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Those problems are systemic. It is the whole system called "Boeing" that is now rotten - and the rot can have extended anywhere and everywhere now. The executi
by aredox 3y ago
Those problems are systemic. It is the whole system called "Boeing" that is now rotten - and the rot can have extended anywhere and everywhere now.
The executive don't care. They earned enough to live rich until the end of their lives. Like locusts, they ate through Boeing's real value (its engineering, its reputation) and can now fly away their bellies full, leaving behind a devastated company.
- aurizon 3y ago[flagged]
- atdrummond 3y agoEmbraer is still an independent company. The merger was a victim of COVID market uncertainty.
- chockablock 3y agoThis fantasy of the line workers getting rich at cushy jobs does not seem to be related to reality?
- ricardobeat 3y agoParent commenter has been drinking gallons of right-wing koolaid. Next thing they’ll probably say is they are going to be forced by the government to share their apartment with an illegal immigrant.
- spamizbad 3y agoI don't know the specifics in the UK, but in the US this was a common belief among a certain political class in the 1960s and 70s. You had skilled blue collar laborers making the equivalent of $30/hr and politicians and some economists felt that was too high. Paul Volcker very famously carried around a card with US autoworker wages printed on it.
- alangibson 3y ago> Thatcher eliminated all this feather bedding and the UK was better for it. You might want to catch up on the last few decades of UK history. To say it's unraveling would be generous. The once mighty British navy can hardly even build working ships anymore.
- netsharc 3y agoThey actually wired a navy ship to go backwards when forwards was ordered.. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/21/royal-navy-warships-crashed-into-each-other-due-to-faulty-rewiring-say-sources https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/21/royal-navy-w...
- HPsquared 3y agoAh, the Ship of State
- heavyset_go 3y agoThere was a BBC special on the Titan submarine before it imploded, and on one of the dives with the camera crew, it got stuck going in circles on the sea floor because the direction buttons on the gamepad used to steer it were incorrectly mapped.
- netsharc 3y agoWell, the Titan was a janky operation, this is the British Navy, it ruled the seas once!
- heavyset_go 3y agoI know, that's why I think it's funny that they both failed in extremely similar ways.
- philk10 3y agoMight also want to read up on the Post Office, Horizon and Fujitsu...
- aredox 3y agoDude, Thatcher was more the kind of person to be on the side of the locust executives that tank a company to cushion their short-term bonuses than on the side of actual workers... Most of the predicament of Boeing is due to the same kind of anti-worker philosophy (nasty cost-cutting, lowering quality, anti-union, moving headquarters away) that Thatcher championed. The UK may have gotten rid of degenerated featherbedded companies, but they only destroyed it, and never rebuilt any excellence. You can extract blood from a stone. Once.
- tlb 3y agoI expect cleaning aircraft factories requires more training and care than cleaning typical industrial facilities. They have to be trained in avoiding foreign object damage, for example. And aircraft assembly has a lot of vertical dimension, so they probably sometimes work on scaffolds with fall arrest harnesses. You can’t just hire the cheapest for that.
- pjc50 3y agoIs there actual evidence of this? It doesn't square with the "obsessed with cost cutting" image elsewhere.
- tcgv 3y ago> The executive don't care. They earned enough to live rich until the end of their lives. Exactly. They care to the extent that they are liable and face the risk of being held accountable, which in corporate America is minimal.
- ThePowerOfFuet 3y ago> Like locusts, they ate through Boeing's real value (its engineering, its reputation) and can now fly away their bellies full, leaving behind a devastated company. If they're smart, on an Airbus.
- hnthrowaway0328 3y agoProbably on a private plane of some sort.
- aredox 3y agoThey're rich. They fly on private jets.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cjrp 3y agoSo long as it's not a BBJ!
- daemin 3y agoWhat's that joke about Software Managers being told to imagine they're on a plane on the ground and then asked if they would remain knowing their teams developed the plane software...
- commandlinefan 3y agoI heard it as an engineering class is on a plane and the pilot announces that the plane they're flying is one designed by the class. All the students run in terror, but the professor stays on the plane. The flight attendant asks, "you have a lot of confidence in your students, don't you?" He says, "no, I know my students, this thing will never get off the ground."
- WesolyKubeczek 3y agoI’d wager it would be an Embraer or Bombardier, they make nice private machines
- somenameforme 3y agoBoeing's a weapons company that makes airplanes on the side. Commercial airplane revenue is now down to 32% of their total. [1] They've just honed in a bit too much on their primary money maker - killing people. [1] - https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/032715/how-boeing-makes-its-money.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/032715/how-boe...
- aredox 3y agoThis kind of degeneracy (normalisation of deviance[0]) is systemic. Expect problems to crop up in Boeing's weapons too sooner or later. I hope the US air force didn't let Boeing self-certify its products as much as the FAA did. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
- jvm___ 3y agoEnshitification
- ghc 3y agoBy law, Boeing must pay the USG for the USG to test and certify equipment produced for the government at one of many test ranges throughout the country. Exactly because companies can't be trusted to meet their contractual obligations. See https://www.test-evaluation.osd.mil https://www.test-evaluation.osd.mil for more info.
- davedx 3y agoIt’s not just Boeing. Their supplier Spirit is a private equity holding.
- odiroot 3y agoAnd no one is gonna dare to hurt Boeing in an election year.
- aaomidi 3y agoThe McKinsey syndrome
- distortionfield 3y agoOne of my managers once said “No one ever got fired for following McKinsey advice” and I’m not sure that it has the positive implications he meant it with at the time.
- aaomidi 3y agoIt's a really easy way of justifying a bad decision. "These smart McKinsey people gave me that advice!" Usually the negative consequences of these decisions happen too far down the line for these managers to be held accountable.
- ActionHank 3y agoI was thinking about the golden parachutes as well. They are in effect an incentive for execs to take bigger and bigger risks to deliver profits. If their gamble pays off, they profit, if their gamble doesn't pay off they profit.
- lumost 3y agoMy understanding is that prior to the 70s most CEOs were effectively ceo for life. They were strongly incentivized to preserve the business, even if that meant keeping it at a low/no growth state. When the MBA and Private Equity craze kicked in, we had golden parachutes and other instruments which pushed companies into growth mode. It is not immediately clear to me that incentivizing short term growth is a wise business strategy for the long term.
- psychlops 3y agoThis comment was interesting until it's weirdly specific anti-executive rant at the end. Is there a specific executive you'd like to name? Do non-executives care more or do they also have full bellies?
- falserum 3y ago> Do non-executives care more On average, executive priorities are different from non-executives. If one hires a plane engineer, one’s filter will be: person who is capable and motivated to engineer a plane. If one hires an executive, return on investment is the metric in focus. So it is safe to say that, on average, non-executives will care slightly more about the safety of the plane. (please notice words “on average” and “slightly”).
- psychlops 3y agoSince we are spitballing without any statistics, I could take the position that the underpaid (and presumably empty bellied) engineer has little motivation to do excellent work or, indeed, any work at all. The executive needs to focus on producing good products since they sell better. But I won't take that position since making up hypothetical arguments isn't a good use of anybody's time.
- mostlysimilar 3y agoWell if we're spitballing, I think a business savvy executive would see a great opportunity cashing in on the good name Boeing built when it was run by engineers. The product will continue to sell for years even as they cut costs, cut corners, and extract as much wealth out of the organization as they can. Said another way, vampires sucking out the blood and leaving an exsanguinated corpse behind.
- psychlops 3y agoUsername checks out.
- 3y ago
- redleggedfrog 3y ago"When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm." Yes, because I'd rather fly in a plane made by a "business" rather than "a great engineering firm." Why in the f*ck isn't this scumbag in prison? When you take a firm that produces a product that must ensure the safety of its users because the consequences are dire and you purposely subvert that, and then people die, you need a long stint of FPMIA prison. Also, cheated on his wife in their Golden Anniversary year. Lowest of the low.
- thot_experiment 3y agoBecause we don't actually believe in holding rich people accountable in America. Wage theft is worse than retail theft, private equity and drug company CEOs kill more people than gang violence. We need to take money/power from rich people much more aggressively. Also while I have some reservations about the expectation of rape as something we joke about, I do love Office Space.
- dang 3y agoOk, but please don't fulminate on HN. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We want curious conversation here. That certainly means not fulminating, as well as not repeating things. You're far from the only one, of course; but this comment was heavily upvoted. In fact it was sitting at the top of the thread, emitting fumes. That's not what HN is for.