4 ms·

That, or this article missed the boat somehow. I find it hard to believe that a total redesign is happening and that they expect to be done by the end of the ye

That, or this article missed the boat somehow. I find it hard to believe that a total redesign is happening and that they expect to be done by the end of the year. Either this article is wrong, or something is terribly wrong at Boeing.

dboreham 7y ago
I'm a huge MAX skeptic, but this article just has to be wrong. Someone who had dropped out of a CS degree would know not to do what the article says they're doing.
- SQueeeeeL 7y ago
  You would be surprised, if managament is broken to it's core, the situation is "Do this unethical thing or we'll find someone who will!" Computer Scientists aren't usually taught engineering ethics and definitely get fired all the time for arbitrary reasons.
  - uxp100 7y ago
    Is that true that CS students don't take an ethics course? I have a 10 year old SE degree and I took 3, only 1 of which was engineering specific. (I took a philosophy ethics course, which really isn't that relevant to issues like these anyway, but also a course that was specific to ethical issues in computing.) OTOH, I'm skeptical those courses change behavior, and in this particular case others in comments are saying this is a common architecture in the space, so how could anyone solve this ethical conundrum if getting to the base level of whether this is an ethical conundrum to begin with is difficult?
    - SQueeeeeL 7y ago
      In my opinion courses wouldn't change behavior, modern computer science is designed to infantalize coders and make them interchangeable. Think of all the effort startups put into marketing themselves as "COOL TO WORK FOR"/"WE HAVE BEER ON FRIDAYS". These reinforce the idea that you are small and need management to tell you exactly what to do everyday, because you're a dumb idiot who spends all day watching anime and playing video games. In that environment, serious ethical concerns could easily be brushed aside as "coders just being coders". When Google got found out for making drones, the employees of a company staged a 5 minute walkout.... that was it, I'm sure some people quit, but not enough to make any impact
      - thfuran 7y ago
        Given >marketing themselves as "COOL TO WORK FOR"/"WE HAVE BEER ON FRIDAYS", "the idea that you are small and need management to tell you exactly what to do everyday, because you're a dumb idiot who spends all day watching anime and playing video games" does not follow.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
        SQueeeeeL 7y ago
        They make efforts to cast the coders as young people who can be swayed by marketing gimmicks instead of real workplace concerns like benefits, livability, consistent work/life balance. That culture permiates the entire engineering culture
    - bradstewart 7y ago
      I took one course that briefly touched on engineering ethics in my ECE program. Nothing even remotely resembling the ethics courses taken by the Mechanical/Civil/Structural guys.
    - MFLoon 7y ago
      SE = structural engineering? That's cool, I'm glad your discipline is receiving some ethical training. I've never heard of any CS program including any sort of engineering or general ethics courses in their curricula.
      - TickleSteve 7y ago
        My CS degree certainly did from University of Manchester. Its also my understanding that most do. BTW: SE typically means Software Engineering in this context.
      - tofof 7y ago
        Every single CS baccalaureate degree from the University of Illinois has required from at least 2005[1] a mandatory engineering ethics course (CS 210). Note that the UofI has always been in the top ten nationally for CS; its 2020 rank is #6 (behind MIT, CMU, UCBerkeley, Georgia Inst. of Tech, and Stanford). 1: 2005: https://web.archive.org/web/20050321215749/http://courses.uiuc.edu/cis/programs/urbana/2004/fall/undergrad/engin/comp_sci.html https://web.archive.org/web/20050321215749/http://courses.ui... 2: 2019: https://cs.illinois.edu/academics/undergraduate/degree-program-options/bs-computer-science https://cs.illinois.edu/academics/undergraduate/degree-progr...
      - uxp100 7y ago
        Yeah, as others said, by SE I meant software engineering. Lots of overlapping acronyms, I usually don't use them, but in this context I thought I'd get away with it. I liked my ethics course in the philosophy department, but that's more about J.S. Mill, and Kant and the rest. Engineering ethics was a course any Eng. degree had to take, interesting, but hard to apply also. You go through case studies and look at them, but to have any productive class discussion they kinda have to be broken down to be at least somewhat clear and concise. I don't feel like getting into here, but I feel like even this Boeing issue, which is pretty clear, is less clear than any case study in a textbook.
    - ashleyn 7y ago
      I had one ethics course. Class of 2013 in a prominent Pennsylvania university.
chkaloon 7y ago
I wonder if someone talked to this reporter about a long-term redesign they're doing, and the reporter conflated that with the short term patches they're doing to get the plane flying again. It just doesn't make sense otherwise. And, 100 scenarios instead of 10? I sure as heck there's more than that on an architecture redesign!
EricE 7y ago
No kidding! How sad is it the entire time I was reading this I kept looking back at "Bloomberg" and was thinking to their other reporting like the server spying that they never did explain. The National Enquirer may be more reliable than Bloomberg at this point.

dboreham 7y ago

I'm a huge MAX skeptic, but this article just has to be wrong. Someone who had dropped out of a CS degree would know not to do what the article says they're doing.

SQueeeeeL 7y ago
You would be surprised, if managament is broken to it's core, the situation is "Do this unethical thing or we'll find someone who will!" Computer Scientists aren't usually taught engineering ethics and definitely get fired all the time for arbitrary reasons.
- uxp100 7y ago
  Is that true that CS students don't take an ethics course? I have a 10 year old SE degree and I took 3, only 1 of which was engineering specific. (I took a philosophy ethics course, which really isn't that relevant to issues like these anyway, but also a course that was specific to ethical issues in computing.) OTOH, I'm skeptical those courses change behavior, and in this particular case others in comments are saying this is a common architecture in the space, so how could anyone solve this ethical conundrum if getting to the base level of whether this is an ethical conundrum to begin with is difficult?
  - SQueeeeeL 7y ago
    In my opinion courses wouldn't change behavior, modern computer science is designed to infantalize coders and make them interchangeable. Think of all the effort startups put into marketing themselves as "COOL TO WORK FOR"/"WE HAVE BEER ON FRIDAYS". These reinforce the idea that you are small and need management to tell you exactly what to do everyday, because you're a dumb idiot who spends all day watching anime and playing video games. In that environment, serious ethical concerns could easily be brushed aside as "coders just being coders". When Google got found out for making drones, the employees of a company staged a 5 minute walkout.... that was it, I'm sure some people quit, but not enough to make any impact
    - thfuran 7y ago
      Given >marketing themselves as "COOL TO WORK FOR"/"WE HAVE BEER ON FRIDAYS", "the idea that you are small and need management to tell you exactly what to do everyday, because you're a dumb idiot who spends all day watching anime and playing video games" does not follow.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - SQueeeeeL 7y ago
        They make efforts to cast the coders as young people who can be swayed by marketing gimmicks instead of real workplace concerns like benefits, livability, consistent work/life balance. That culture permiates the entire engineering culture
  - bradstewart 7y ago
    I took one course that briefly touched on engineering ethics in my ECE program. Nothing even remotely resembling the ethics courses taken by the Mechanical/Civil/Structural guys.
  - MFLoon 7y ago
    SE = structural engineering? That's cool, I'm glad your discipline is receiving some ethical training. I've never heard of any CS program including any sort of engineering or general ethics courses in their curricula.
    - TickleSteve 7y ago
      My CS degree certainly did from University of Manchester. Its also my understanding that most do. BTW: SE typically means Software Engineering in this context.
    - tofof 7y ago
      Every single CS baccalaureate degree from the University of Illinois has required from at least 2005[1] a mandatory engineering ethics course (CS 210). Note that the UofI has always been in the top ten nationally for CS; its 2020 rank is #6 (behind MIT, CMU, UCBerkeley, Georgia Inst. of Tech, and Stanford). 1: 2005: https://web.archive.org/web/20050321215749/http://courses.uiuc.edu/cis/programs/urbana/2004/fall/undergrad/engin/comp_sci.html https://web.archive.org/web/20050321215749/http://courses.ui... 2: 2019: https://cs.illinois.edu/academics/undergraduate/degree-program-options/bs-computer-science https://cs.illinois.edu/academics/undergraduate/degree-progr...
    - uxp100 7y ago
      Yeah, as others said, by SE I meant software engineering. Lots of overlapping acronyms, I usually don't use them, but in this context I thought I'd get away with it. I liked my ethics course in the philosophy department, but that's more about J.S. Mill, and Kant and the rest. Engineering ethics was a course any Eng. degree had to take, interesting, but hard to apply also. You go through case studies and look at them, but to have any productive class discussion they kinda have to be broken down to be at least somewhat clear and concise. I don't feel like getting into here, but I feel like even this Boeing issue, which is pretty clear, is less clear than any case study in a textbook.
  - ashleyn 7y ago
    I had one ethics course. Class of 2013 in a prominent Pennsylvania university.

chkaloon 7y ago

I wonder if someone talked to this reporter about a long-term redesign they're doing, and the reporter conflated that with the short term patches they're doing to get the plane flying again. It just doesn't make sense otherwise. And, 100 scenarios instead of 10? I sure as heck there's more than that on an architecture redesign!

EricE 7y ago

No kidding! How sad is it the entire time I was reading this I kept looking back at "Bloomberg" and was thinking to their other reporting like the server spying that they never did explain. The National Enquirer may be more reliable than Bloomberg at this point.