26 ms·

Isn't this just confirming a seemingly widely held opinion that the safety culture started to break down after 1997 after the merger with McDonnell Douglas? Se

Isn't this just confirming a seemingly widely held opinion that the safety culture started to break down after 1997 after the merger with McDonnell Douglas? See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26417095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26417095

beowulfey 3y ago
>Isn't this just confirming a seemingly widely held opinion Yes-- this represents formal acknowledgement by a regulatory agency. The hope is that agency can now use this formalization to enforce change within Boeing.
- dclowd9901 3y ago
  And, what, undo capitalism? The motivating forces here are profit, plain and simple. I've come to think that it's not only probable, but _inevitable_ that any growth-oriented, profit-motivated company (read: any company) will reach a point that their only remaining growth path is to undermine quality.
  - Zigurd 3y ago
    Capitalism in practice is an artificial environment. People speak of it as if it is a force of nature, but anywhere it is put into practice it is put into practice in the context of norms and regulations. Undo capitalism is a conversation terminating tactic. If the Jack Welch style of capitalism is failing, it can be changed. For example, there is a national Labor relations board because we don't do this anarchically.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - anadem 3y ago
      > there is a national Labor relations board Unless/until Amazon, Starbucks, SpaceX and Trader Joe’s manage to gut the NLRB with their recent legal challenges.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    Capitalism is a tool, not a force of nature*. It can be channeled, directed and mitigated. That is what regulations and regulatory agencies do. Although of course you need to watch the watchers so they don't get captured. * and even if it were, we channel, direct, and mitigate forces of nature all the time, if not always to great success, or without consequences
    - bumby 3y ago
      >of course you need to watch the watchers I don't cut Boeing much slack, but some of this also falls on the FAA for delegating certain oversight activities to the manufacturer. I assume they do it for manpower reasons (ie there just aren't enough FAA employees to do the job sufficiently).
      - masklinn 3y ago
        I don't think there's any need to cut Boeing any flack to point out that the regulators did fail to do due diligence. It is understandable that regulators would take a lighter hand to a company which has shown good ethics — which was historically the case of Boeing (more of an issue if that is because of not being able to handle the load), it's a problem if they go completely hands off. I don't think the FAA is the sole culprit here either, we've not heard much of non-american regulators. While it makes sense that the FAA would be the primary regulator for Boeing, that regulators would cooperate internationally, and that non-primary regulators would have to be careful e.g. around the risk of being called out for trade restrictions, I still feel non-US regulators should have been a lot more involved with and suspicious of Boeing following the MCAS mess.
        dclowd9901 3y ago
        I’ll take your point a step further: If you ask a company, any company, what the most important aspect of their product is, they’ll proudly crow “the quality of it.” And yet, we still, for some reason, have to deploy the FAA to make sure profits didn’t take a front seat to not killing hundreds of people. The FAA shouldn’t need to exist. It only does because private industry _never_ holds up its end of the bargain. It’s a race to the bottom. Unfortunately it’s not just consumer products that eventually get enshittified, it’s also big things that can kill us (737 Max 8s and Tesla autopilots apparently).
  - iskander 3y ago
    Exceptions so far are Novo Nordisk and CostCo. Not sure if there are many others at scale.
  - GuB-42 3y ago
    > And, what, undo capitalism? No, they just have to make following a safety culture less expensive than not. For example, by conducting proper audits. If not following safety requirements means that new planes are not certified and the others get grounded before it is fixed, then it is going to get more costly for Boeing than doing it right to begin with. That's what regulations are for. And undermining quality is often not profitable. That's because their customers also want to maximize their profits, and a bad plane, one that doesn't last, requires frequent repairs, is unreliable, has a bad reputation with passengers, etc... isn't going to be very valuable. Customers will pay more for a good plane that offers better returns on investment. This is the same for any B2B company. Consumers are a bit easier to fool, especially with good advertising (which is also expensive), but at some point, they too will realize that a brand is worthless.
    - calf 3y ago
      This is reducing culture to money, which I imagine the safety culture theorists anticipated a layperson, misinformed understanding of it.
    - MomoXenosaga 3y ago
      Short term profits. Literally nobody gives a shit anymore what happens to a company ten years in the future. Outsourcing and building the Max fast led to good numbers at the annual shareholder meeting. Arguably it still does because what is anyone going to do? Buy Airbus? They have waiting lists too.
  - hodgesrm 3y ago
    > And, what, undo capitalism? No, just make it very costly to have quality lapses. Capitalism takes care of the rest. When it's effective government regulation makes companies pay for costs that would otherwise be externalized.
  - akira2501 3y ago
    Well, how about, just enforce laws already passed by congress? Monopolies are illegal. They have been for 100 years and it has yet to "undo capitalism."
  - bbor 3y ago
    Undo American capitalism :). A true capitalism would have strong regulations to prevent this sort of thing, and companies that recognize that making bad products is bad for themselves and society in the long run. That said, I hope to god you’re a socialist lol. The stance “capitalism inevitably leads to corner cutting, but it’s still the best we’ve got” would have the potential to literally break my mind with consternation.
- bbor 3y ago
  Does anyone else share my wish that the result of this investigation was “poof no more Boeing”? I don’t understand why corporations can be fundamentally flawed and keep going, where a person in that situation would be prosecuted as a criminal. If Boeing has a bad safety culture because they keep investing unbelievable sums of money into stock buybacks and dividends, so much so that they don’t even have reporting culture… I don’t think they deserve a second chance, and frankly I think the shareholders deserve jail time so I really don’t care if they lose some money. Yes, I know some pension fund somewhere is invested in Boeing. No, I don’t care. Will we ever solve corruption and climate change if we refuse to actually change our ways?
  - falserum 3y ago
    No, we can not solve corruption, because people are greedyand organization needs hierarchy. Regarding climate change I have hope, but again, same greed, kind of would dictate that at best we will slow it down. Whatever you will decide to do with boeing, you will have to make employees, shareholders and numerous clients (incl. Us military) content. Btw. I own a share of a fund which has shares of boeing. Should I go to jail?
    - bbor 3y ago
      people are greedy I think that people are far more culturally and historically specific than they appreciate, so I take claims like this (i.e. non-specific ones about human nature and virtue therein) with a massive grain of salt. I agree in the general sense of the word, of course! Whatever you will decide to do with Boeing, you will have to make employees, shareholders and numerous clients (incl. Us military) content. I totally agree with many of your points re:climate change and hierarchies, but I don't see how that responds to my initial charge: that specific companies that are found systematically guilty of some sort of crime should be forcibly disbanded. What if many of the smart, motivated Boeing engineers would be more productive in a dynamic marketplace of smaller firms? What if there's a warp drive concept lurking in the mind of an underutilized systems analyst deep in the basements of their valley? Investing all these resources, especially public fiscal ones, into a company that has proven again and again to prioritize suicidally negligent, short term, excessively selfish thinking... well, it seems criminally unjust. TL;DR_1: I don't need him, he needs me! I own a share of a fund which has shares of boeing. Should I go to jail? I would separate laborers who have shares as some form of retirement from capitalists who deploy unimaginable sums of money. I know the 1% discourse is tired but the general sentiment is extremely valid: a relatively small group of powerful people pressured the Boeing board to make these decisions. In the paraphrased words of AOC: "..and it's, like, twelve people." Yes, I think the people who lobbied for cost cutting and dividend/buyback programs within the company deserve to be criminally investigated. I am so far from a lawyer and doubt our exact current laws and policies (esp. SEC) would be enough, so the most specific I can get is "charges related to negligence and greed" TBH. But no, I was being unclear when I said "owners" -- not all owners of any amount of the stock are complicit, other than in a broad ethical-consumerism sense. You're on Hacker News, so I have no doubt at all that you're living your life in good faith. TL;DR_2: capitalists != investors
TheCondor 3y ago
Confirms some serious issues in culture. Not sure if confirms the cause of those issues or where/when the infection took hold.
hinkley 3y ago
Really started when Congress decided they were supporting too many aerospace companies and some asshat got the idea that forcing some of them to merge would be a good idea. Spreading manufacturing all over the US is also more to do with getting kore congressional districts “pregnant” than with national defense. In war you want multiple, as in redundant, supply lines so if one is cut, you can source matériel from somewhere else. What we have is multiple, as in single point of failure, supply lines. Lose one and everything collapses.
basseed 3y ago
widely held as you read it in one post on HN?
- zettabomb 3y ago
  Widely held by many in the industry, including those working at Boeing.
- cameroncf 3y ago
  It's been covered for at least the last 5 years by many reputable news orgs. That HN link (you looked at the link right?) includes several refs, and a Google search dozens more.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
schainks 3y ago
Yes, this video also had a great historical breakdown and context about what's going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URoVKPVDKPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URoVKPVDKPU Everything Wendover Productions makes is so helpful!

beowulfey 3y ago

>Isn't this just confirming a seemingly widely held opinion Yes-- this represents formal acknowledgement by a regulatory agency. The hope is that agency can now use this formalization to enforce change within Boeing.

dclowd9901 3y ago
And, what, undo capitalism? The motivating forces here are profit, plain and simple. I've come to think that it's not only probable, but _inevitable_ that any growth-oriented, profit-motivated company (read: any company) will reach a point that their only remaining growth path is to undermine quality.
- Zigurd 3y ago
  Capitalism in practice is an artificial environment. People speak of it as if it is a force of nature, but anywhere it is put into practice it is put into practice in the context of norms and regulations. Undo capitalism is a conversation terminating tactic. If the Jack Welch style of capitalism is failing, it can be changed. For example, there is a national Labor relations board because we don't do this anarchically.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - anadem 3y ago
    > there is a national Labor relations board Unless/until Amazon, Starbucks, SpaceX and Trader Joe’s manage to gut the NLRB with their recent legal challenges.
- masklinn 3y ago
  Capitalism is a tool, not a force of nature*. It can be channeled, directed and mitigated. That is what regulations and regulatory agencies do. Although of course you need to watch the watchers so they don't get captured. * and even if it were, we channel, direct, and mitigate forces of nature all the time, if not always to great success, or without consequences
  - bumby 3y ago
    >of course you need to watch the watchers I don't cut Boeing much slack, but some of this also falls on the FAA for delegating certain oversight activities to the manufacturer. I assume they do it for manpower reasons (ie there just aren't enough FAA employees to do the job sufficiently).
    - masklinn 3y ago
      I don't think there's any need to cut Boeing any flack to point out that the regulators did fail to do due diligence. It is understandable that regulators would take a lighter hand to a company which has shown good ethics — which was historically the case of Boeing (more of an issue if that is because of not being able to handle the load), it's a problem if they go completely hands off. I don't think the FAA is the sole culprit here either, we've not heard much of non-american regulators. While it makes sense that the FAA would be the primary regulator for Boeing, that regulators would cooperate internationally, and that non-primary regulators would have to be careful e.g. around the risk of being called out for trade restrictions, I still feel non-US regulators should have been a lot more involved with and suspicious of Boeing following the MCAS mess.
      - dclowd9901 3y ago
        I’ll take your point a step further: If you ask a company, any company, what the most important aspect of their product is, they’ll proudly crow “the quality of it.” And yet, we still, for some reason, have to deploy the FAA to make sure profits didn’t take a front seat to not killing hundreds of people. The FAA shouldn’t need to exist. It only does because private industry _never_ holds up its end of the bargain. It’s a race to the bottom. Unfortunately it’s not just consumer products that eventually get enshittified, it’s also big things that can kill us (737 Max 8s and Tesla autopilots apparently).
- iskander 3y ago
  Exceptions so far are Novo Nordisk and CostCo. Not sure if there are many others at scale.
- GuB-42 3y ago
  > And, what, undo capitalism? No, they just have to make following a safety culture less expensive than not. For example, by conducting proper audits. If not following safety requirements means that new planes are not certified and the others get grounded before it is fixed, then it is going to get more costly for Boeing than doing it right to begin with. That's what regulations are for. And undermining quality is often not profitable. That's because their customers also want to maximize their profits, and a bad plane, one that doesn't last, requires frequent repairs, is unreliable, has a bad reputation with passengers, etc... isn't going to be very valuable. Customers will pay more for a good plane that offers better returns on investment. This is the same for any B2B company. Consumers are a bit easier to fool, especially with good advertising (which is also expensive), but at some point, they too will realize that a brand is worthless.
  - calf 3y ago
    This is reducing culture to money, which I imagine the safety culture theorists anticipated a layperson, misinformed understanding of it.
  - MomoXenosaga 3y ago
    Short term profits. Literally nobody gives a shit anymore what happens to a company ten years in the future. Outsourcing and building the Max fast led to good numbers at the annual shareholder meeting. Arguably it still does because what is anyone going to do? Buy Airbus? They have waiting lists too.
- hodgesrm 3y ago
  > And, what, undo capitalism? No, just make it very costly to have quality lapses. Capitalism takes care of the rest. When it's effective government regulation makes companies pay for costs that would otherwise be externalized.
- akira2501 3y ago
  Well, how about, just enforce laws already passed by congress? Monopolies are illegal. They have been for 100 years and it has yet to "undo capitalism."
- bbor 3y ago
  Undo American capitalism :). A true capitalism would have strong regulations to prevent this sort of thing, and companies that recognize that making bad products is bad for themselves and society in the long run. That said, I hope to god you’re a socialist lol. The stance “capitalism inevitably leads to corner cutting, but it’s still the best we’ve got” would have the potential to literally break my mind with consternation.
bbor 3y ago
Does anyone else share my wish that the result of this investigation was “poof no more Boeing”? I don’t understand why corporations can be fundamentally flawed and keep going, where a person in that situation would be prosecuted as a criminal. If Boeing has a bad safety culture because they keep investing unbelievable sums of money into stock buybacks and dividends, so much so that they don’t even have reporting culture… I don’t think they deserve a second chance, and frankly I think the shareholders deserve jail time so I really don’t care if they lose some money. Yes, I know some pension fund somewhere is invested in Boeing. No, I don’t care. Will we ever solve corruption and climate change if we refuse to actually change our ways?
- falserum 3y ago
  No, we can not solve corruption, because people are greedyand organization needs hierarchy. Regarding climate change I have hope, but again, same greed, kind of would dictate that at best we will slow it down. Whatever you will decide to do with boeing, you will have to make employees, shareholders and numerous clients (incl. Us military) content. Btw. I own a share of a fund which has shares of boeing. Should I go to jail?
  - bbor 3y ago
    people are greedy I think that people are far more culturally and historically specific than they appreciate, so I take claims like this (i.e. non-specific ones about human nature and virtue therein) with a massive grain of salt. I agree in the general sense of the word, of course! Whatever you will decide to do with Boeing, you will have to make employees, shareholders and numerous clients (incl. Us military) content. I totally agree with many of your points re:climate change and hierarchies, but I don't see how that responds to my initial charge: that specific companies that are found systematically guilty of some sort of crime should be forcibly disbanded. What if many of the smart, motivated Boeing engineers would be more productive in a dynamic marketplace of smaller firms? What if there's a warp drive concept lurking in the mind of an underutilized systems analyst deep in the basements of their valley? Investing all these resources, especially public fiscal ones, into a company that has proven again and again to prioritize suicidally negligent, short term, excessively selfish thinking... well, it seems criminally unjust. TL;DR_1: I don't need him, he needs me! I own a share of a fund which has shares of boeing. Should I go to jail? I would separate laborers who have shares as some form of retirement from capitalists who deploy unimaginable sums of money. I know the 1% discourse is tired but the general sentiment is extremely valid: a relatively small group of powerful people pressured the Boeing board to make these decisions. In the paraphrased words of AOC: "..and it's, like, twelve people." Yes, I think the people who lobbied for cost cutting and dividend/buyback programs within the company deserve to be criminally investigated. I am so far from a lawyer and doubt our exact current laws and policies (esp. SEC) would be enough, so the most specific I can get is "charges related to negligence and greed" TBH. But no, I was being unclear when I said "owners" -- not all owners of any amount of the stock are complicit, other than in a broad ethical-consumerism sense. You're on Hacker News, so I have no doubt at all that you're living your life in good faith. TL;DR_2: capitalists != investors

TheCondor 3y ago

Confirms some serious issues in culture. Not sure if confirms the cause of those issues or where/when the infection took hold.

hinkley 3y ago

Really started when Congress decided they were supporting too many aerospace companies and some asshat got the idea that forcing some of them to merge would be a good idea. Spreading manufacturing all over the US is also more to do with getting kore congressional districts “pregnant” than with national defense. In war you want multiple, as in redundant, supply lines so if one is cut, you can source matériel from somewhere else. What we have is multiple, as in single point of failure, supply lines. Lose one and everything collapses.

basseed 3y ago

widely held as you read it in one post on HN?

zettabomb 3y ago
Widely held by many in the industry, including those working at Boeing.
cameroncf 3y ago
It's been covered for at least the last 5 years by many reputable news orgs. That HN link (you looked at the link right?) includes several refs, and a Google search dozens more.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

schainks 3y ago

Yes, this video also had a great historical breakdown and context about what's going on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URoVKPVDKPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URoVKPVDKPU Everything Wendover Productions makes is so helpful!