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You fully and entirely misunderstand the argument. The argument is that after the McDonnel Douglas merger, the "idyllic culture of building great and safe produ
by blendergeek 6y ago
You fully and entirely misunderstand the argument. The argument is that after the McDonnel Douglas merger, the "idyllic culture of building great and safe products" was pillaged and destroyed by greedy corporate overlords. At this point (so goes the argument) all the "good engineers" who would have most certainly spoken up were laid off and were replaced with dime-a-dozen engineers who were overworked, underpaid, and didn't know what they were doing.
In essence, the great engineering culture at Boeing was dead at the time of the 737 MAX debacle and the death of Boeing's previously near perfect engineering culture was directly responsible for the failure of the 737 MAX.
- grogenaut 6y agoSide note, there is a definite trend of blaming this on McDonnel Douglas. Growing up in St. Louis and now living in Seattle I notice it all the time. I do think the way you said it may be more true (with no evidence) that a management culture which had switched more to acquisition choked out good engineering culture. You are essentially correlating it with the acquisition in timeline. Note I'm in no way attacking you, just adding what I've seen online and heard in bars.
- haltingproblem 6y agoSigh. The mythmaking contines. In the theory of causation, we distinguish between proximate vs. ultimate causality. Every proximate event can plausibly be claimed to be the cause for a subsequent event. As they say for want of a nail the war was lost. We don't say the war was lost because the nail was missing because 20 years ago they changed the way they cataloged the nails in the hardware store which sold the nails because the owner of the store changed their inventory system. What is plausibly the cause for the engineering fiasco of the 737 Max? Why go back to the merger in 1997 and why not blame the 9/11 attacks or the election of G.W Bush or Obama's for this disaster? Why go back to the 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas? Because it allows Boeing engineers to deflect blame for the terrible product they built and foisted on the flying public by coasting on their past reputations.
- 1123581321 6y agoThis is uninteresting as the engineers are only making a limited point that the superior character of the engineering organization has been lost, relative to the demands of buyers and the FAA. It’s not a novel theory to suggest a merger or acquisition can cause this to happen more obviously than a national or world event.
- haltingproblem 6y agoThe theory is just that - a theory and a convenient one at that since it exonerates Boeing engineers. The is no evidence supporting the theory (verification) and more interesting it is not falsifiable. It is just a narrative.
- tangjurine 6y agoThe evidence for the theory is that there are many Boeing 'apologists' as OP states - he is trying to debate them, not people that don't care if Boeing ever had a good engineering culture.
- 1123581321 6y agoIt is falsifiable, given access to the record of management decisions and hiring data and some agreement on what a consequential company decision would look like. Whether some people think it “exonerates” current engineers doesn’t matter. I don’t think it does, personally.
- pdonis 6y ago> In the theory of causation, we distinguish between proximate vs. ultimate causality. Yes, and you have them backwards. "The engineers failed to raise the issue" is a proximate cause, not an ultimate cause. If engineers in your company are failing to raise obvious technical issues, then either you're hiring incompetent engineers, or your corporate culture discourages engineers from speaking up and punishes those who do. Either way, the ultimate cause is a failure of the organization as a whole, which ultimately means its top management, not a failure of the engineers.