6 ms·

I hate stories like this. Yeah, excellent documentation for an immensely expensive one-off, bespoke, incredibly complex product costs a ton of money. Duh.

rapind 7y ago
Totally agree, and hey, if you or anyone you know is looking for documentation, PM me!
badrabbit 7y ago
Not $84M ,unless you're talking about a death star. And even then! I mean, back up a bit here, even the greediest tech company (oracle!) Has not thought of to charge for documentation. On what insane world would someone purchase a complex product like this without the docs? Why is it billed differently?
- Scramblejams 7y ago
  This works out to $840/page. How many hours does it take to write the page, by people who are making how much? And don't forget, they get revisited and revised as the design changes. On the subject of why it's billed differently: well, first, transparency. What would you make you feel better? Getting a $4 billion lump quote for a giant project, or seeing that $4 billion itemized down so you can check the underlying data? Edit: Oops, sorry, data entry failure. Thanks for the corrections. Fixed.
  - dev_tty01 7y ago
    Uh, $840/page.
  - fpvracing 7y ago
    > This works out to $84/page. You're off by an order of magnitude. It works out to $840/page.
  - xnyan 7y ago
    Off by a factor of 10, $840 a page. I think you make a compelling argument but I’d rather see some data comparing costs of similar projects.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - qzw 7y ago
    $840/page. 100k+ pages rather than 1M. Doesn’t change your other points, however.
  - badrabbit 7y ago
    No, things cost what buyers are willing to pay. Transparency would be saying the product costs the total sum so that everyone making purchasing decison knows the total cost. A manual in this case is as much part of the plane as is the wing! The product is a pile of metal without the docs. Is there a separate cost like this for R&D,labor,parts,paint, "service charge"? I mean come on,imagine the outrage here if microsoft made msdn cost even $10/year! Salaried employees don't get paid by hour our output. If it takes a team a half a year to write the doc, they still get paid for the rest of the year. Regardless, the cost nevet reflects the effort put into it. It is simply what they charge because they can and because the buyer pays and because the competition is not offering something better when bidding.
    - Scramblejams 7y ago
      Salaried employees don't get paid by hour our output. If it takes a team a half a year to write the doc, they still get paid for the rest of the year. One of the reasons I left aerospace is I found out that when a project ends, you and 2,000 of your closest friends all hit the street at the same time. :-) Or as another friend put it when we were discussing the big companies: "If you work for Boeing, you'll always have a job. But you may have to move to Florida to keep it." And current events show the first part isn't even true any more...
    - downerending 7y ago
      > things cost what buyers are willing to pay That's a ceiling but not a floor. Things never cost less than the expense of producing them. 840 per page or so does not sound excessive for this sort of thing--I'm surprise it's not 10x more. (Yeah, loss leaders occasionally, but don't look for that in military contracts.)
  - downerending 7y ago
    At the MIL-SPEC level? $840/page sounds like a bargain. This entity is the polar opposite of "move fast and break things". It's more like, we're going to bury this in a cavern, and when we dig it up in 100 years, it absolutely, positively has to work.
  - kakwa_ 7y ago
    Also, it must not be forgotten that there is a lot more than writing the pages themselves. On a document this big, you need to properly organize and index it so that the maintenance personnel would be able to find the relevant bits easily. that's a lot of editing job required, and a lot of coordination (to properly reference and label each subsystem for example). Also, this document requires a lot of reviews and a lot of the maintenance procedures needs to actually be performed to actually check if they are clear enough to be executed reliably by operators/maintenance personnel. All that is a lot of work, requiring a significant amount of man hours by skilled people and hardware and tooling available for validation.
- badfrog 7y ago
  > even the greediest tech company (oracle!) Has not thought of to charge for documentation Oracle sells products/services that thousands or millions of organizations purchase. That's a completely different kind of business arrangement than something that a single entity purchases once. If you hire a software consultant to build you a custom system, they're definitely going to charge you for the time they spend writing documentation.
  - pm321 7y ago
    Not hard to imagine scenario after political wrangling where initiative is launched and the first thing the new entity does is buy Oracle for HR very special edition which eats up all the budget for the first years of its life. And nothing is left to the original reason for being for that entity.
- MattGaiser 7y ago
  Angry citizens want itemized lists of costs.
mxcrossb 7y ago
I wonder though if the expense is for producing the document, or because Boeing will no longer be the only company that can repair it.
- MattGaiser 7y ago
  I don't think Boeing does the repair, but rather Air Force personnel.
  - adamhearn 7y ago
    I think their point was that Boeing might be charging a premium as they will no longer service the plane. However, I don't think this is the case, the cost probably has to do more with the specificity and overall data included.
    - Scramblejams 7y ago
      Interesting to take that factor into account, at least in other areas of the program. I have it on good authority that a major producer of jet engines was essentially forced to provide their engines for free to a major airliner program, or have the engines excluded from the program entirely. They opted in, for those sweet operational revenues. Everybody seems to be focusing on milking the maintenance market.
garyrichardson 7y ago
My general rule in these cases: "1 is the worst number of times to do something" -- 84M for documentation for 2 airplanes seems like a lot. It looks a lot better if you have 84 airplanes or 8,400 airplanes. Alternatively, cost isn't so bad if those 84M manuals and the 2 airplanes are useful for 50 years.
- downerending 7y ago
  "Why buy one when you can buy two for twice the price?" :-) Yeah, not your point, but it was a great line in a great movie.

rapind 7y ago

Totally agree, and hey, if you or anyone you know is looking for documentation, PM me!

badrabbit 7y ago

Not $84M ,unless you're talking about a death star. And even then! I mean, back up a bit here, even the greediest tech company (oracle!) Has not thought of to charge for documentation. On what insane world would someone purchase a complex product like this without the docs? Why is it billed differently?

Scramblejams 7y ago
This works out to $840/page. How many hours does it take to write the page, by people who are making how much? And don't forget, they get revisited and revised as the design changes. On the subject of why it's billed differently: well, first, transparency. What would you make you feel better? Getting a $4 billion lump quote for a giant project, or seeing that $4 billion itemized down so you can check the underlying data? Edit: Oops, sorry, data entry failure. Thanks for the corrections. Fixed.
- dev_tty01 7y ago
  Uh, $840/page.
- fpvracing 7y ago
  > This works out to $84/page. You're off by an order of magnitude. It works out to $840/page.
- xnyan 7y ago
  Off by a factor of 10, $840 a page. I think you make a compelling argument but I’d rather see some data comparing costs of similar projects.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- qzw 7y ago
  $840/page. 100k+ pages rather than 1M. Doesn’t change your other points, however.
- badrabbit 7y ago
  No, things cost what buyers are willing to pay. Transparency would be saying the product costs the total sum so that everyone making purchasing decison knows the total cost. A manual in this case is as much part of the plane as is the wing! The product is a pile of metal without the docs. Is there a separate cost like this for R&D,labor,parts,paint, "service charge"? I mean come on,imagine the outrage here if microsoft made msdn cost even $10/year! Salaried employees don't get paid by hour our output. If it takes a team a half a year to write the doc, they still get paid for the rest of the year. Regardless, the cost nevet reflects the effort put into it. It is simply what they charge because they can and because the buyer pays and because the competition is not offering something better when bidding.
  - Scramblejams 7y ago
    Salaried employees don't get paid by hour our output. If it takes a team a half a year to write the doc, they still get paid for the rest of the year. One of the reasons I left aerospace is I found out that when a project ends, you and 2,000 of your closest friends all hit the street at the same time. :-) Or as another friend put it when we were discussing the big companies: "If you work for Boeing, you'll always have a job. But you may have to move to Florida to keep it." And current events show the first part isn't even true any more...
  - downerending 7y ago
    > things cost what buyers are willing to pay That's a ceiling but not a floor. Things never cost less than the expense of producing them. 840 per page or so does not sound excessive for this sort of thing--I'm surprise it's not 10x more. (Yeah, loss leaders occasionally, but don't look for that in military contracts.)
- downerending 7y ago
  At the MIL-SPEC level? $840/page sounds like a bargain. This entity is the polar opposite of "move fast and break things". It's more like, we're going to bury this in a cavern, and when we dig it up in 100 years, it absolutely, positively has to work.
- kakwa_ 7y ago
  Also, it must not be forgotten that there is a lot more than writing the pages themselves. On a document this big, you need to properly organize and index it so that the maintenance personnel would be able to find the relevant bits easily. that's a lot of editing job required, and a lot of coordination (to properly reference and label each subsystem for example). Also, this document requires a lot of reviews and a lot of the maintenance procedures needs to actually be performed to actually check if they are clear enough to be executed reliably by operators/maintenance personnel. All that is a lot of work, requiring a significant amount of man hours by skilled people and hardware and tooling available for validation.
badfrog 7y ago
> even the greediest tech company (oracle!) Has not thought of to charge for documentation Oracle sells products/services that thousands or millions of organizations purchase. That's a completely different kind of business arrangement than something that a single entity purchases once. If you hire a software consultant to build you a custom system, they're definitely going to charge you for the time they spend writing documentation.
- pm321 7y ago
  Not hard to imagine scenario after political wrangling where initiative is launched and the first thing the new entity does is buy Oracle for HR very special edition which eats up all the budget for the first years of its life. And nothing is left to the original reason for being for that entity.
MattGaiser 7y ago
Angry citizens want itemized lists of costs.

mxcrossb 7y ago

I wonder though if the expense is for producing the document, or because Boeing will no longer be the only company that can repair it.

MattGaiser 7y ago
I don't think Boeing does the repair, but rather Air Force personnel.
- adamhearn 7y ago
  I think their point was that Boeing might be charging a premium as they will no longer service the plane. However, I don't think this is the case, the cost probably has to do more with the specificity and overall data included.
  - Scramblejams 7y ago
    Interesting to take that factor into account, at least in other areas of the program. I have it on good authority that a major producer of jet engines was essentially forced to provide their engines for free to a major airliner program, or have the engines excluded from the program entirely. They opted in, for those sweet operational revenues. Everybody seems to be focusing on milking the maintenance market.

garyrichardson 7y ago

My general rule in these cases: "1 is the worst number of times to do something" -- 84M for documentation for 2 airplanes seems like a lot. It looks a lot better if you have 84 airplanes or 8,400 airplanes. Alternatively, cost isn't so bad if those 84M manuals and the 2 airplanes are useful for 50 years.

downerending 7y ago
"Why buy one when you can buy two for twice the price?" :-) Yeah, not your point, but it was a great line in a great movie.