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Bad analogies won't help anyone. Did the CEO believe his people were incompetent to develop and verify the software?

consp 2y ago
> Did the CEO believe his people were incompetent to develop and verify the software? Did the CEO create the culture in which they could not despite being able to?
- vmladenov 2y ago
  IIUC the decisions that led to the 737 Max happened under the prior CEO Muilenburg. Calhoun is just the fall guy. He wasn’t even CEO when the crashes happened. He should bear responsibility for the door plugs, though.
close04 2y ago
Analogies don't have to be perfect unless you don't want see inconvenient arguments. Boeing CEO(s) shot hundreds of people in the head and then claimed they had no idea the gun was loaded and the safety was off. "My assistants said it's fine to point and shoot". It's not about the result or what the CEO "believes", it's about what they reasonably did to avoid bad outcomes. Did the CEO do anything to be certain his people are competent, or that an incompetent person cannot tank the quality of the product? Did they take any reasonable measures, implemented checks, ordered audits, spent more to prioritized safety and quality? The CEO has the highest executive authority and the highest pay. This means the highest level of accountability. Until the shit hits the fan, or the ground, and then the employees were incompetent, the processes were weak, the consultants that weren't picked by the CEO said it's all good. The reason they get away with this isn't that the law protects them, it's that they fill pockets and buy laws to protect them. Random "Empty Pockets" Joe won't get a pass for building something that kills people because they didn't bother to verify anything.
pyrale 2y ago
Your question is also far from the mark. Plenty of people have to respect a much higher standard of accountability: did the CEO take actions to ensure that proper adherence to industry standard was respected? Which processes were put in place to ascertain the continued respect of these standards? In many jobs, incompetence will get you in jail. Sure, sometimes your reports go out of their way to conceal issues, but aside from extreme cases, a CEO should have to show what they did to prevent issues, and merely "believing" should land them in jail.

> Did the CEO believe his people were incompetent to develop and verify the software? Did the CEO create the culture in which they could not despite being able to?

vmladenov 2y ago
IIUC the decisions that led to the 737 Max happened under the prior CEO Muilenburg. Calhoun is just the fall guy. He wasn’t even CEO when the crashes happened. He should bear responsibility for the door plugs, though.

close04 2y ago

Analogies don't have to be perfect unless you don't want see inconvenient arguments. Boeing CEO(s) shot hundreds of people in the head and then claimed they had no idea the gun was loaded and the safety was off. "My assistants said it's fine to point and shoot". It's not about the result or what the CEO "believes", it's about what they reasonably did to avoid bad outcomes. Did the CEO do anything to be certain his people are competent, or that an incompetent person cannot tank the quality of the product? Did they take any reasonable measures, implemented checks, ordered audits, spent more to prioritized safety and quality? The CEO has the highest executive authority and the highest pay. This means the highest level of accountability. Until the shit hits the fan, or the ground, and then the employees were incompetent, the processes were weak, the consultants that weren't picked by the CEO said it's all good. The reason they get away with this isn't that the law protects them, it's that they fill pockets and buy laws to protect them. Random "Empty Pockets" Joe won't get a pass for building something that kills people because they didn't bother to verify anything.

pyrale 2y ago

Your question is also far from the mark. Plenty of people have to respect a much higher standard of accountability: did the CEO take actions to ensure that proper adherence to industry standard was respected? Which processes were put in place to ascertain the continued respect of these standards? In many jobs, incompetence will get you in jail. Sure, sometimes your reports go out of their way to conceal issues, but aside from extreme cases, a CEO should have to show what they did to prevent issues, and merely "believing" should land them in jail.