I've just reread this article and it's very good in parts. All the essence about what's gone wrong at Boeing is there but you have to read between the lines a l

I've just reread this article and it's very good in parts. All the essence about what's gone wrong at Boeing is there but you have to read between the lines a little to extract it all (but it's all there). But here I don't want to dwell on the broader issues of why Boeing's in trouble. Instead I've copied a section from the article that quotes a Boeing mechanic who clearly knows what he's talking about. What he says hits the nail exactly on the head. He hones in what I believe is wrong with the management of many Western companies today and it's not just Boeing, unfortunately. Simply, there are too many middle and upper managers—usually Harvard/uni types—who don't have a fucking clue—who don't know one end of a screwdriver from another and they're the ones running companies nowadays. These useless bastards only get in the way. Now I'm not decrying all uni types for the sake of it (as I'm one), but you'll find many of the best engineers and other professionals often have good trade skills or hands-on experience and they know how to get their hands dirty just like everyone else in the skilled workforce. What Boeing's mechanic says in the last paragraph is just so fucking correct that it ought to be etched in stone and put up on a public monument: "…Some veteran union employees at Boeing draw a link between its current issues and a move by the company more than two decades ago to introduce “team leader” managers, replacing a previous system whereby the most senior, experienced factory workers were in charge. “The team leader isn’t picked by his skill on the airplane – he is picked by his relationship with another manager or another person,” said the mechanic. “Now we don’t have team leads who know what’s up.” Today, the managers “doing the thinking have never done physical labor before”, they added. “There’s no way you can learn how to build an airplane in a school on the third floor. There are a lot of things you can learn in the classroom, but building an airplane is not one of them.””