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It is important to note that Boeing settled for 2.5 billion in which it is agreed that "...the misconduct by its former employees was “neither pervasive across

by dsq 5y ago

It is important to note that Boeing settled for 2.5 billion in which it is agreed that "...the misconduct by its former employees was “neither pervasive across the organization, nor undertaken by a large number of employees, nor facilitated by senior management". (https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-reaches-2-5-billion-settlement-of-u-s-probe-into-737-max-crashes-11610054729 https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-reaches-2-5-billion-sett...). So remember, when push comes to shove, the technical lead always gets thrown to the wolves while management goes "we don't know about that technical stuff". Not to detract in any way from what he is culpable for.

soylentnewsorg 5y ago
I took a gig at a hospital. They got an MBA Karen with 3 years of experience. She learned the very basics of IT, then started micromanaging. As in, she'd tell you what switches to put on CLI commands. If you said that's wrong, or would cause data corruption - you're not a team player. The entire team of 18 people were not team players - the team consisted of her alone. One time, she told me to do something very dangerous during a data migration. Not a best practice, and a big no-no. I'm seeing open files randomly spread across about 50 NAS shares which should according to her be offline - retired apps. It would take time to identify those, notify people, etc. She has deadlines to meet. You see, this migration that's been put off time and again for 2 years, needs to be finished in about a month, because when she was hired, she made that promise to her boss - without knowing anything about the apps, how much data, what users, etc. I talked to her over chat, saved the chat, warned her about all the dangers and was told to proceed. It brought down a clinic, resulted in some data loss, and affected patients. Next migration batch, she asks me to do it again. With a phone call. I ask for it in writing, she refuses. I added the phone call notes to the servicenow change control ticket, put risk as high, and said I need a note in the ticket from her telling me to proceed despite risk. A week later I'm on suspension for disobeying my manager. HR tells me they will be getting in touch with me to get the details of what happened. I enjoy my paid week off while HR investigates the complaint - they need a full week because they review so much. at 4pm, the day before the week is over, the HR rep calls me and asks be about what happened. At 9am the next day I'm fired. I file for unemployment and get a corp to corp contract to a company I'm part owner in (contract to the company, not to me). They dispute it, saying I was fired for my attitude, and was written up many times. Both false - I turn over the details - saved chats, emails, a phone call I recorded, etc to the UI officer. The next day my unemployment is approved, and I'm collecting unemployment weekly, while collecting dividends from the company I own for its c2c contract. I do however reply to one email per day from an indian recruiter - I pick ones with names I can't pronounce. They do the needful and submit me to one position per day with "their client." Why only indian recruiters? Because they are a minority and I don't discriminate. This is a Boeing engineer being thrown under the bus by management. Here's what needs to happen: the engineer is guilty. I was guilty too when the first time I ran the destructive script, despite being told to do that in writing. The engineer is like a nazi soldier. Both the soldier, and his boss, and anyone up the chain who approved or pushed for this, need to be on the receiving side of that courtroom.
- scns 5y ago
  "The fish smells from the head" - turkish proverb
  - chopin 5y ago
    A German as well ("Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf her").
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - VBprogrammer 5y ago
    I believe the anglicised equivalent is "The fish rots from the head."
- nuerow 5y ago
  Thank you for taking the time to write such a insightful post. Some lessons are invaluable, and I believe this is one of them.
- Chyzwar 5y ago
  Depending on country/state you could possibly sue for wrongful termination. In addition, you could send your story to media or contact someone higher in the food chain of the company.
  - soylentnewsorg 5y ago
    I reported them to OSHA and to the state health authority. This was a while ago. I got reminded of it today and posted the story because I had a call this week asking me to send in written testimony in addition to the form I filled out. Wrongful termination is a no-go. I talked to a literal slew of lawyers. The amount I'd be looking to recover would be probably the cost of court. Also chump change compared to my overall income, so not worth my time. Now, as far as media - no one died, no one was greatly impacted - probably not very interesting, and very technical. There was an outage for a day, records of a couple of hours of data (5-10 patient visits) was lost. Now, as far a "higher up the food chain" - I got a rant here about my 20+ years of experience in corporate america. The guy up the food chain took a chance (saved money on salaries) by hiring a manager of an 18 person team, who has literally had 3 years of work experience. That was a bad decision. He (my boss's boss) doesn't want his boss, (my boss's boss's boss), to see this bad decision. So he's going to protect her until someone dies and he throws her under the bus. This is just a fact of life. I've been at several hospitals over many years. All the IT people care greatly about patient care. The management is willing to have deaths on their hand to shave a day off a project. Management at hospitals are people who shouldn't be allowed near medical care. The higher up the chain you go, the closer you get to the money, the closer you get to the purpose of the hospital: pretend you're losing money while underpaying and overworking staff, and scamming sick people. Think about it: you are a supplier. Your demand curve is inelastic. Your customers don't know the price before they buy. Now, what kind of people is this type of corporation going to attract? The worst of the worst.
KennyBlanken 5y ago
It's possible this is the initial charge to get them in the door with search warrants and subpoenas and testimony because someone dropped a dime with some info that there were criminal acts not know to the government at the time, not covered by the settlement. I doubt the settlement was a "you're pardoned for ALL acts related to 737 MAX." A refresher since this happened so long ago: Airbus was eating Boeing's 737 sales for lunch. Boeing management wanted to put better engines on the plane to get those sales back. But the better engines were bigger, and that meant they couldn't just swap them out and call it a day. So they moved the engine position. Well, when you move heavy shit around on a plane that also happens to be the thing generating thrust, you change a lot of stuff about the plane - its center of gravity, how the plane behaves when that thrust is applied (think torque steer but for planes) and aerodynamics. The plane became aerodynamically unstable in certain conditions. Hence the need to add fly-by-wire systems and sensors. Except...they also cheaped out on both the number of sensors and even the frigging lightbulbs to warn pilots of sensor error. The shit Boeing has gotten away with over the years boggles the mind. At one point the NSA got caught doing industrial espionage against Airbus for them!
- foldr 5y ago
  Fly by wire isn’t really the right term here. Fly by wire means that control inputs are transmitted to actuators via an electrical signal (rather than by a hydraulic or mechanical connection). As far as I know, the 737 MAX retains conventional primary flight controls. Lots of airliners with conventional flight controls also have various forms of artificial stability that modify pilot inputs (such as yaw dampers).
  - l33tman 5y ago
    The trim can be controlled by an electrical motor in the 737, and the MCAS system in question here controls that motor, so you could argue its part of a FBW system (but I guess normally you refer to the main flight surfaces which are not FBW in the 737 like you say).
    - foldr 5y ago
hef19898 5y ago
Boeing got away with that, VW tried and didn't. I would prefer companies not getting away with these settlements.
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  That might be because VW wasn't US-based, but Boeing is.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    That might have played a role. Plus Boeing, as part of duopoly on commercial aircraft, seems to be a lot more important than a simple, regardless of size, car maker.
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  I think they did (UK).
cryptica 5y ago
I was thinking this too. Seems to be a pattern since Volkswagen scandal; blame the rank and file employee... As if the employee had any incentive at all to lie about the performance of the plane. This is disgusting. The directors who pressured the employee to lie and then tried to use them as a scapegoat should be jailed for life.
- dsq 5y ago
  I also thought of VW in this context. The idea that the managers only set policy and it's up to the engineers to figure it out, lesving management with "plausible deniability".
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by dsq 5y ago

soylentnewsorg 5y ago

I took a gig at a hospital. They got an MBA Karen with 3 years of experience. She learned the very basics of IT, then started micromanaging. As in, she'd tell you what switches to put on CLI commands. If you said that's wrong, or would cause data corruption - you're not a team player. The entire team of 18 people were not team players - the team consisted of her alone. One time, she told me to do something very dangerous during a data migration. Not a best practice, and a big no-no. I'm seeing open files randomly spread across about 50 NAS shares which should according to her be offline - retired apps. It would take time to identify those, notify people, etc. She has deadlines to meet. You see, this migration that's been put off time and again for 2 years, needs to be finished in about a month, because when she was hired, she made that promise to her boss - without knowing anything about the apps, how much data, what users, etc. I talked to her over chat, saved the chat, warned her about all the dangers and was told to proceed. It brought down a clinic, resulted in some data loss, and affected patients. Next migration batch, she asks me to do it again. With a phone call. I ask for it in writing, she refuses. I added the phone call notes to the servicenow change control ticket, put risk as high, and said I need a note in the ticket from her telling me to proceed despite risk. A week later I'm on suspension for disobeying my manager. HR tells me they will be getting in touch with me to get the details of what happened. I enjoy my paid week off while HR investigates the complaint - they need a full week because they review so much. at 4pm, the day before the week is over, the HR rep calls me and asks be about what happened. At 9am the next day I'm fired. I file for unemployment and get a corp to corp contract to a company I'm part owner in (contract to the company, not to me). They dispute it, saying I was fired for my attitude, and was written up many times. Both false - I turn over the details - saved chats, emails, a phone call I recorded, etc to the UI officer. The next day my unemployment is approved, and I'm collecting unemployment weekly, while collecting dividends from the company I own for its c2c contract. I do however reply to one email per day from an indian recruiter - I pick ones with names I can't pronounce. They do the needful and submit me to one position per day with "their client." Why only indian recruiters? Because they are a minority and I don't discriminate. This is a Boeing engineer being thrown under the bus by management. Here's what needs to happen: the engineer is guilty. I was guilty too when the first time I ran the destructive script, despite being told to do that in writing. The engineer is like a nazi soldier. Both the soldier, and his boss, and anyone up the chain who approved or pushed for this, need to be on the receiving side of that courtroom.

scns 5y ago
"The fish smells from the head" - turkish proverb
- chopin 5y ago
  A German as well ("Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf her").
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- VBprogrammer 5y ago
  I believe the anglicised equivalent is "The fish rots from the head."
nuerow 5y ago
Thank you for taking the time to write such a insightful post. Some lessons are invaluable, and I believe this is one of them.
Chyzwar 5y ago
Depending on country/state you could possibly sue for wrongful termination. In addition, you could send your story to media or contact someone higher in the food chain of the company.
- soylentnewsorg 5y ago
  I reported them to OSHA and to the state health authority. This was a while ago. I got reminded of it today and posted the story because I had a call this week asking me to send in written testimony in addition to the form I filled out. Wrongful termination is a no-go. I talked to a literal slew of lawyers. The amount I'd be looking to recover would be probably the cost of court. Also chump change compared to my overall income, so not worth my time. Now, as far as media - no one died, no one was greatly impacted - probably not very interesting, and very technical. There was an outage for a day, records of a couple of hours of data (5-10 patient visits) was lost. Now, as far a "higher up the food chain" - I got a rant here about my 20+ years of experience in corporate america. The guy up the food chain took a chance (saved money on salaries) by hiring a manager of an 18 person team, who has literally had 3 years of work experience. That was a bad decision. He (my boss's boss) doesn't want his boss, (my boss's boss's boss), to see this bad decision. So he's going to protect her until someone dies and he throws her under the bus. This is just a fact of life. I've been at several hospitals over many years. All the IT people care greatly about patient care. The management is willing to have deaths on their hand to shave a day off a project. Management at hospitals are people who shouldn't be allowed near medical care. The higher up the chain you go, the closer you get to the money, the closer you get to the purpose of the hospital: pretend you're losing money while underpaying and overworking staff, and scamming sick people. Think about it: you are a supplier. Your demand curve is inelastic. Your customers don't know the price before they buy. Now, what kind of people is this type of corporation going to attract? The worst of the worst.

KennyBlanken 5y ago

It's possible this is the initial charge to get them in the door with search warrants and subpoenas and testimony because someone dropped a dime with some info that there were criminal acts not know to the government at the time, not covered by the settlement. I doubt the settlement was a "you're pardoned for ALL acts related to 737 MAX." A refresher since this happened so long ago: Airbus was eating Boeing's 737 sales for lunch. Boeing management wanted to put better engines on the plane to get those sales back. But the better engines were bigger, and that meant they couldn't just swap them out and call it a day. So they moved the engine position. Well, when you move heavy shit around on a plane that also happens to be the thing generating thrust, you change a lot of stuff about the plane - its center of gravity, how the plane behaves when that thrust is applied (think torque steer but for planes) and aerodynamics. The plane became aerodynamically unstable in certain conditions. Hence the need to add fly-by-wire systems and sensors. Except...they also cheaped out on both the number of sensors and even the frigging lightbulbs to warn pilots of sensor error. The shit Boeing has gotten away with over the years boggles the mind. At one point the NSA got caught doing industrial espionage against Airbus for them!

foldr 5y ago
Fly by wire isn’t really the right term here. Fly by wire means that control inputs are transmitted to actuators via an electrical signal (rather than by a hydraulic or mechanical connection). As far as I know, the 737 MAX retains conventional primary flight controls. Lots of airliners with conventional flight controls also have various forms of artificial stability that modify pilot inputs (such as yaw dampers).
- l33tman 5y ago
  The trim can be controlled by an electrical motor in the 737, and the MCAS system in question here controls that motor, so you could argue its part of a FBW system (but I guess normally you refer to the main flight surfaces which are not FBW in the 737 like you say).
  - foldr 5y ago

hef19898 5y ago

Boeing got away with that, VW tried and didn't. I would prefer companies not getting away with these settlements.

fxtentacle 5y ago
That might be because VW wasn't US-based, but Boeing is.
- hef19898 5y ago
  That might have played a role. Plus Boeing, as part of duopoly on commercial aircraft, seems to be a lot more important than a simple, regardless of size, car maker.
FridayoLeary 5y ago
I think they did (UK).

cryptica 5y ago

I was thinking this too. Seems to be a pattern since Volkswagen scandal; blame the rank and file employee... As if the employee had any incentive at all to lie about the performance of the plane. This is disgusting. The directors who pressured the employee to lie and then tried to use them as a scapegoat should be jailed for life.

dsq 5y ago
I also thought of VW in this context. The idea that the managers only set policy and it's up to the engineers to figure it out, lesving management with "plausible deniability".

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]