4 ms·

A lot of HN commenters seem to think that people don't care about their customers' wellbeing. What an attitude. That's their attitude during working hours too?

• ruined 3y ago
  yeah that's my attitude during working hours. maybe a person cares, but a corporation can't. i expect a corporation cares about making money, and to some extent that correlates with not killing me, but who knows. the code i write at work is open.
  • Aaargh20318 3y ago
    > maybe a person cares, but a corporation can't A corporation is a legal fiction. It doesn't actually do anything, it doesn't make decisions. The people who work for the corporation do. Liability should not stop with the corporation but with the actual human beings making the decisions.
    • ruined 3y ago
      a corporation doesn't do anything the same way a crowd in the street doesn't do anything. which is to say, watch out
    • lupire 3y ago
      You are not exhibiting nonlinear-systems thinking. A corporation is not purely hierarchical. Effects are very diffuse from decisions. Humans don't control things; humans interact with things.
• formerly_proven 3y ago
  Probably projection. Maybe also motivated by office jobs having tons of people freeloading and genuinely not giving a fuck, which just doesn't work in labor jobs.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• justanorherhack 3y ago
  You are blaming the wrong party. They’ve gotten that perspective from experience not thought vacuum. There are many industries, commercial airlines included that do not have competitive capitalist environments. There are typically 3-5 big players, typically heavily in bed with the gov whose incentives aren’t aligned. Telco, domestic automakers, insurance come to mind initially. There is also a corporate greed, which is leaking into tech with commoditization, problem in America where fewer and fewer companies treat their employees as assets and rather treat them as cogs. People are loosing their tolerance.
  • AlexandrB 3y ago
    > There are typically 3-5 big players, typically heavily in bed with the gov whose incentives aren’t aligned. Things are just as bad in big tech. Ever tried to get support from Google? Many modern companies cut customer support to the bare minimum. Then there's stuff like the 23andMe saga (also on the front page of HN right now), where the company actively blames their customers for their fuck up.
    • JohnFen 3y ago
      Yep. Heck I am a part of the tech industry and have pretty much lost all trust in the tech industry. It's hard to see and experience widespread misbehavior without beginning to expect it.
  • wbl 3y ago
    The airlines are one of the few industries where almost everyone comparison shops for each and every purchase. The list of airline bankruptcies is very very long as are the new entrants. Sure if you fly to some very small destinations you will have very limited choices, but almost definitionally that's a small fraction of the total trips.
    • PaulHoule 3y ago
      It's a very limited and stilted kind of competition. One of the few real bright spots is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiant_Air https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegiant_Air which works on a fundamentally different model from other airlines (limited network, fewer flights per week.) It is getting harder and harder to see the difference between traditional airliners like Delta and "low cost" airlines like Southwest. People do compare prices on competitive routes. Airlines, in the US at least, try pretty hard not to compete on quality and the mediocrity of the 737 is part of that. Every other commercial airliner built today has a modern fly by wire system which can accomplish what MCAS was supposed to do in a safe way. The 737 is noisy for its size https://www.aviationfile.com/noise-pollution-levels-by-aircraft-types/ https://www.aviationfile.com/noise-pollution-levels-by-aircr... not just in the passenger cabin and on the ground but particularly in the cockpit (years back I wrote a comment on an av blog about the noisy 737 and pilots joined in.) The 737 struggles to take off under good conditions and has to be grounded under conditions that other airliners handle easily. The 737 also lacks the anti-turbulence feature of the A320 which uses the fly-by-wire system to smooth out the ride. People are so used to the dismal 737 and only somewhat better A320 that they have a hard time believing that modern airliners like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E-Jet_E2_family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_E-Jet_E2_family can be much smaller but much more comfortable than the 737 but people who fly it become believers, the more people who get to experience them the more people will demand them. They cost less to operate too and being a little smaller could support a more efficient network just as 2-engine widebodies replaced 4-engine widebodies.
• Nihilartikel 3y ago
  I think that -people- care for customer well-being.. but that it's barely cynical to say that a board of a publicly traded company only cares about it insofar as it effects shareholder returns.. and with proper market positioning, customer well-being is barely necessary..
  • usrusr 3y ago
    The board orders subordinates to be safe and cheap. When safety fails to materialize without throwing money at the problem they pretend it's not their fault. What's missing is not care, but commitment. Care without commitment is wishful thinking and I'm sure there's plenty of that.
  • dash2 3y ago
    If an airline is shown to take risks with its passengers' safety, that airline is dead, so here I would expect shareholder returns to do the job very effectively.
    • smcl 3y ago
      Every single flight represents dozens of risks that an airline has calculated and decided are worth taking.
      • dash2 3y ago
        And in calculating that tradeoff I would expect them to weight passenger safety very, very highly, unless they want to go out of business (and possibly be liable for corporate manslaughter and go to jail?)
        • smcl 3y ago
          Yes but there's still a tradeoff, there's no such thing as an airline that takes no risks.
• cmiles74 3y ago
  If Boeing really cared about their customers, they would tighten the bolts on outgoing planes to make sure that they wouldn't lose doors and windows and stuff. Maybe Alaska does really care, but I must confess my first thought was also "cagey PR move." I've seen many products and services clearly making their products worse in order to make more money. Airlines have done similar things with passenger space and various fees, it's not so hard to imagine them cutting corners only to be surprised that they've gone too far and inadvertently impacted airplane safety. Sure they care about customer wellbeing but isn't making money higher on their list of priorities?
  • brookst 3y ago
    It’s too reductive to talk about what “Boeing” thinks and does as if it’s one single entity with a single purpose and complete alignment on all things. The person(s) who failed to tighten bolts could easily have been doing exactly the right thing, for instance if training and documentation were screwed up. Boeing in general seems to have a serious culture problem that we should condemn, but it’s not like the “they” that set cultural norms is the same “they” that’s out there on a supplier’s factory floor with a torque wrench. Being reductive can be a good rhetorical tool, but in this case I think it’s better to view the problem as culture and system rather than a single personality with ill intent.
• usrusr 3y ago
  True. The reality I think is that many of those who do believe that they care just don't actually care as much as they'd have to for a positive effect. Delusion is a strong force.
• deely3 3y ago
  Boeing customers is not people, Boeing customers is airlines.
• elzbardico 3y ago
  Having a cynical world view about everything is seen by some as a status signifier. HN is full of people obsessed about status. Ergo…
  • throwaway167 3y ago
    While I think it is commonplace to assume that, it's just an assumption and I feel HN would be better if we just stuck to known facts and marked hearsay as hearsay.
• sparrowInHand 3y ago
  That is what the feet message and communicate. If they say we do a deathmarch on this project, that is what your managers polished shoes tell the world.