Because when you're a DER (Designated Engineering Representative), you're still getting your paycheck from Boeing, and being a fussy DER is not a fast track to

Because when you're a DER (Designated Engineering Representative), you're still getting your paycheck from Boeing, and being a fussy DER is not a fast track to success. I can't lay down too much more specifics, but anecdotally, that's how things go, and not just at Boeing either. Seen it at a lot of suppliers too. You're a "good" DER, or you're on the short list next round of layoffs[1]. DERs have been getting more and more sign off authority on increasingly critical core airworthiness systems, stuff no one would have dreamed of delegating to a DER twenty years ago. The actual full time agency people, well, depends on how much they're fishing for a corner office. But by and large, they were hardasses, thank God. All three of them. Particularly the EUROCAE Dutch guys. Whew! But none of this is important as the Boeing culture, which . . ehhhhhhyyyyuuuuuchhh . . could use some improvements. To phrase it one way. [1] There's always layoffs, good times and bad, because everything is funded contract to contract, week to week. I had a goddamn amazing analog engineer get pink slipped, packed his stuff, and then - after all that - he got called back before he got his boxes in the car. "Whoops! We didn't mean it! Turns out no one else in the universe knows how to do this!". Luckily, he was a canny old gent, and responded with a well-deserved, "Sure. I'll come back in. But it's gonna cost ya".