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Boeing chief must have engineering background, Emirates boss says
- nielsbot 3y agoJohn Oliver covered this on Last Week Tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- SkyMarshal 3y agoBoeing needs to go through the reorg process NASA did after Challenger and Columbia. Identify the organizational causes and rework organizational incentives to prioritize safety culture. They've already had two fatal flights and several more serious incidents, it's past time they did this already. https://sma.nasa.gov/news/safety-messages/safety-message-item/lessons-from--challenger https://sma.nasa.gov/news/safety-messages/safety-message-ite...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agoHow about "software engineering". Does that count. :)
- isaacfrond 3y agohttps://archive.is/20240326192857/https://www.ft.com/content/fcacc767-5f05-414e-bebc-61c737764e7b https://archive.is/20240326192857/https://www.ft.com/content...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoSome more discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39827626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39827626
- znpy 3y agoI’m honestly surprised that we now have to praise the saudis for trying to enforce some basic common sense into US corporate world. Kudos to the Emirates boss, I guess?
- cyclecount 3y agothe Emirates boss is Emirati, not Saudi
- joshuaissac 3y agoEmirates itself is Emirati and not Saudi, but the chief mentioned in the article is Tim Clark, who is British.
- solumunus 3y agoThe plot thickens.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- saberience 3y agoEmirates airlines is not a Saudi airline. It’s an Emirati airline for the United Arab Emirates… hence its name.
- xarope 3y agoI think you've mistaken the UAE (United Arab Emirates, flag carriers being Emirates and Etihad) for the KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, flag carrier being Saudia ). These are different countries (and airlines).
- _giorgio_ 3y agoAre they all sand monkeys to you?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hkon 3y agoI think it's too late for them. There is no rewind.
- lukan 3y agoJust as a reminder, the former CEO, Dennis Muilenburg, likely responsible for this mess, does have a engineering background: "He received a bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from Iowa State University, followed by a master's degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Washington." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Muilenburg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Muilenburg So this alone is apparently not enough.
- fleischhauf 3y agoa degree does not help against cheaping out on safety for maximizing profit. Making the head of a company personally responsible might help.
- roenxi 3y agoIt'd help China in their efforts to break in to the sector. You want risk-averse CEOs, increasing the personal risk faced by CEOs will tilt the selection process towards people who are delusional and create incentives for the best people to avoid the job. Fining companies is a much better approach. Companies understand financial signals.
- frodo8sam 3y agoThe long time CEO of ASML, probably one of the most successful engineering companies of the last two decades, is an accountant by training. But if you hear him speak it's all about the quality of the product and delivering value to the customer. The CEO of Boeing should have his priorities right and be willing to listen to his engineers instead of maximizing profits by reducing cost. What he did in college is not that important in my opinion.
- rldjbpin 3y agoit is easy to use qualifications as a crutch for making excuses about leadership when things don't go well. the same happens for tech founders without a management degree acting as ceo.
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- dsq 3y agoIt's depressing how quickly the move has been from thriving Republic to downfall with very little actual Empire in the middle. The Romans at least got to enjoy a couple hundred years of wine, revelry and decadence before things broke down completely.
- bbsimonbb 3y agoThis is worth meditating! The American empire, like the British before it and the other european while we're at it, are flashes in the pan compared to the Romans, the Byzantines, the Ottomans. It could be that hypocrisy, racism and just wanting the oil/diamonds/gold/consumers is not a formula for lasting success.
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoDepressing, perhaps, if you're part of the nobility. Heartening, perhaps, of you're one of the workers building the palaces of revelry but never getting to enjoy them. Essentially, society is highly inequitable, instability is to be expected and is probably only a negative if you're living it up. If you're part of the higher classes gaining rent -- in any form -- from others needs then you'd probably want this 'empire' to live for ever. Under it all lies greed, and over-population.
- lupusreal 3y agoIf you think America's administrative competency crisis will make things better for workers, I'd like some of what you're smoking.
- OfficeChad 3y ago[dead]
- FredPret 3y agoWhere do people get these class warfare talking points? Is there a new wave of teenagers discovering Das Kapital and then saying stuff like this online?
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- IshanMi 3y agoPersonally, I think the issue isn't one of degrees or qualifications, but rather one of values. The CEO prior to this one (Muilenburg) also had degrees in Aerospace Engineering, but chose to value profit maximization over things like security and a good engineering culture. Innocent people had to pay the price for it.
- colinng 3y agoAre we reading the same sources? The ex-CEO, David Calhoun, has a degree in accounting. https://www.boeing.com/company/bios/david-l-calhoun https://www.boeing.com/company/bios/david-l-calhoun > Calhoun has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Virginia Tech.
- Andoryuuta 3y agoThe former CEO does (Dennis Muilenburg), but not David Calhoun.
- IshanMi 3y agoYou're right about Calhoun- I was actually referring to Dennis Muilenburg, the CEO who was fired in 2019 after the two 737 MAX crashes and the subsequent groundings. My comment wasn't clear enough- I'll edit it for clarity.
- ibeckermayer 3y agoThe financialization of management at Boeing has been an issue since well before 2019. See: https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=213075 https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=213075
- elygre 3y agoDavid Calhoun is the current CEO until the end of the year.
- p_l 3y agoThe CEOs that triggered various financialization moves were engineers by background, too
- RecycledEle 3y agoI predict they will hire someone who has an "engineering background" but who genuinely can not take the first derivative of y=x in their head.
- pi-err 3y agoAn engineer in chief is not necessarily the best way to grow an engineering driven culture.
- holoduke 3y agoIt is. People without that background will never understand its culture.
- oldpersonintx 3y ago[dead]
- _giorgio_ 3y agoCEOs don't like this fact, because it severely limits their career opportuninties. In Italy we had Marchionne more or less an insurance salesman. He lead FIAT group into oblivion, he tried to clear the books by simply canceling the development of a car model. Instead, he destroyed the company.
- ponector 3y agoDestroyed? Other says he saved it. Financial Times considered Marchionne as having been "one of the boldest business leaders of his generation".
- fransje26 3y agoI have no doubt that before the first MAX crash, the Financial Times was gushing about how great a value the Boeing stock was, with the order books being full for the years to come...
- _giorgio_ 3y agoWell, order books are probably really full because for an Airline it is cheaper to pay for the death of the customers than to pay for the training of 3000 pilots and technicians and finally switching from Boeing to Airbus. Fight Club vibes.
- _giorgio_ 3y agoLOL no. The brand in practice doesn't exist anymore, it has been merged. The most important thing about the guy: he didn't like electric cars. Such a small man. Sorry for the italian page: https://www.panorama.it/economia/panda-punto-bravo-modelli-flop-marchionne https://www.panorama.it/economia/panda-punto-bravo-modelli-f...
- hayst4ck 3y agoI've started to bring up Admiral Rickover's speech Doing a Job in all of the Boeing threads because he is just so relevant. Admiral Rickover was the man responsible for America having nuclear submarines. https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm https://govleaders.org/rickover.htm The speech is well worth a read in its entirety and it feels prescient in regards to Boeing. I think this paragraph more than any other hits at the core problem at Boeing: > Unless the individual truly responsible can be identified when something goes wrong, no one has really been responsible. With the advent of modern management theories it is becoming common for organizations to deal with problems in a collective manner, by dividing programs into subprograms, with no one left responsible for the entire effort. There is also the tendency to establish more and more levels of management, on the theory that this gives better control. These are but different forms of shared responsibility, which easily lead to no one being responsible—a problems that often inheres in large corporations as well as in the Defense Department. To contrast here is a statement from Calhoun: “We caused the problem. And we understand that. Over these last few weeks, I've had tough conversations with our customers, with our regulators, congressional leaders, and more. We understand why they are angry, and we will work to earn their confidence,” Calhoun said. That we is him failing to take personal responsibility and choosing instead to spread responsibility to all employees, making no one responsible for the state of Boeing. Boeing needs a leader who will take personal responsibility.
- qznc 3y ago> When I came to Washington before World War II to head the electrical section of the Bureau of Ships, I found that one man was in charge of design, another of production, a third handled maintenance, while a fourth dealt with fiscal matters. The entire bureau operated that way. It didn’t make sense to me. Design problems showed up in production, production errors showed up in maintenance, and financial matters reached into all areas. I changed the system. I made one man responsible for his entire area of equipment—for design, production, maintenance, and contracting. If anything went wrong, I knew exactly at whom to point. I run my present organization on the same principle. Rickover was apparently a fan of simple hierarchies. In contrast, Andy Grove like matrix organisation. From "High Output Management": > It's not because Intel loved ambiguity that we became a hybrid organization. We have tried everything else, and while other models may have been less ambiguous, they simply didn't work. Hybrid organizations and the accompanying dual reporting principle, like a democracy, are not great in and of themselves. They just happen to be the best way for any business to be organized.
- ReptileMan 3y agoOne of the fine things in the Starship Troopers (the book) was that no one can become supreme commander without climbed high in both the army and the navy. You have to know engineering so that engineers can't push you around and you have to know business side so that the bean counters can't push you around. But most important you have to have a person with the right values. Rigid quality control becoming the top priority right now. Also optimizations of the whole development process. Things right now are taking too much time and money.
- pella 3y agoEngineering teaches problem-solving, critical thinking, and a systematic approach to addressing issues—all valuable in developing a strong security culture. A CEO who understands the technical intricacies of aircraft manufacturing is more likely to prioritize safety and security as non-negotiable aspects of the business model.
- KBme 3y ago[flagged]
- thinkingtoilet 3y agoComments like this add nothing.
- throw0101c 3y agohttps://archive.is/XEc8S https://archive.is/XEc8S https://archive.today/XEc8S https://archive.today/XEc8S
- jmorenoamor 3y agoAny chief should be a subject matter expert. Even if its knowledge is partially outdated due to switching to management at some point.
- downut 3y agoGaTech ChE here, married to a very successful GaTech ChE, been battling the financial efficiency wars for a quite a few decades: never met an engineer who couldn't be bought when the downside was (realistically, short term) job security. You get married to a company and job mobility is very constrained. Credentials at the top don't mean that the process culture from the neck down isn't rotten. I quit a cushy, maybe even a galactic set of Gubmint jobs when I was a young whippersnapper because I wanted to go to where the real work was getting done, in the F500 corporate world. Bell Labs, baby. Hahahahahaha.
- albertfredrick 3y agoI need an advice. I am currently processing a crypto recovery,with an agency called,RecoveringATusa .com and we did some transaction validation. Out of 200k USD which was lost they where able to recover 90% of my lost, and I have only received only 60k USD and its been four days already since we started. I am a bit worried, i will like to know if they took the remaining of my money or if it is actually impossible to recover entirely everything i lost.
- lettergram 3y agoBasic question I have yet to have answered - are the planes actually less safe than 10 years ago OR is this a media blitz on the topic? Alternatively, is this a maintenance issue or a construction issue?
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoAll the big companies started with Engineers. It seems companies have a life-cycle. Engineers are at the kick off, growth stage. But later it is accountants or marketing that take lead and then it kind of goes into slow decline. Andy Grove, Intel, comes to mind.
- _heimdall 3y agoDoes the Emirates boss really think that CEOs can and should be directly involved in safety changes? It doesn't take an engineer to see they have safety issues worth fixing, and it doesn't take a CEO to fix them. They just need a CEO with a better prioritization of safety versus profits/losses.