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I've read that he was the token engineer in the see of accountants, MBAs and consultants. Cultural change goes much deeper than changing the CEO. Boeing might

I've read that he was the token engineer in the see of accountants, MBAs and consultants. Cultural change goes much deeper than changing the CEO. Boeing might not be salvageable on the cheap side. Decapitating the company at levels 1-4 may not even be enough. It may require acknowledging that changing the flight envelope and software-patching it was a mistake. This is a major can of worms on itself. This means a plane redesign, 6-8 years delay, and probably another round of WTO-unfriendly subsidy.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> I've read that he was the token engineer in the see of accountants, MBAs and consultants The myth that engineers make better leaders may have originated with Andy Grove. In truth, there is no evidence for the claim. Jack Welch was as much an engineer as an asshole.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Interesting that Grove’s company would go on to provide some of the best evidence that putting an engineer at the wheel is no magic bullet.
- galleywest200 3y ago
  It is not about them being better leaders, but the engineer (hopefully) considering the efficacy of their design over bean counting.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    Having an engineer as CEO can get you dumb decisions like thinking the Pentium4 Netburst architecture and dependency on expensive RAMBUS memory is a great idea.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  >The myth that engineers make better leaders may have originated with Andy Grove. Quite possible, and what's really ironic is that Grove's successor, Craig Barrett (who helped start the company with Grove), also an engineer, was a terrible CEO. He was the one who made a bunch of bad moves: P4/Netburst + RAMBUS, Itanic, refusing to adopt amd64 or make their own x64-64 ISA before AMD, etc. The company did poorly under his leadership and only turned around when his successor, Paul Otellini (an accountant IIRC) took over and moved to the "Core" CPU architecture.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> I've read that he was the token engineer in the see of accountants, MBAs and consultants The myth that engineers make better leaders may have originated with Andy Grove. In truth, there is no evidence for the claim. Jack Welch was as much an engineer as an asshole.

bee_rider 3y ago
Interesting that Grove’s company would go on to provide some of the best evidence that putting an engineer at the wheel is no magic bullet.
galleywest200 3y ago
It is not about them being better leaders, but the engineer (hopefully) considering the efficacy of their design over bean counting.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  Having an engineer as CEO can get you dumb decisions like thinking the Pentium4 Netburst architecture and dependency on expensive RAMBUS memory is a great idea.
shiroiuma 3y ago
>The myth that engineers make better leaders may have originated with Andy Grove. Quite possible, and what's really ironic is that Grove's successor, Craig Barrett (who helped start the company with Grove), also an engineer, was a terrible CEO. He was the one who made a bunch of bad moves: P4/Netburst + RAMBUS, Itanic, refusing to adopt amd64 or make their own x64-64 ISA before AMD, etc. The company did poorly under his leadership and only turned around when his successor, Paul Otellini (an accountant IIRC) took over and moved to the "Core" CPU architecture.