aren't actively engaged with the ethics of the process you're facilitating, you can't really call yourself an Engineer. I have lists of projects I won't do, and I have fewer qualms with letting an employer know they're crossing them as I get older. Unfortunately for me the point is a little moot, as there is no PE for Software fellas anyway, and I'm a few years away from being able to work my way educationwise into a field that has a program for it. Just wanted to let you know you aren't alone in your sentiment.
  - logjammin 7y ago
    I know zero about engineering (or even ethics, heh) but this comment seems plausible and well-reasoned enough to not be anonymously greyed out, which seems a bit tattle-tale-y , to be honest.
  - D_Alex 7y ago
    >why they find this comment so inappropriate It is just wrong. >Engineering is a social/ethical process, not a technical one This is just bizarre. >Yes, engineers tend to have technical skills ...tend to have??? >What separates engineers from "skilled people" is professional ethics I'd argue that it is specialized education > when you use those skills to design a bridge >An engineer... who does not consider the ethics of their work cannot credibly claim to be an engineer at all. A bridge is usually designed by a team of engineers, who will get a specification (usually from another team of engineers and other professionals). One engineer may be a geotechnical expert, another might design piling, a third will specify the cement and aggregates in the concrete etc etc. Each contribution must meet the applicable technical standards and specifications. Apart from making sure your work is correct, how do you bring ethics into calculating the amount of rebar in your concrete slab??
- deleted 7y ago
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- ChuckMcM 7y ago
  I don't disagree, it is grating, but I read it more as an observation than as an intent. When you are in senior management, you make decisions based on their overall effect on the company's financial health or future growth. That is your job, just like it is the engineer's job to make decisions based on overall safety and reliability or future capability. The debate, or perhaps the proof, is what happens next. Every decision, engineering or management, needs to be evaluated post implementation to evaluate its effectiveness. Are we better off financially? Are we more capable? Is this system more reliable? Is this system easier to change while continuing to validate it is meeting its design goals? Both management and engineering resist having their decisions "colored" by their negative impact from the "other" group. Engineers don't like it when their clearly correct decision is overridden by management's feeling it doesn't make "business" sense (which is usually code for it reduces margins unacceptably). And management doesn't like it when their decision is negated by engineering telling them it will cause their products to become unacceptably unreliable or unsafe. In a properly functioning company it is the role of executive management to combine both the needs of engineering and the needs of the business into an effective outcome that everyone can live with and keeps the company alive. Articles on the acquisition suggest that Boeing acquired MD both because the industry was consolidating and because MD was making more money per plane than Boeing was. They wanted both the customer base of MD and the "DNA" or managerial understanding of how to build planes that were more profitable. Here in hindsight the implication is that the additional profit margin came from skimping on safety and reliability engineering. At some point, there was no doubt a review on the 737-MAX, where the engineering teams raised concerns about MCAS and the impact on safety and reliability. And the costs associated with addressing those concerns were also discussed, both cost to implement and time to market costs. The result of that review was to pursue certification on their plan of record and to not incur the additional certification and time to market costs that engineering advocated were needed. That decision was explicitly the pursuit of profit margin at the expense of product safety and reliability. As human lives are transitively related to safety and reliability of the aircraft, it is a reasonable statement to make about pursuing profit at the expense of human lives. That is what the equations reduce to.
  - na85 7y ago
    >When you are in senior management, you make decisions based on their overall effect on the company's financial health or future growth. That is your job, just like it is the engineer's job to make decisions based on overall safety and reliability or future capability. I find this statement very troubling. You seem to be absolving the corporate/C-level class of any moral or ethical culpability when it comes to the consequences of their decisions, so long as "it makes business sense".
- journalctl 7y ago
  Screwing over workers for profit is nothing new [1]. You’d think after more than a hundred years we could start calling a spade a spade. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_...
  - nabla9 7y ago
    It lacks explanatory power. It should be possible to screw workers without endangering lives or the bottom line. Boeing did that long time. So did Airbus, GE Aviation, Rolls-Royce, Bombardier.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Yeah, even the greediest executive knows that killing your passengers leads to the opposite of profit, as Boeing is surely proof of right now.
- loufe 7y ago
  An excellent point, I start to lose interest when reading conflation of fact and opinion as well. You know, it's comments like this that make me appreciate this community that much more.
- curyous 7y ago
  It's a true statement, though. They decided to move away from the safety conscious approach they had taken in the past.
- ulfw 7y ago
  The "industry" wasn't consolidating though. What industry? There were three larg(er) players (Airbus, Boeing, McDD) and a handful of small ones (deHavilland/Bombardier, Embraer, etc). What consolidation was happening in 'the industry' around that time? Boeing started said consolidation itself by having McDD buy it Boeing with Boeing's money.
  - ozmaverick72 7y ago
    The consolidation the author is talking about is consolidation of defence aerospace contractors - Grumman, Northrup, McDonald Douglas and Boeing. McDonald Douglas was in some financial difficulties and the defence department encouraged the merger to keep them alive.
dmix 7y ago
Has anyone considered that the MCAS bug was just simply nasty and difficult to detect in their simulator? It’s easy to look back with retrospect and make sweeping judgements about the entire company and the FAA. But fundamentally this was all over, as the author mentions, a single software bug and a lack of backup sensors to offset the risk. In addition it was the technical pilots who asked for the stick to be harder than it was, which added to the difficulty in that unique situation. The MAX was otherwise a very safe plane was it not? There will always be limits to how effective regulatory oversight can be.
- golemotron 7y ago
  It was simply bad systems engineering. Using software to compensate for hardware like that is like coding "subtract one" when two plus two yields five. In software this hack is explicit, so perhaps Boeing engineers can be forgiven for not seeing it when it straddles hardware and software.
- binky 7y ago
  The bug is a symptom of bad architecture. Bad architecture is an outcome of taming loud engineers in sake of short term business outcomes.
  - linuxftw 7y ago
    Pretty much. If something is theoretically possible it needs to be defended against. I'm sure there's no shortage of people that could have looked at the requirements and figured out how to make it break, but Boeing outsourced. I'm hoping we get more details so we can help build a text-book case against software outsourcing.
- sqldba 7y ago
  The article is not a complete overview of the situation. For that we go to Wiki. "Boeing considered MCAS part of the flight control system, and elected to not describe it in the flight manual or in training materials." It... "could not be overridden by pilot resistance against the control wheel as on previous versions of the 737." "Following the Lion Air accident, Boeing issued an Operations Manual Bulletin (OMB)[13] which outlined the many indications and effects resulting from erroneous AOA data and provided instructions to turn off the motorized trim system for the remainder of the flight, and trim manually instead. Until Boeing supplemented the manuals[14] and training, pilots were unaware of the existence of MCAS due to its omission from the crew manual and no coverage in training.[12]" It wasn't just "a software bug". It wasn't just culture cutting corners. Even after the first crash they continued to cover up that MCAS was the cause. After the second crash they still refused and it wasn't until airlines started grounding planes that they caved in. There's a lot more than regulatory oversight could have done. We haven't reached the limits in the slightest.
hannasanarion 7y ago
Silly corporations, pursuing profit instead of the good of everyone. Why would we expect any corporation to cut corners to improve profits, which is definitely not what private for-profit corporations are explicitly organized to accomplish? What a weird thing that nobody could have predicted. Really tickles my nose. Makes me want to sneeze actually. aaaa AAAA AAAAAACHSEIZETHEMEANSOFPRODUCTION that was a weird one, sorry. I'm gonna go get a tissue.
- golemotron 7y ago
  Er, we have through the stock market.
  - uoaei 7y ago
    Depends who is the "we"
  - hannasanarion 7y ago
    Lol no we don't. The richest 1% of Americans own 50% of the stocks. The top 10% of Americans own 84% of the stocks.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      Arguably, just like nationalization, since control of the government is weighted similarly.
    - pinkfoot 7y ago
      Is it really true that all the pension funds in USA - let alone all the foreigners (rich and poor) - together own only 16% of the shares in USA listed public companies. I call BS.
      - hannasanarion 7y ago
        Pension funds represent less than 20% of the stock market, and 90% of households represent only 35% of pension funds, the richest 10% own the remaining 65% of pensions. Since pensions are allocated by earnings, if you're income-rich, you get a bigger pension, and most pension funds are owned by rich people. In addition, much of pension funds go into public bonds and real estate investment trusts, not the stock market anyway. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/01/fact-checking-gary-cohns-claims-on-pensions.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/01/fact-checking-gary-cohns-cla... https://www.investopedia.com/articles/credit-loans-mortgages/090116/what-do-pension-funds-typically-invest.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/credit-loans-mortgages...
cellu_cc 7y ago
While I appreciate the amount of effort the author put into writing this, Matt Stoller’s analysis of the Boeing situation remains the best I’ve found so far: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout
- vitaminCPP 7y ago
  This is short and excellent. Thanks for sharing. I wish Mr. Stoller took more time on this: > The Federal Aviation Administration, having outsourced much of its own regulatory capacity to Boeing, didn’t know what was going on, and Boeing didn’t tell airlines and pilots about the new and crucial safety procedures. This seems like big deal to me.
  - samcodes 7y ago
    Regulatory capture is a common feature of policies promoted by the deregulate crowd
  - K0SM0S 7y ago
    Indeed. Meet accidentology, “the study and analysis of the causes and effects of accidents”, which became a huge applied field during the second half of the 20th century — notably driven by air traffic (also championned by medical care among other sectors). The gist of it is extremely simple: most fatal accidents happen because of a sum of mistakes, a chain of more or less important errors which, taken individually, would seldom lead to an accident, but together form "the perfect storm". This is btw the true meaning of Murphy's famous quote (especially the 'worst possible time' part, e.g. software failing in-flight as opposed to during tests), and how we avoid such outcomes. The beauty of accidentology, beyond engineering / repairing honesty, beyond tons of carefully written procedures and double checklists, is also quite simple: to systematically track the origin of mistakes, to reward people who were involved in finding the issue, and fix the problem once and for all through better practice, better documentation, changing procedures. It contributed to make air travel statistically the safest means of transportation for human beings (the rationale was that plane crashes were so traumatising to the general public that it wasn't enough to be "better" than cars or trains or ferrys; air travel had to be 99.99...% safe to succeed). In this case, we indeed have multiple failures which form a chain of events: the manufacturer (Boeing) cutting corners on safety, the regulator (FAA) also cutting corners in what looks like plain and simple corruption here, and somehow everyone else (companies, pilots) taking for granted what Boeing/FAA said. All in the name of more profit, for a ridiculously tiny part of the population. The results are the tragedies we witnessed. And while the first crash should have been a wake-up call, the fact that Boeing themselves didn't come forward and did let a second crash occur is borderline criminal (for courts to decide, anyway, but the question seems salient in this case). It's all extremely worrying and sets a dire precedent for the USA as a lax or incompetent regulator, and a champion of big corporations now apparently digging way too far down the 'profit hole' — it has literally become a grave by that point.
seanalltogether 7y ago
So exactly the situation that Steve Jobs describes in his infamous interview on how sales and marketing takes over product focused companies.
- gbjw 7y ago
  See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuZ6ypueK8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuZ6ypueK8M.
- azinman2 7y ago
  What makes the interview infamous? Did you mean famous?
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    I suppose its infamous amongst sales and marketing folks.
    - stjohnswarts 7y ago
      I would point out that there are very few sales and marketing folks reading hackernews vs engineers and scientists and coders.
pavlov 7y ago
> To this day, industry insiders still joke, “McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s money.” That's commonly said about the Apple-NeXT acquisition too — NeXT paid a negative $429 million to take over Apple. Obviously the results were much different there...
- j1vms 7y ago
  > > To this day, industry insiders still joke, “McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s money.” > That's commonly said about the Apple-NeXT acquisition too — NeXT paid a negative $429 million to take over Apple. (...) I guess that is why it is considered a joke. It sounds like the management teams of NeXT / McDonnell Douglas benefited much more (in the long term) than the investors of their defunct, purchased companies. Benefiting through greater compensation and clout without really taking over (i.e. owning) the purchasor's company.
deleted 7y ago
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JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
Interesting read, but most of the article is about the increased costs of outsourcing of component fabrication. It doesn't really explain how the MCAS system evolved, or the outsourcing on the software side, even though the author identifies a software failure as the primary source of the crashes.
solatic 7y ago
> In the case of information technology-related manufacturing, research, development, and marketing are the most profitable areas to specialize. Fabricating the units and linking critical components is a low-margin race to the bottom. Inspired by this theory, companies like Boeing aim to specialize in high-margin activities and outsource the rest. This is the core point which the author seems to be trying to make, that outsourcing necessarily raised costs because it's a de facto defective strategy for improving margins. What the author fails to delve into is precisely why subcontracting failed to deliver as imagined - did subcontractors fail to deliver airplane parts within tolerances? Were the specifications provided to subcontractors faulty? Did the outsourcing contracts fail to require compensation for failing to deliver on-time and within tolerances; did such requirements exist but in reality such financial obligations caused subcontractors to run out of money / go bankrupt and default on their obligations? Was no insurance purchased to hedge against these risks, so that costs would not explode along with delays? Part of smile theory is that when you decide to outsource lower-margin operations, the ability to outsource effectively in and of itself becomes part of your core competency. That Boeing executives failed to reduce costs as planned through outsourcing is less proof that outsourcing is inherently poor practice and more proof that competency at shifting numbers around on bean-counting accounting sheets is not the same thing as competency at outsourcing.
- jl2718 7y ago
  There are different kinds of outsourcing. One is where a subcontractor has an existing and superior product, which incurs integration cost, but results in a superior product. The other is exporting a core competence to an inexperienced subcontractor for less cost, which incurs training costs, integration costs, loss of intellectual capital, logistics loss, and results in an inferior product.
  - solatic 7y ago
    > which incurs training costs, integration costs, loss of intellectual capital, logistics loss, and results in an inferior product What I'm arguing is that, in order to effectively outsource, one must get good at the so-referred training and integration costs, while hedging against logistics issues. Otherwise you will get, as you prophesy, an inferior product. But I'm not convinced that's inevitable. Of note, keeping everything in-house can result in its own logistics issues, as the organization becomes necessarily larger and must pay related overhead costs. So deciding to keep processes in-house doesn't mean you get to completely ignore "logistics loss" because you're paying a similar price in its stead.
sargram01 7y ago
You see this at startups too, middle eng management were actual engineers and as the startup grows career managers creep in and skew the alignment of the engineering departments away from engineering solutions, the “product” they make, to problems they understand instead, political jockeying, manipulation, appeasing the LCD and the next managerial rung above them.
- ajeet_dhaliwal 7y ago
  Yes, not unique to boeing, ive seen it in many places.
- aphexairlines 7y ago
  Your initial scenario is still flawed: "middle eng management were actual engineers." The problem is elevating management above other roles. At that point the course has been set.
  - sargram01 7y ago
    Yes, exactly, that’s the point I was trying to get at.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    And they may know how to manage devs but they have very little change of being good at , which is what protects the dev team. When the smooth talking suits show up and tell their pretty dictions, there aren’t enough people who know how to push back. But where would you find these classically trained managers who haven’t drunk the Taylor koolaid?
- ThalesX 7y ago
  I’ve also had the misfortune of working with an early startup that as soon as it got a series A hired a team of career managers on board. The product plummeted soon after, product market fit got lost as the direction became more and more political and by the end, the ones that came out on top and ready to move to their next venture were the managers that managed to tick their measurements and KPIs even though they were totally disconnected from the operational space. But, they do wield weapons that us engineers often don’t have the time not desire to sharpen...
im_down_w_otp 7y ago
I don't understand how this was a software failure. From everything I've ever read about this issue, including this piece, the failure seems very much like a model & design failure. It seems like a systems & human factors engineering failure. Not a software failure.
- thatswrong0 7y ago
  Well, if you ask why only once, then it's a software failure - a system with a serious amount of control authority can fail catastrophically if just one hardware sensor fails. Safety critical software like this must account for hardware failures. But there are many many more whys you need to ask before you get the full picture.
  - Haga 7y ago
    I wish some of the engineers that dropped out over this could speak up.
- jrockway 7y ago
  They should have written a program to determine the angle of attack without an angle of attack sensor. The fact that they couldn't means that there need to be more team-building exercises, websites blocked by the corporate firewall, and outsourcing!
- afterburner 7y ago
  The software fix was the stopgap solution to a design side effect. The stopgap solution was also not that well designed, and ultimately confused the pilots, who were deliberately untrained in the changes. Why deliberately untrained? Because the whole selling point of the design was that you wouldn't have to retrain your pilots because it would handle just like the old plane.
  - im_down_w_otp 7y ago
    Still none of that makes it a software failure. We're also straining the definition of "failure" here as it relates to software. Software doesn't really fail in the way considered in the realm of traditional functional-safety. It doesn't wear out like a cable or a capacitor. But, I digress.
jl2718 7y ago
Note two contradictory popular trends: 1. AI is going to replace cheap labor 2. Engineering companies are outsourcing because of cheap labor The reality is that trend #2 is orders of magnitude larger. Any reversal of that by ‘AI’ would be the biggest jobs boom in decades for western nations, and according to this article, would increase quality and therefore trade balance as well. The other reality is that manufacturing automation with ‘AI’ is hard, takes a lot of human effort, and is a huge part of a company’s value (e.g. Tesla). Outsourcing is often selling off this value at a negative price. It is done because Wall St analysts don’t know how to price this asset. Like it or love it, it is investment analysts that determine company culture. The good thing is that they are greedy; they may be misinformed, but they are predictable. Everything above liquidation value is held in the heads of the employees of the company. Its actually not that hard to compute, and if business schools taught this, corporate behavior would change.
- HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
  That reminds me of an article I read about the new Toyota Supra and Toyota & BMW's collaboration to create it and (either the Z4 or an M-car? Sorry, I don't remember). Anywho, the thing that was interesting to me was how much Toyota and BMW were willing to invest in what is more or less an engineer's bootcamp- like baseball teams playing out-of-league teams in practice to get better- and that that was seen as a worthy investment by the engineering team's superiors. Some companies still value engineers. That's where I want to be.
  - imglorp 7y ago
    Maybe all true, but also note that all is not roses, at least in all engineering departments. Toyota produced a lump of buggy firmware spaghetti that cost the company more than $1B after the unintended acceleration crashes. And Beemer seems to have a dual culture where the dinosaurs are fighting its electric future (cf the i3 disaster: it still costs more than a Tesla or Bolt but has half the range; that doesn't sound like all-in).
    - selimthegrim 7y ago
jgeada 7y ago
Engineers create value, management is a tax on that value. And when management takes over a company culture the next stop is typically bankruptcy as management wont stop until all value is extracted into their pockets. American corporate history is littered with examples.
PaulHoule 7y ago
People forget the other purpose of outsourcing which is that it diffuses complaints from other countries that they are buying planes from dupolists and should do something about it because sweden, japan, and other countries that might develop and aircraft industry can point to some part of every Airbus and Boeing made in their country.
gaze 7y ago
The headline is written as if this is the fault of the engineers :/
jorblumesea 7y ago
I've often felt GE and other industrial conglomerates have similar issues as those brought up in the article. Too much focus on quarterly profits and investor payouts, obsession over stock prices and "wall street" metrics. Everyone talks about Japan or China stealing our industrial base but it often feels like we did it ourselves.
mrtweetyhack 7y ago
Even though Boeing will be sue to hell, the CEOs will run off with big smiles on their faces and pockets lined in gold. Prison time!
jonplackett 7y ago
Reminds me of what a Steve Jobs warned about marketing people taking over and product people being pushed out: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM
tomohawk 7y ago
When the 737 was first created, iterating a known type of aircraft was much less of a concern. It was not a key design constraint. As time went by and we learned more and the good idea faeries had time to think about things, we now have all kinds of regulation that makes the cost of making a new plane much higher if it is not an iteration on an existing design. This sort of regulatory pressure has a tendency to nix innovation in favor of stability, and that's what we see here.
- jyounker 7y ago
  I don't think this is a new phenomena. My understanding is that the MD-80 was built on the DC-9 airframe partially to avoid the costs and efforts of recertification, and that was 40 years ago. Aside from regulation, There are very good business reasons from both ends of the industry that exert pressure to iterate on an old design. (E.g Each additional airframe dramatically increases the complexity of an airline's maintenance organization.)
mltony 7y ago
> The new engines were too big to fit in their traditional spot under the wings. To combat the problem, Boeing mounted them forward on the wings. Moving the engine position forward shifted the plane’s center of gravity, which altered the aerodynamics of the aircraft. The position of the new engines pulled the 737 tail down, pushed its nose up, and put it at risk of stalling. Can someone explain to me how this is possible? In my understanding If you move the engines forward, it would move the center of gravity forward as well, and this would push the tail up and pull the nose down - exactly the opposite from what's written in the article. Does some fancy aerodynamic effect play some role here that leads to stalling?
- alumowa 7y ago
  Layman here. What I picture in my head is due to the engines being placed higher and more forward on the wing, it will want to rotate nose up when thrust is being produced.
  - salawat 7y ago
    This is correct, and normal behavior actually. That's already accomodated for in modern designs. What isn't is the extra lift at high-AoA and longer lever arm for the lift force to operate through. MCAS was meant to counter that, and arguably would have been a perfectly reasonable fix if they'd have designed it to the proper degree of redundancy, and actually told pilots how it worked and that it existed.
- leetrout 7y ago
  My armchair physics example would be a balance seesaw and let’s say the left side is the “front”. If you attached a rocket motor (or jet engine) in front of the the CG point would the the thrust push the left side of the seesaw up or down? I believe the issue is precisely this - the engines were moved (and they are bigger so more powerful perhaps?) forward and the thrust probably pushes the nose up.
  - salawat 7y ago
    Seesaw isn't the best model really. A seesaw with a turbine engine strapped to it, (besides making a godawful mess and maybe just maybe making the HOA angry enough to worth the trouble of setting up) wouldn't do much since it's a fixed structure and not interacting in any way remotely consistent with a body in motion through a fluid. Boat might be a better model, or even better, use your hand hanging out the window of a moving car. If you taped a couple of projections under your hand, and slowly increase the Angle of Attack of your hand to get a feel for what the old design would do. Then do the same thing but with those protrusions up in front of your hand. You should notice that it becomes harder in the second arrangement to counter the tendency of your hand to continue pitching up after a point. Assuming your weird mini-not turbine construction stays together in the airstream.
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gist 7y ago
I don't flag articles but this is one that I would flag. Why? It's typical HN 'red meat'. Well presented and (seemingly) well written and thoughtful. But the writer not only has no expertise (he did research?) but offers no backup (other than things that other news outlets have written) for most if not all of his statements. Now it's on thing if you are a major news outlet (NYT, WSJ or online well know publication) and it's another thing if you are just 'some guy, writer with a 'media company'' (what he does) and you do this and post your own articles. https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=davidperell https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=davidperell Why bother to read this exactly? There is always a question of what you read being true and sure it's fun to poke positive or negative. But honestly having a flashy website or blog is not enough. (Kudos David for being opportunistic (I really mean that btw) pulling this off).
- theYipster 7y ago
  Couldn’t agree more. This is a rambling mess of an article which strings together past commentary on Boeing’s history and the 737 Max without making a coherent point. Furthermore, the author also gets a number of things wrong about his research, and also presents statements as pure fact which are purely false. Here are three examples I pulled out—in order from minor to argument-disqualifying. 1. The author cites innovation on the 787 as having electrically operated systems in place of hydraulics. He meant to say pneumatics. The 787 does not have an engine air-bleed system, using solid state electric systems to power the aforementioned components instead of the system of valves and ducts which manage the flow of high pressure air coming off the engine, as is the norm on other aircraft. 2. The author sites engines being outsourced historically because of a natural difference in engineering expertise between engine and airframe. While engine and airframe engineering are different domains, the real reason airframe manufacturers don’t make engines and vise-versa is entirely due to the Air Mail Act of 1934. I suggest the OP research the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation. 3. The OP’s central argument of cost control, and particularly outsourcing, as being a central driver to engineering problems with the MAX is hindered when he cites example and supporting arguments primarily about the 787 program. Yes, cost control is an overarching issue and one that is being investigated vigorously, and 787’s level of airframe outsourcing has been a key problem to that particular program’s profitability. However, the author fails to understand that the outsourcing he talks about is made at the program level. Citing the 787 as being representative of Boeing as a whole is spurious. The author also fails to understand how outsourcing effects engineering both at Boeing and down the supply chain. In truth, the level of outsourcing on the MAX is largely no different than on the NG. (The previous model 737 that has been flying safely for decades, which went into service 2 years before the MD-Boeing merger.) It has been common since the advent of the jet age for there to be separate suppliers for engines and components—i.e landing gear or avionics. This does not mean innovation and engineering expertise is past over the fence—-airplanes are in fact built on strong partnerships between firms, and that includes partnerships between engineers. This has always been how the industry works. Now, tying this back to my 3rd example: The 787 supply chain problems the OP sites are in regards to final assembly of fuselage and wing structures — this is a specific area in which one could argue the 787 went overboard in outsourcing. This, of course, has nothing to do with MCAS—a piece of flight control software—nor the AOA vanes that feed it. Flight control systems, sensors, and vanes are typically outsourced, as they are on the 777, 767, 777, and 747 (all of which engineered and built before the merger.) ... If we really want to add value to the conversation about Boeing’s culture, the 737 MAX, and engineering aircraft—then let’s please build some knowledge first about how aircraft systems are actually engineered. Disclaiming that nothing can be definitively said about the MCAS crashes until all the investigations are complete and known, I strongly believe the issue is not a software failure but a systems failure, and particularly, a failure in the management of the safety classification and assessment process. There is also the matter that the 737 is a very old program. Beyond the argument that it was a mistake to try to modernize a 1967 design and architecture a 3rd time, there is also the problem that the 737MAX doesn’t necessarily adhere to current engineering standards for safety assessment—especially at the systems level. This is because the 737MAX was engineered under the authority of the original 737 certification. For aerospace engineers working in industry, it would be useful to map what we know about MCAS and the 737MAX against the requirements outlined in DO-178C and, especially, ARP-4754. Unfortunately, the 737MAX doesn’t subscribe fully to ARP-4754 methodology, since it’s a continuation of the program certified in 1967 and not a new type.
sudoaza 7y ago
MBAs ruining everything again, this is so familiar it ain't even funny. Putting business guys at the top is one of the biggest mistakes in companies, even if we concede that they are needed they should have very limited power not the control of the company like today's CEOs.
AlleyTrotter 7y ago
Happens every time the accountants and MBA's take over. Experience with three companies bought out by investment funds/accountants. Move on as quickly as possible. Cheers
rdxm 7y ago
tldr: safety critical engineering is hard and expensive...go figure!
segmondy 7y ago
Why are the engineers being blamed? Why not frame it as Boeing MBAs took over the company and drove quality down.
fmajid 7y ago
I agree 100%. McDonnell-Douglas' corrupt military contractor culture ate Boeing from the inside. I have family that work at Boeing and the tales of corruption they told me are hair-raising.
booblik 7y ago
While it is nice to think that this is all a beancounter fault, and to an extent it is, there must be an engineer in Boeing who was tasked with this difficult and challenging mission how to avoid the expensive recertification of the airplane. They must have spent many sleepless nights thinking how to make that happen, until finally reaching a eurika! moment. And I want to believe that they thought the solution they proposed was both sound and economical, yet the execution was lacking. In the end there must be an engineer behind every feature, even if they were pressured by non engineering manager to compromise.
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ilaksh 7y ago
My own personal (fanciful) beliefs: - at least two executives including the CEO should get life in prison - at least two people from the FAA should join them - Boeing should be dismantled and become at least two separate companies. - The FAA should also be rebuilt from the ground up. - Create a new type of corporate tax that helps ensure the FAA has a more adequate budget. - New law that ensures that CEO and some other upper-level decision makers need to have senior engineering experience. (Ideally there would be no executives at all, just engineers, but that's too unrealistic even for my fantasy here).
RedBeetDeadpool 7y ago
Didn’t get to read the full article, but it sounds like a case of snakes in suits. Did the leaders and managers in charge at the time the poor engineering took place get any sort of reprimanding or blame, or have they walked away with accolades of their quarterly performance and cost savings with continued increases in salaries and public reputation?
piva00 7y ago
I read this article [0] about a month ago that went through what happened to Boeing after the MD merge. After reading it I went through some other articles comparing the development of the 777 to the 787 (the first plane to be designed with this new Boeing management completely in control) and it's staggering how Boeing went downhill from an engineering-focused company perspective to a bean-counter paradise, it seems to be the common trope: you let business people take complete control of your products' pipeline and the race to the bottom starts, the company can still deliver while the old culture lingers but as more time passes the more problematic these deliveries are until the company has been sucked dry to deliver on-paper good quarterly reports but is rotting from the inside. Maybe it's a side effect of financial capitalism taking over, maybe it's not but it's quite correlated. [0] https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-investigation-indonesia-lion-air-ethiopian-airlines-managerial-revolution https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-invest...

352 points by davidperell 7y ago

> Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas? Because the airplane manufacturing industry is consolidating, and Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives. Was it really necessary to add the second part to explain why the merger occured? 'industry is consolidating' seems reason enough. The mixing of explanation with moralism in every sentence is grating. Put the moralism and ethics in it's own paragraph so we can understand the explanation first. If it's all mixed up, then I have to evaluate every claim in the article as if it might be ethical statements by the author instead of focusing on understanding first, and then considering the ethical outcome after having attained the understanding.

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briandear 7y ago
It’s a hyperbolic statement. Boeing employees and engineers also fly on those planes with their families. It isn’t like they are making decisions with the intent of compromising safety.
- hannasanarion 7y ago
  Boeing executive decision makers don't. They never fly commercial, they have private jets.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    Including BBJs, which are 737s. Note there's a BBJ MAX.
  - yourapostasy 7y ago
    General aviation (private jets included) has a higher fatality rate than commercial aviation [1]. Even after backing out amateur general aviation, it is still more dangerous [2], though not egregiously so like personal planes, and helicopters make a sizeable chunk of fatality rate that is lumped into the same category as private jets. But it is still poor optics to rarely dog food your own products. [1] https://qz.com/work/1169517/executives-are-dying-in-private-planes-while-commercial-flights-have-never-been-safer/ https://qz.com/work/1169517/executives-are-dying-in-private-... [2] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/corporate-jets-commercial-aircraft-christophe-de-margerie/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/corporate-jets-commerci...
    - beatgammit 7y ago
      I think there are a few other factors to take into account, such as private jets flying faster on average, no layovers, etc. Looking only at flight hours doesn't really show the risk for an individual (e.g. an exec choosing between commercial flights and private flights). My guess is that the average exec is about as likely to die from one vs the other since the exec would spend more time flying in the commercial jet. So it's really not a fair comparison and I wouldn't be surprised if they're functionally equivalent after taking into account all major variables.
  - desdiv 7y ago
    Interesting side note, Boeing does make private jets - the Boeing Business Jet family[0]. But Boeing executives doesn't fly on these, since they're too large for even CEOs. Boeing executives fly on one of the three Boeing owned Bombardier Challenger 650s [1][2][3]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Business_Jet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Business_Jet [1] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N541BA/908966 https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N541BA/908... [2] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N543BA/908968 https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N543BA/908... [3] https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N544BA/884121 https://www.planelogger.com/Aircraft/Registration/N544BA/884...
    - therockspush 7y ago
      Former CEO James McNerney used to fly in the BBJ all the time. Sometimes he was the only passenger.
- nyolfen 7y ago
  i have quite the video for you (timestamped, but the whole thing is worth watching): https://youtu.be/rvkEpstd9os?t=2499 https://youtu.be/rvkEpstd9os?t=2499
  - TylerE 7y ago
    Seems like a totally unbiased source. /s I mean, do you really not understand how that sort of thing is done? They ask 100 people and then edit it down to the 5 most extreme responses.
    - pushswap 7y ago
      While that's a reasonable suspicion to have, the reporting in this case is accurate. I'm from Charleston, where the plant is located, & I have several friends that work at Boeing in assembly and quality inspection. What you see in the video is exactly the same sentiment I've heard for years.
    - Enginerrrd 7y ago
      While I always remain skeptical, they said that they asked 15 and 10/15 wouldn't fly on it.
  - starpilot 7y ago
    That documentary is very naive. This is a good review: https://www.forbes.com/sites/airchive/2014/09/10/review-al-jazeeras-787-report-misses-the-mark/#7f1a2bd44c7a https://www.forbes.com/sites/airchive/2014/09/10/review-al-j...
    - deleted 7y ago
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    - nyolfen 7y ago
      this is weak industry pr. the fact is that boeing did not have safety issues before finance took over, and that opening a non-union shop for the purpose of labor fungibility is going to result in less experienced workers with a lower stake on average. it doesn't even bother mentioning what i linked, which is that 2/3 of the informally surveyed employees lack confidence in the final product to the point that they wouldn't want their families to fly on the planes.
- rjsw 7y ago
  Boeing employees don't go anywhere right now.
  - spaceandshit 7y ago
    I love seeing these false statements on HN, where most users have no idea what the aerospace industry is like.
    - deleted 7y ago
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    - rjsw 7y ago
      The Boeing people that I work with are not allowed to travel.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        Not allowed to? How does that work? Boeing thinks they control what people do on their vacation time?
        rjsw 7y ago
        They are American, they don't get significant vacation time. I was really writing about work travel though.
        AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        Ah, I see. Yes, that Boeing can legitimately control.
      - deleted 7y ago
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      - spaceandshit 7y ago
        Some still do. I suspect you only know a very small percentage of the total number of employees.
- nabdab 7y ago
  > It isn’t like they are making decisions with the intent of compromising safety. That really is actually exactly what they did and are doing. When you don’t do tests because you are confident something will pass, that doesn’t change that you aren’t testing, and you are compromising quality on the basis of productivity. Here Boeing decided to go against the safe practice because that would have classified the plane as a different plane and incurred huge costs, but it would have increased safety and likely avoided the accidents. They did compromise safety, they did so thinking that it wouldn’t matter because the overall safety would be good enough for no one to notice, but that gamble failed and others paid their lives to cover the bet.
  - kingkongjaffa 7y ago
    There's a level of engineering judgement involved here though. If product A has passed testing and I made minor changes and made a product B if I can avoid running the whole battery of tests as if product B is brand new and not derivative then I totally will and Aerospace and Automotive operate like this all the time in every country in the world it's not poor practice.
  - WalterBright 7y ago
    On the other hand, making X behave like Y, where Y is something pilots are very used to, is safer.
    - salawat 7y ago
      MD-11 and now MAX raise questions on the execution of that. Pilots have to understand the how and why the different thing can fly like the old thing so that when something goes wrong and that invariant is inevitably violated, they aren't caught off guard.
      - WalterBright 7y ago
        Since the advent of powered flight controls, they've been shaped to give desired handling characteristics. For example, in the 70's control forces were lightened considerably to accommodate female pilots, though many were concerned this would lead to overcontrolling the airplane by the male pilots. Human factors design is nowhere near easy or settled science, not in iphone design nor in flight controls design.
- briandear 7y ago
  My comment is being misread — I said they don’t make decisions with the intent to compromise safety. I am not defending the decisions, but they aren’t actively trying to make unsafe planes in order to save money. It isn’t like they are doing what some car makers did where they judged the expense of a recall as cheaper than the litigation from deaths.
  - bumby 7y ago
    I read your comment and interpreted it as a misalignment of incentives in the context of informed decisions about risk. The second part is key to me. Inadequate system safety analysis seemed to give them the green light in decisions to save money (or make more money with safety critical 'options'). It's not like they knew MCAS would have an out-sized chance of downing a plane. My guess is they didn't know what they didn't know and it led them to have overconfidence in their ability to properly gauge business/safety trade-offs
brojonat 7y ago
> Boeing is pursuing profit at the expense of human lives To play devil's advocate, this isn't a moral statement. The author is saying this is true based on actual events.
- platz 7y ago
  It's retroactively true with knowledge current events, but does not answer the question 'Why did Boeing buy McDonnell-Douglas?' at that point in history with respect to "at the expense of human lives"
  - throwaway2048 7y ago
    Lets do a thought experiment, what would Boeing do about this situation if their feet weren't being held to the fire, what did they do with their initial knowledge of it?
- slededit 7y ago
  I'm almost certain "expense of human lives" didn't come up as a factor on any of the merger pitch decks. Frankly its a huge leap to see that a merger of two successful and relatively safe aircraft manufacturers would be intentionally at the expense of human lives.
  - bashallah 7y ago
    Nice of you to think facts only exist at the corporate level
  - buddylw 7y ago
    If they aren't considering human lives in the process, that may be the real problem.
  - lovich 7y ago
    Why would it have to be intentional? They are pursuing profit. Human lives were ended as a result of their actions in the pursuit of profit. Is that not pursuing profit at the expense of human lives?
KoenDG 7y ago
Though perhaps not the case, it sounds to me like you're saying "let's not consider the morality of the situation". Moving it to a later part of the text is a great way to get people to ignore it.
na85 7y ago
>The mixing of explanation with moralism in every sentence is grating. At the fundamental level, Engineering is a social/ethical process, not a technical one. Yes, engineers tend to have technical skills but when you use those skills to design a bridge you must always keep society (the users of your product) at the forefront of your mind. What separates engineers from "skilled people" is professional ethics. An engineer (structural, software, aerospace, chemical or whatever) who does not consider the ethics of their work cannot credibly claim to be an engineer at all. To "put the moralism and ethics in its own paragraph" is to sequester the ethical considerations somewhere where they can be conveniently ignored in service of the cult of CEO worship. edit: Instead of anonymous downvotes, would anyone care to let me know why they find this comment so inappropriate for HN?
- salawat 7y ago
  I absolutely concur with your viewpoint. Then again, I've always bought into the Iron Ring mentality anyway. Right now I feel like there is a lot of hostility aimed at the "ethically active engineer". I've seen time and time again people pushed to back down because they're "rocking the boat." On the other hand, I look at stuff going on in the Free Software movement where cancel culture seems to be being weaponized (by whom, and to whose ultimate benefit I can't really tell)as well. There is a balance, but I really do agree that if you aren't actively engaged with the ethics of the process you're facilitating, you can't really call yourself an Engineer. I have lists of projects I won't do, and I have fewer qualms with letting an employer know they're crossing them as I get older. Unfortunately for me the point is a little moot, as there is no PE for Software fellas anyway, and I'm a few years away from being able to work my way educationwise into a field that has a program for it. Just wanted to let you know you aren't alone in your sentiment.
- logjammin 7y ago
  I know zero about engineering (or even ethics, heh) but this comment seems plausible and well-reasoned enough to not be anonymously greyed out, which seems a bit tattle-tale-y , to be honest.
- D_Alex 7y ago
  >why they find this comment so inappropriate It is just wrong. >Engineering is a social/ethical process, not a technical one This is just bizarre. >Yes, engineers tend to have technical skills ...tend to have??? >What separates engineers from "skilled people" is professional ethics I'd argue that it is specialized education > when you use those skills to design a bridge >An engineer... who does not consider the ethics of their work cannot credibly claim to be an engineer at all. A bridge is usually designed by a team of engineers, who will get a specification (usually from another team of engineers and other professionals). One engineer may be a geotechnical expert, another might design piling, a third will specify the cement and aggregates in the concrete etc etc. Each contribution must meet the applicable technical standards and specifications. Apart from making sure your work is correct, how do you bring ethics into calculating the amount of rebar in your concrete slab??
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ChuckMcM 7y ago
I don't disagree, it is grating, but I read it more as an observation than as an intent. When you are in senior management, you make decisions based on their overall effect on the company's financial health or future growth. That is your job, just like it is the engineer's job to make decisions based on overall safety and reliability or future capability. The debate, or perhaps the proof, is what happens next. Every decision, engineering or management, needs to be evaluated post implementation to evaluate its effectiveness. Are we better off financially? Are we more capable? Is this system more reliable? Is this system easier to change while continuing to validate it is meeting its design goals? Both management and engineering resist having their decisions "colored" by their negative impact from the "other" group. Engineers don't like it when their clearly correct decision is overridden by management's feeling it doesn't make "business" sense (which is usually code for it reduces margins unacceptably). And management doesn't like it when their decision is negated by engineering telling them it will cause their products to become unacceptably unreliable or unsafe. In a properly functioning company it is the role of executive management to combine both the needs of engineering and the needs of the business into an effective outcome that everyone can live with and keeps the company alive. Articles on the acquisition suggest that Boeing acquired MD both because the industry was consolidating and because MD was making more money per plane than Boeing was. They wanted both the customer base of MD and the "DNA" or managerial understanding of how to build planes that were more profitable. Here in hindsight the implication is that the additional profit margin came from skimping on safety and reliability engineering. At some point, there was no doubt a review on the 737-MAX, where the engineering teams raised concerns about MCAS and the impact on safety and reliability. And the costs associated with addressing those concerns were also discussed, both cost to implement and time to market costs. The result of that review was to pursue certification on their plan of record and to not incur the additional certification and time to market costs that engineering advocated were needed. That decision was explicitly the pursuit of profit margin at the expense of product safety and reliability. As human lives are transitively related to safety and reliability of the aircraft, it is a reasonable statement to make about pursuing profit at the expense of human lives. That is what the equations reduce to.
- na85 7y ago
  >When you are in senior management, you make decisions based on their overall effect on the company's financial health or future growth. That is your job, just like it is the engineer's job to make decisions based on overall safety and reliability or future capability. I find this statement very troubling. You seem to be absolving the corporate/C-level class of any moral or ethical culpability when it comes to the consequences of their decisions, so long as "it makes business sense".
journalctl 7y ago
Screwing over workers for profit is nothing new [1]. You’d think after more than a hundred years we could start calling a spade a spade. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_...
- nabla9 7y ago
  It lacks explanatory power. It should be possible to screw workers without endangering lives or the bottom line. Boeing did that long time. So did Airbus, GE Aviation, Rolls-Royce, Bombardier.
BurningFrog 7y ago
Yeah, even the greediest executive knows that killing your passengers leads to the opposite of profit, as Boeing is surely proof of right now.
loufe 7y ago
An excellent point, I start to lose interest when reading conflation of fact and opinion as well. You know, it's comments like this that make me appreciate this community that much more.
curyous 7y ago
It's a true statement, though. They decided to move away from the safety conscious approach they had taken in the past.
ulfw 7y ago
The "industry" wasn't consolidating though. What industry? There were three larg(er) players (Airbus, Boeing, McDD) and a handful of small ones (deHavilland/Bombardier, Embraer, etc). What consolidation was happening in 'the industry' around that time? Boeing started said consolidation itself by having McDD buy it Boeing with Boeing's money.
- ozmaverick72 7y ago
  The consolidation the author is talking about is consolidation of defence aerospace contractors - Grumman, Northrup, McDonald Douglas and Boeing. McDonald Douglas was in some financial difficulties and the defence department encouraged the merger to keep them alive.

dmix 7y ago

Has anyone considered that the MCAS bug was just simply nasty and difficult to detect in their simulator? It’s easy to look back with retrospect and make sweeping judgements about the entire company and the FAA. But fundamentally this was all over, as the author mentions, a single software bug and a lack of backup sensors to offset the risk. In addition it was the technical pilots who asked for the stick to be harder than it was, which added to the difficulty in that unique situation. The MAX was otherwise a very safe plane was it not? There will always be limits to how effective regulatory oversight can be.

golemotron 7y ago
It was simply bad systems engineering. Using software to compensate for hardware like that is like coding "subtract one" when two plus two yields five. In software this hack is explicit, so perhaps Boeing engineers can be forgiven for not seeing it when it straddles hardware and software.
binky 7y ago
The bug is a symptom of bad architecture. Bad architecture is an outcome of taming loud engineers in sake of short term business outcomes.
- linuxftw 7y ago
  Pretty much. If something is theoretically possible it needs to be defended against. I'm sure there's no shortage of people that could have looked at the requirements and figured out how to make it break, but Boeing outsourced. I'm hoping we get more details so we can help build a text-book case against software outsourcing.
sqldba 7y ago
The article is not a complete overview of the situation. For that we go to Wiki. "Boeing considered MCAS part of the flight control system, and elected to not describe it in the flight manual or in training materials." It... "could not be overridden by pilot resistance against the control wheel as on previous versions of the 737." "Following the Lion Air accident, Boeing issued an Operations Manual Bulletin (OMB)[13] which outlined the many indications and effects resulting from erroneous AOA data and provided instructions to turn off the motorized trim system for the remainder of the flight, and trim manually instead. Until Boeing supplemented the manuals[14] and training, pilots were unaware of the existence of MCAS due to its omission from the crew manual and no coverage in training.[12]" It wasn't just "a software bug". It wasn't just culture cutting corners. Even after the first crash they continued to cover up that MCAS was the cause. After the second crash they still refused and it wasn't until airlines started grounding planes that they caved in. There's a lot more than regulatory oversight could have done. We haven't reached the limits in the slightest.

hannasanarion 7y ago

Silly corporations, pursuing profit instead of the good of everyone. Why would we expect any corporation to cut corners to improve profits, which is definitely not what private for-profit corporations are explicitly organized to accomplish? What a weird thing that nobody could have predicted. Really tickles my nose. Makes me want to sneeze actually. aaaa AAAA AAAAAACHSEIZETHEMEANSOFPRODUCTION that was a weird one, sorry. I'm gonna go get a tissue.

golemotron 7y ago
Er, we have through the stock market.
- uoaei 7y ago
  Depends who is the "we"
- hannasanarion 7y ago
  Lol no we don't. The richest 1% of Americans own 50% of the stocks. The top 10% of Americans own 84% of the stocks.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Arguably, just like nationalization, since control of the government is weighted similarly.
  - pinkfoot 7y ago
    Is it really true that all the pension funds in USA - let alone all the foreigners (rich and poor) - together own only 16% of the shares in USA listed public companies. I call BS.
    - hannasanarion 7y ago
      Pension funds represent less than 20% of the stock market, and 90% of households represent only 35% of pension funds, the richest 10% own the remaining 65% of pensions. Since pensions are allocated by earnings, if you're income-rich, you get a bigger pension, and most pension funds are owned by rich people. In addition, much of pension funds go into public bonds and real estate investment trusts, not the stock market anyway. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/01/fact-checking-gary-cohns-claims-on-pensions.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/01/fact-checking-gary-cohns-cla... https://www.investopedia.com/articles/credit-loans-mortgages/090116/what-do-pension-funds-typically-invest.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/credit-loans-mortgages...

cellu_cc 7y ago

While I appreciate the amount of effort the author put into writing this, Matt Stoller’s analysis of the Boeing situation remains the best I’ve found so far: https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout

vitaminCPP 7y ago
This is short and excellent. Thanks for sharing. I wish Mr. Stoller took more time on this: > The Federal Aviation Administration, having outsourced much of its own regulatory capacity to Boeing, didn’t know what was going on, and Boeing didn’t tell airlines and pilots about the new and crucial safety procedures. This seems like big deal to me.
- samcodes 7y ago
  Regulatory capture is a common feature of policies promoted by the deregulate crowd
- K0SM0S 7y ago
  Indeed. Meet accidentology, “the study and analysis of the causes and effects of accidents”, which became a huge applied field during the second half of the 20th century — notably driven by air traffic (also championned by medical care among other sectors). The gist of it is extremely simple: most fatal accidents happen because of a sum of mistakes, a chain of more or less important errors which, taken individually, would seldom lead to an accident, but together form "the perfect storm". This is btw the true meaning of Murphy's famous quote (especially the 'worst possible time' part, e.g. software failing in-flight as opposed to during tests), and how we avoid such outcomes. The beauty of accidentology, beyond engineering / repairing honesty, beyond tons of carefully written procedures and double checklists, is also quite simple: to systematically track the origin of mistakes, to reward people who were involved in finding the issue, and fix the problem once and for all through better practice, better documentation, changing procedures. It contributed to make air travel statistically the safest means of transportation for human beings (the rationale was that plane crashes were so traumatising to the general public that it wasn't enough to be "better" than cars or trains or ferrys; air travel had to be 99.99...% safe to succeed). In this case, we indeed have multiple failures which form a chain of events: the manufacturer (Boeing) cutting corners on safety, the regulator (FAA) also cutting corners in what looks like plain and simple corruption here, and somehow everyone else (companies, pilots) taking for granted what Boeing/FAA said. All in the name of more profit, for a ridiculously tiny part of the population. The results are the tragedies we witnessed. And while the first crash should have been a wake-up call, the fact that Boeing themselves didn't come forward and did let a second crash occur is borderline criminal (for courts to decide, anyway, but the question seems salient in this case). It's all extremely worrying and sets a dire precedent for the USA as a lax or incompetent regulator, and a champion of big corporations now apparently digging way too far down the 'profit hole' — it has literally become a grave by that point.

seanalltogether 7y ago

So exactly the situation that Steve Jobs describes in his infamous interview on how sales and marketing takes over product focused companies.

gbjw 7y ago
See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuZ6ypueK8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuZ6ypueK8M.
azinman2 7y ago
What makes the interview infamous? Did you mean famous?
- throwaway2048 7y ago
  I suppose its infamous amongst sales and marketing folks.
  - stjohnswarts 7y ago
    I would point out that there are very few sales and marketing folks reading hackernews vs engineers and scientists and coders.

pavlov 7y ago

> To this day, industry insiders still joke, “McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s money.” That's commonly said about the Apple-NeXT acquisition too — NeXT paid a negative $429 million to take over Apple. Obviously the results were much different there...

j1vms 7y ago
> > To this day, industry insiders still joke, “McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing’s money.” > That's commonly said about the Apple-NeXT acquisition too — NeXT paid a negative $429 million to take over Apple. (...) I guess that is why it is considered a joke. It sounds like the management teams of NeXT / McDonnell Douglas benefited much more (in the long term) than the investors of their defunct, purchased companies. Benefiting through greater compensation and clout without really taking over (i.e. owning) the purchasor's company.

deleted 7y ago

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JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

Interesting read, but most of the article is about the increased costs of outsourcing of component fabrication. It doesn't really explain how the MCAS system evolved, or the outsourcing on the software side, even though the author identifies a software failure as the primary source of the crashes.

solatic 7y ago

> In the case of information technology-related manufacturing, research, development, and marketing are the most profitable areas to specialize. Fabricating the units and linking critical components is a low-margin race to the bottom. Inspired by this theory, companies like Boeing aim to specialize in high-margin activities and outsource the rest. This is the core point which the author seems to be trying to make, that outsourcing necessarily raised costs because it's a de facto defective strategy for improving margins. What the author fails to delve into is precisely why subcontracting failed to deliver as imagined - did subcontractors fail to deliver airplane parts within tolerances? Were the specifications provided to subcontractors faulty? Did the outsourcing contracts fail to require compensation for failing to deliver on-time and within tolerances; did such requirements exist but in reality such financial obligations caused subcontractors to run out of money / go bankrupt and default on their obligations? Was no insurance purchased to hedge against these risks, so that costs would not explode along with delays? Part of smile theory is that when you decide to outsource lower-margin operations, the ability to outsource effectively in and of itself becomes part of your core competency. That Boeing executives failed to reduce costs as planned through outsourcing is less proof that outsourcing is inherently poor practice and more proof that competency at shifting numbers around on bean-counting accounting sheets is not the same thing as competency at outsourcing.

jl2718 7y ago
There are different kinds of outsourcing. One is where a subcontractor has an existing and superior product, which incurs integration cost, but results in a superior product. The other is exporting a core competence to an inexperienced subcontractor for less cost, which incurs training costs, integration costs, loss of intellectual capital, logistics loss, and results in an inferior product.
- solatic 7y ago
  > which incurs training costs, integration costs, loss of intellectual capital, logistics loss, and results in an inferior product What I'm arguing is that, in order to effectively outsource, one must get good at the so-referred training and integration costs, while hedging against logistics issues. Otherwise you will get, as you prophesy, an inferior product. But I'm not convinced that's inevitable. Of note, keeping everything in-house can result in its own logistics issues, as the organization becomes necessarily larger and must pay related overhead costs. So deciding to keep processes in-house doesn't mean you get to completely ignore "logistics loss" because you're paying a similar price in its stead.

sargram01 7y ago

You see this at startups too, middle eng management were actual engineers and as the startup grows career managers creep in and skew the alignment of the engineering departments away from engineering solutions, the “product” they make, to problems they understand instead, political jockeying, manipulation, appeasing the LCD and the next managerial rung above them.

ajeet_dhaliwal 7y ago
Yes, not unique to boeing, ive seen it in many places.
aphexairlines 7y ago
Your initial scenario is still flawed: "middle eng management were actual engineers." The problem is elevating management above other roles. At that point the course has been set.
- sargram01 7y ago
  Yes, exactly, that’s the point I was trying to get at.
- hinkley 7y ago
  And they may know how to manage devs but they have very little change of being good at , which is what protects the dev team. When the smooth talking suits show up and tell their pretty dictions, there aren’t enough people who know how to push back. But where would you find these classically trained managers who haven’t drunk the Taylor koolaid?
ThalesX 7y ago
I’ve also had the misfortune of working with an early startup that as soon as it got a series A hired a team of career managers on board. The product plummeted soon after, product market fit got lost as the direction became more and more political and by the end, the ones that came out on top and ready to move to their next venture were the managers that managed to tick their measurements and KPIs even though they were totally disconnected from the operational space. But, they do wield weapons that us engineers often don’t have the time not desire to sharpen...

im_down_w_otp 7y ago

I don't understand how this was a software failure. From everything I've ever read about this issue, including this piece, the failure seems very much like a model & design failure. It seems like a systems & human factors engineering failure. Not a software failure.

thatswrong0 7y ago
Well, if you ask why only once, then it's a software failure - a system with a serious amount of control authority can fail catastrophically if just one hardware sensor fails. Safety critical software like this must account for hardware failures. But there are many many more whys you need to ask before you get the full picture.
- Haga 7y ago
  I wish some of the engineers that dropped out over this could speak up.
jrockway 7y ago
They should have written a program to determine the angle of attack without an angle of attack sensor. The fact that they couldn't means that there need to be more team-building exercises, websites blocked by the corporate firewall, and outsourcing!
afterburner 7y ago
The software fix was the stopgap solution to a design side effect. The stopgap solution was also not that well designed, and ultimately confused the pilots, who were deliberately untrained in the changes. Why deliberately untrained? Because the whole selling point of the design was that you wouldn't have to retrain your pilots because it would handle just like the old plane.
- im_down_w_otp 7y ago
  Still none of that makes it a software failure. We're also straining the definition of "failure" here as it relates to software. Software doesn't really fail in the way considered in the realm of traditional functional-safety. It doesn't wear out like a cable or a capacitor. But, I digress.

jl2718 7y ago

Note two contradictory popular trends: 1. AI is going to replace cheap labor 2. Engineering companies are outsourcing because of cheap labor The reality is that trend #2 is orders of magnitude larger. Any reversal of that by ‘AI’ would be the biggest jobs boom in decades for western nations, and according to this article, would increase quality and therefore trade balance as well. The other reality is that manufacturing automation with ‘AI’ is hard, takes a lot of human effort, and is a huge part of a company’s value (e.g. Tesla). Outsourcing is often selling off this value at a negative price. It is done because Wall St analysts don’t know how to price this asset. Like it or love it, it is investment analysts that determine company culture. The good thing is that they are greedy; they may be misinformed, but they are predictable. Everything above liquidation value is held in the heads of the employees of the company. Its actually not that hard to compute, and if business schools taught this, corporate behavior would change.

HeWhoLurksLate 7y ago
That reminds me of an article I read about the new Toyota Supra and Toyota & BMW's collaboration to create it and (either the Z4 or an M-car? Sorry, I don't remember). Anywho, the thing that was interesting to me was how much Toyota and BMW were willing to invest in what is more or less an engineer's bootcamp- like baseball teams playing out-of-league teams in practice to get better- and that that was seen as a worthy investment by the engineering team's superiors. Some companies still value engineers. That's where I want to be.
- imglorp 7y ago
  Maybe all true, but also note that all is not roses, at least in all engineering departments. Toyota produced a lump of buggy firmware spaghetti that cost the company more than $1B after the unintended acceleration crashes. And Beemer seems to have a dual culture where the dinosaurs are fighting its electric future (cf the i3 disaster: it still costs more than a Tesla or Bolt but has half the range; that doesn't sound like all-in).
  - selimthegrim 7y ago

jgeada 7y ago

Engineers create value, management is a tax on that value. And when management takes over a company culture the next stop is typically bankruptcy as management wont stop until all value is extracted into their pockets. American corporate history is littered with examples.

PaulHoule 7y ago

People forget the other purpose of outsourcing which is that it diffuses complaints from other countries that they are buying planes from dupolists and should do something about it because sweden, japan, and other countries that might develop and aircraft industry can point to some part of every Airbus and Boeing made in their country.

gaze 7y ago

The headline is written as if this is the fault of the engineers :/

jorblumesea 7y ago

I've often felt GE and other industrial conglomerates have similar issues as those brought up in the article. Too much focus on quarterly profits and investor payouts, obsession over stock prices and "wall street" metrics. Everyone talks about Japan or China stealing our industrial base but it often feels like we did it ourselves.

mrtweetyhack 7y ago

Even though Boeing will be sue to hell, the CEOs will run off with big smiles on their faces and pockets lined in gold. Prison time!

jonplackett 7y ago

Reminds me of what a Steve Jobs warned about marketing people taking over and product people being pushed out: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxZofbMGpM

tomohawk 7y ago

When the 737 was first created, iterating a known type of aircraft was much less of a concern. It was not a key design constraint. As time went by and we learned more and the good idea faeries had time to think about things, we now have all kinds of regulation that makes the cost of making a new plane much higher if it is not an iteration on an existing design. This sort of regulatory pressure has a tendency to nix innovation in favor of stability, and that's what we see here.

jyounker 7y ago
I don't think this is a new phenomena. My understanding is that the MD-80 was built on the DC-9 airframe partially to avoid the costs and efforts of recertification, and that was 40 years ago. Aside from regulation, There are very good business reasons from both ends of the industry that exert pressure to iterate on an old design. (E.g Each additional airframe dramatically increases the complexity of an airline's maintenance organization.)

mltony 7y ago

> The new engines were too big to fit in their traditional spot under the wings. To combat the problem, Boeing mounted them forward on the wings. Moving the engine position forward shifted the plane’s center of gravity, which altered the aerodynamics of the aircraft. The position of the new engines pulled the 737 tail down, pushed its nose up, and put it at risk of stalling. Can someone explain to me how this is possible? In my understanding If you move the engines forward, it would move the center of gravity forward as well, and this would push the tail up and pull the nose down - exactly the opposite from what's written in the article. Does some fancy aerodynamic effect play some role here that leads to stalling?

alumowa 7y ago
Layman here. What I picture in my head is due to the engines being placed higher and more forward on the wing, it will want to rotate nose up when thrust is being produced.
- salawat 7y ago
  This is correct, and normal behavior actually. That's already accomodated for in modern designs. What isn't is the extra lift at high-AoA and longer lever arm for the lift force to operate through. MCAS was meant to counter that, and arguably would have been a perfectly reasonable fix if they'd have designed it to the proper degree of redundancy, and actually told pilots how it worked and that it existed.
leetrout 7y ago
My armchair physics example would be a balance seesaw and let’s say the left side is the “front”. If you attached a rocket motor (or jet engine) in front of the the CG point would the the thrust push the left side of the seesaw up or down? I believe the issue is precisely this - the engines were moved (and they are bigger so more powerful perhaps?) forward and the thrust probably pushes the nose up.
- salawat 7y ago
  Seesaw isn't the best model really. A seesaw with a turbine engine strapped to it, (besides making a godawful mess and maybe just maybe making the HOA angry enough to worth the trouble of setting up) wouldn't do much since it's a fixed structure and not interacting in any way remotely consistent with a body in motion through a fluid. Boat might be a better model, or even better, use your hand hanging out the window of a moving car. If you taped a couple of projections under your hand, and slowly increase the Angle of Attack of your hand to get a feel for what the old design would do. Then do the same thing but with those protrusions up in front of your hand. You should notice that it becomes harder in the second arrangement to counter the tendency of your hand to continue pitching up after a point. Assuming your weird mini-not turbine construction stays together in the airstream.

deleted 7y ago

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gist 7y ago

I don't flag articles but this is one that I would flag. Why? It's typical HN 'red meat'. Well presented and (seemingly) well written and thoughtful. But the writer not only has no expertise (he did research?) but offers no backup (other than things that other news outlets have written) for most if not all of his statements. Now it's on thing if you are a major news outlet (NYT, WSJ or online well know publication) and it's another thing if you are just 'some guy, writer with a 'media company'' (what he does) and you do this and post your own articles. https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=davidperell https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=davidperell Why bother to read this exactly? There is always a question of what you read being true and sure it's fun to poke positive or negative. But honestly having a flashy website or blog is not enough. (Kudos David for being opportunistic (I really mean that btw) pulling this off).

theYipster 7y ago
Couldn’t agree more. This is a rambling mess of an article which strings together past commentary on Boeing’s history and the 737 Max without making a coherent point. Furthermore, the author also gets a number of things wrong about his research, and also presents statements as pure fact which are purely false. Here are three examples I pulled out—in order from minor to argument-disqualifying. 1. The author cites innovation on the 787 as having electrically operated systems in place of hydraulics. He meant to say pneumatics. The 787 does not have an engine air-bleed system, using solid state electric systems to power the aforementioned components instead of the system of valves and ducts which manage the flow of high pressure air coming off the engine, as is the norm on other aircraft. 2. The author sites engines being outsourced historically because of a natural difference in engineering expertise between engine and airframe. While engine and airframe engineering are different domains, the real reason airframe manufacturers don’t make engines and vise-versa is entirely due to the Air Mail Act of 1934. I suggest the OP research the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation. 3. The OP’s central argument of cost control, and particularly outsourcing, as being a central driver to engineering problems with the MAX is hindered when he cites example and supporting arguments primarily about the 787 program. Yes, cost control is an overarching issue and one that is being investigated vigorously, and 787’s level of airframe outsourcing has been a key problem to that particular program’s profitability. However, the author fails to understand that the outsourcing he talks about is made at the program level. Citing the 787 as being representative of Boeing as a whole is spurious. The author also fails to understand how outsourcing effects engineering both at Boeing and down the supply chain. In truth, the level of outsourcing on the MAX is largely no different than on the NG. (The previous model 737 that has been flying safely for decades, which went into service 2 years before the MD-Boeing merger.) It has been common since the advent of the jet age for there to be separate suppliers for engines and components—i.e landing gear or avionics. This does not mean innovation and engineering expertise is past over the fence—-airplanes are in fact built on strong partnerships between firms, and that includes partnerships between engineers. This has always been how the industry works. Now, tying this back to my 3rd example: The 787 supply chain problems the OP sites are in regards to final assembly of fuselage and wing structures — this is a specific area in which one could argue the 787 went overboard in outsourcing. This, of course, has nothing to do with MCAS—a piece of flight control software—nor the AOA vanes that feed it. Flight control systems, sensors, and vanes are typically outsourced, as they are on the 777, 767, 777, and 747 (all of which engineered and built before the merger.) ... If we really want to add value to the conversation about Boeing’s culture, the 737 MAX, and engineering aircraft—then let’s please build some knowledge first about how aircraft systems are actually engineered. Disclaiming that nothing can be definitively said about the MCAS crashes until all the investigations are complete and known, I strongly believe the issue is not a software failure but a systems failure, and particularly, a failure in the management of the safety classification and assessment process. There is also the matter that the 737 is a very old program. Beyond the argument that it was a mistake to try to modernize a 1967 design and architecture a 3rd time, there is also the problem that the 737MAX doesn’t necessarily adhere to current engineering standards for safety assessment—especially at the systems level. This is because the 737MAX was engineered under the authority of the original 737 certification. For aerospace engineers working in industry, it would be useful to map what we know about MCAS and the 737MAX against the requirements outlined in DO-178C and, especially, ARP-4754. Unfortunately, the 737MAX doesn’t subscribe fully to ARP-4754 methodology, since it’s a continuation of the program certified in 1967 and not a new type.

sudoaza 7y ago

MBAs ruining everything again, this is so familiar it ain't even funny. Putting business guys at the top is one of the biggest mistakes in companies, even if we concede that they are needed they should have very limited power not the control of the company like today's CEOs.

AlleyTrotter 7y ago

Happens every time the accountants and MBA's take over. Experience with three companies bought out by investment funds/accountants. Move on as quickly as possible. Cheers

rdxm 7y ago

tldr: safety critical engineering is hard and expensive...go figure!

segmondy 7y ago

Why are the engineers being blamed? Why not frame it as Boeing MBAs took over the company and drove quality down.

fmajid 7y ago

I agree 100%. McDonnell-Douglas' corrupt military contractor culture ate Boeing from the inside. I have family that work at Boeing and the tales of corruption they told me are hair-raising.

booblik 7y ago

While it is nice to think that this is all a beancounter fault, and to an extent it is, there must be an engineer in Boeing who was tasked with this difficult and challenging mission how to avoid the expensive recertification of the airplane. They must have spent many sleepless nights thinking how to make that happen, until finally reaching a eurika! moment. And I want to believe that they thought the solution they proposed was both sound and economical, yet the execution was lacking. In the end there must be an engineer behind every feature, even if they were pressured by non engineering manager to compromise.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

ilaksh 7y ago

My own personal (fanciful) beliefs: - at least two executives including the CEO should get life in prison - at least two people from the FAA should join them - Boeing should be dismantled and become at least two separate companies. - The FAA should also be rebuilt from the ground up. - Create a new type of corporate tax that helps ensure the FAA has a more adequate budget. - New law that ensures that CEO and some other upper-level decision makers need to have senior engineering experience. (Ideally there would be no executives at all, just engineers, but that's too unrealistic even for my fantasy here).

RedBeetDeadpool 7y ago

Didn’t get to read the full article, but it sounds like a case of snakes in suits. Did the leaders and managers in charge at the time the poor engineering took place get any sort of reprimanding or blame, or have they walked away with accolades of their quarterly performance and cost savings with continued increases in salaries and public reputation?

piva00 7y ago

I read this article [0] about a month ago that went through what happened to Boeing after the MD merge. After reading it I went through some other articles comparing the development of the 777 to the 787 (the first plane to be designed with this new Boeing management completely in control) and it's staggering how Boeing went downhill from an engineering-focused company perspective to a bean-counter paradise, it seems to be the common trope: you let business people take complete control of your products' pipeline and the race to the bottom starts, the company can still deliver while the old culture lingers but as more time passes the more problematic these deliveries are until the company has been sucked dry to deliver on-paper good quarterly reports but is rotting from the inside. Maybe it's a side effect of financial capitalism taking over, maybe it's not but it's quite correlated. [0] https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-investigation-indonesia-lion-air-ethiopian-airlines-managerial-revolution https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-invest...