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Former Boeing CEO McNerny hated the "phenomenally talented **holes" in engineering roles and sought to minimize their power or get rid of them . Dreamliner was

Former Boeing CEO McNerny hated the "phenomenally talented **holes" in engineering roles and sought to minimize their power or get rid of them . Dreamliner was delayed and cost 3x the amount to develop as a result. This may be more follow-on from engineering-hostile management.

api 2y ago
There seem to be a ton of business suite types that have active contempt for whoever does the work. They’re always overpaid or lazy or whatever. Meanwhile they will spend endless amounts on consultants and other fluff. It feels somehow related to the political dynamic where things like building infrastructure are seen as wasteful but not… well… massive graft and waste. It’s fine to set money on fire as long as you’re not actually accomplishing anything.
- bluefirebrand 2y ago
  > Meanwhile they will spend endless amounts on consultants and other fluff Preferring consultants over employees is a way for those in charge to quietly practice nepotism and other forms of favor-granting, shuffling money to people loyal to them or as favors to other powerful people who they want to get favors from I'm not saying this is the case 100% of the time, but I think if you could give people a truth serum when they are choosing consultants and ask if any of their friends, family, or personal professional network stand to gain from the contract, many would have to say yes
EnigmaFlare 2y ago
He might be right though. If it's going to be impossible to compete with SpaceX, however talented the engineers are, they can still make money for a while being the backup that the government wants even if they never produce anything that works.
- 7thaccount 2y ago
  How does that make him right? Getting rid of the talented people making new products just means you can only win via regulatory capture.
  - justin66 2y ago
    It was maybe a slightly stronger strategy before their airliners started failing in spectacularly public ways, drawing scrutiny.
  - 627467 2y ago
    You just described exactly what happens. The business and competitive advantage of Primes like Boeing IS regulatory capture. So focusing their operations on it is right call
- lupusreal 2y ago
  Ah, the "we're losers so we should stop trying to do better" mentality. This must be why they pay him the big bucks.
- boricj 2y ago
  That doesn't work with fixed-price contracts and the Starliner is one of those. Boeing's overrun costs in that program aren't covered by the government, they've been hemorrhaging money for a while on it as noted by the article.
akira2501 2y ago
It may be that they just lacked competition for so long that they forgot how to do honest engineering in an exceptionally competitive for-profit environment. Their airline operations were effectively subsidized and protected by the government and the military for years. They know how to manage a regulatory environment. They seem to have forgotten everything else. When you're in a publicly traded company you should expect the engineering environment to be actively hostile, it's a peculiar type of environment, where the balance of stakeholder concerns becomes the primary engineering work and not the end state of the product or feature itself.
- bwanab 2y ago
  It was more like the merger of Boeing - a long time high level engineering company and McDonnell-Douglas - a company that specialized in getting contracts was really a hostile takeover by MD. https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merg...
  - nine_k 2y ago
    One reason to stay private, like Dell or SpaceX, is that a hostile takeover cannot happen.
  - justin66 2y ago
    To someone like me without firsthand knowledge, the problem with a “McDonnell Douglas ruined everything” analysis is that McD’s military products are doing really well.
    - dingaling 2y ago
      McDonnell St Louis ( what's now Boeing defence arm ) was a very different operating unit to Douglas Long Beach where the airliners were built. McD remained an engineering-driven unit whereas Douglas was constantly stymied by accountancy from the early 70s onwards. Douglas lapsed from defence after Ed Heinemann stepped down as chief designer, they had nothing to offer after the A-4. Boeing Defence is still riding on the solid engineering of the McD F-15 and -18 of that era. Plus the AH-64 from another engineering-driven company, Hughes, and the CH-47 from Vertol. Note the distinct lack of Boeing design origins.
pacificmint 2y ago
> cost 3x the amount to develop With cost plus contracts that’s unfortunately a feature and not a bug. I think Boeing has just been unable to pivot to behaving differently for fixed price contracts, which is not surprising given corporate inertia.
- varjag 2y ago
  The 787 was Boeing's own commercial project, what does it have to do with cost plus?
  - moralestapia 2y ago
    Internal corruption. My personal razor, Do not attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by corruption.
  - wahern 2y ago
    Fair point, but OTOH the 787 was financially engineered to put Boeing on the other side of fixed price contracting. If you're on the purchasing side of fixed price you can tell yourself you don't need experienced engineers, similar to when you're on the selling side of cost plus. Plus, if you already have a little fiefdom of fixed price subcontractors, you can fool yourself into believing you can take fixed price contracts on novel work, passing the burden and risk onto subcontractors, taking a slice no matter what. And that's exactly what has happened with Starliner, right? AFAIU, these valves were designed and built by subcontractors. Boeing's biggest role seems to be project management, and maybe some assembly? Except now they're even failing at that.
AnotherGoodName 2y ago
We reward this style of management in the USA unfortunately. Fire talent. Focus on political donations and regulatory capture. Up the C-suite pay and pay high dividends (the dividend was only just very recently cut) whilst taking government handouts. I think the USA is going to hit a hard wall across all sectors allowing this type shit to go on for so long. Reminds me of the eBay exec steve wymer who said they’ll crush critics of the c suite leading to extreme harassment of journalists. That guy is now more employed than ever because who wouldn’t want such a person on their board in the current operating mode of USA c-suites. Fucking depressing and glaring and anti-American yet we don’t just allow this. We reward it.
- dividefuel 2y ago
  What are some changes that we could make that would discourage it?
  - AnotherGoodName 2y ago
    The political donation system is a good place to start. There’s no way to read corporate donations to lobby groups as anything other than bribery for favourable laws. Why even run a good business when you can just get handouts.
    - dmvdoug 2y ago
      Good luck amending the First Amendment.
      - Jensson 2y ago
        First amendment doesn't say that money is speech, sending politicians money shouldn't be protected by the first amendment. Politicians likes to receive money though so of course they say money is speech. I wonder when they say that bribing politicians is speech as well so there can't be laws against direct bribes.
        2y ago
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I don’t doubt that prioritizing leadership with a finance background over engineering is a huge contributor. But friends who worked on the Dreamliner also complained about the cliques of older long time Boeing engineers that seemed to do little work, and contributed little to innovation. They also pointed out the inefficiencies and internal politics of union labor that showed up on the assembly line, with redundant staffing and aggressive territorial attitudes creating serious limitations. These issues aren’t talked about in news or social media, but they matter and I think it would be odd to pin everything just on executives.
- lovich 2y ago
  Their compensation is arbitrarily high because they are responsible for the results of the business. If the rewards are being pinned on them then why wouldn’t responsibility?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- sonofhans 2y ago
  Consider that you’re not describing an “old guard engineer” problem but a management problem. People will behave as they are motivated. Good management would detect that and shut it down, redirect the energy somewhere productive.
- dccoolgai 2y ago
  It would be odd, if the executives weren't paid 300x what the union assembly line workers were... This "heads they win tails we lose" system is the thing that seems odd. They make millions on the theory that they take responsibility for things... If the union guys aren't doing their job: fix it. If some engineers aren't doing their job: fix it. Otherwise what are they getting paid so much for?
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    You can’t just “fix” the union situations because of how the labor relations act (and other legislation at different levels) limits the speech and actions of corporations. A union basically creates a monopoly around labor within the company, and that monopoly creates rules that result in benefits for members at the expense of the company. And overcoming that is hard unless you resort to things like outsourcing, which happened to significant portions of the Dreamliner despite how awkward it was. The ideal fix would be to have competitive in house labor without these restrictions. Also I don’t think executive pay has any relation to what I am alleging, which is that part of the blame lies on old boys clubs and unions. Executive pay is determined by its own market of supply and demand. Sure they get some of the blame but there are limits to what is possible even for the best of executives. Also consider that the sum of executive pay is a lot less than the sum of the assembly line pay, so even by your own logic the responsibility cannot be solely at the top. That said I totally agree that Boeing executives have largely failed, and the choices made by the board in appointing finance people or old guard from other aerospace companies is a big part of the problem.
kristianp 2y ago
The article is about Starliner, not Dreamliner. Just to make that clear for people skimming the comments.
- watersb 2y ago
  Right, so to be super pedantic: Dreamliner is the Boeing 787 passenger jet. Starliner is the spacecraft that has been on orbit for the past month, not cleared to return to Earth due to multiple attitude-control thruster failures.
sidcool 2y ago
Why do managers dislike engineers?

api 2y ago

There seem to be a ton of business suite types that have active contempt for whoever does the work. They’re always overpaid or lazy or whatever. Meanwhile they will spend endless amounts on consultants and other fluff. It feels somehow related to the political dynamic where things like building infrastructure are seen as wasteful but not… well… massive graft and waste. It’s fine to set money on fire as long as you’re not actually accomplishing anything.

bluefirebrand 2y ago
> Meanwhile they will spend endless amounts on consultants and other fluff Preferring consultants over employees is a way for those in charge to quietly practice nepotism and other forms of favor-granting, shuffling money to people loyal to them or as favors to other powerful people who they want to get favors from I'm not saying this is the case 100% of the time, but I think if you could give people a truth serum when they are choosing consultants and ask if any of their friends, family, or personal professional network stand to gain from the contract, many would have to say yes

EnigmaFlare 2y ago

He might be right though. If it's going to be impossible to compete with SpaceX, however talented the engineers are, they can still make money for a while being the backup that the government wants even if they never produce anything that works.

7thaccount 2y ago
How does that make him right? Getting rid of the talented people making new products just means you can only win via regulatory capture.
- justin66 2y ago
  It was maybe a slightly stronger strategy before their airliners started failing in spectacularly public ways, drawing scrutiny.
- 627467 2y ago
  You just described exactly what happens. The business and competitive advantage of Primes like Boeing IS regulatory capture. So focusing their operations on it is right call
lupusreal 2y ago
Ah, the "we're losers so we should stop trying to do better" mentality. This must be why they pay him the big bucks.
boricj 2y ago
That doesn't work with fixed-price contracts and the Starliner is one of those. Boeing's overrun costs in that program aren't covered by the government, they've been hemorrhaging money for a while on it as noted by the article.

akira2501 2y ago

It may be that they just lacked competition for so long that they forgot how to do honest engineering in an exceptionally competitive for-profit environment. Their airline operations were effectively subsidized and protected by the government and the military for years. They know how to manage a regulatory environment. They seem to have forgotten everything else. When you're in a publicly traded company you should expect the engineering environment to be actively hostile, it's a peculiar type of environment, where the balance of stakeholder concerns becomes the primary engineering work and not the end state of the product or feature itself.

bwanab 2y ago
It was more like the merger of Boeing - a long time high level engineering company and McDonnell-Douglas - a company that specialized in getting contracts was really a hostile takeover by MD. https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merger-led-to-the-737-max-crisis https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merg...
- nine_k 2y ago
  One reason to stay private, like Dell or SpaceX, is that a hostile takeover cannot happen.
- justin66 2y ago
  To someone like me without firsthand knowledge, the problem with a “McDonnell Douglas ruined everything” analysis is that McD’s military products are doing really well.
  - dingaling 2y ago
    McDonnell St Louis ( what's now Boeing defence arm ) was a very different operating unit to Douglas Long Beach where the airliners were built. McD remained an engineering-driven unit whereas Douglas was constantly stymied by accountancy from the early 70s onwards. Douglas lapsed from defence after Ed Heinemann stepped down as chief designer, they had nothing to offer after the A-4. Boeing Defence is still riding on the solid engineering of the McD F-15 and -18 of that era. Plus the AH-64 from another engineering-driven company, Hughes, and the CH-47 from Vertol. Note the distinct lack of Boeing design origins.

pacificmint 2y ago

> cost 3x the amount to develop With cost plus contracts that’s unfortunately a feature and not a bug. I think Boeing has just been unable to pivot to behaving differently for fixed price contracts, which is not surprising given corporate inertia.

varjag 2y ago
The 787 was Boeing's own commercial project, what does it have to do with cost plus?
- moralestapia 2y ago
  Internal corruption. My personal razor, Do not attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by corruption.
- wahern 2y ago
  Fair point, but OTOH the 787 was financially engineered to put Boeing on the other side of fixed price contracting. If you're on the purchasing side of fixed price you can tell yourself you don't need experienced engineers, similar to when you're on the selling side of cost plus. Plus, if you already have a little fiefdom of fixed price subcontractors, you can fool yourself into believing you can take fixed price contracts on novel work, passing the burden and risk onto subcontractors, taking a slice no matter what. And that's exactly what has happened with Starliner, right? AFAIU, these valves were designed and built by subcontractors. Boeing's biggest role seems to be project management, and maybe some assembly? Except now they're even failing at that.

AnotherGoodName 2y ago

We reward this style of management in the USA unfortunately. Fire talent. Focus on political donations and regulatory capture. Up the C-suite pay and pay high dividends (the dividend was only just very recently cut) whilst taking government handouts. I think the USA is going to hit a hard wall across all sectors allowing this type shit to go on for so long. Reminds me of the eBay exec steve wymer who said they’ll crush critics of the c suite leading to extreme harassment of journalists. That guy is now more employed than ever because who wouldn’t want such a person on their board in the current operating mode of USA c-suites. Fucking depressing and glaring and anti-American yet we don’t just allow this. We reward it.

dividefuel 2y ago
What are some changes that we could make that would discourage it?
- AnotherGoodName 2y ago
  The political donation system is a good place to start. There’s no way to read corporate donations to lobby groups as anything other than bribery for favourable laws. Why even run a good business when you can just get handouts.
  - dmvdoug 2y ago
    Good luck amending the First Amendment.
    - Jensson 2y ago
      First amendment doesn't say that money is speech, sending politicians money shouldn't be protected by the first amendment. Politicians likes to receive money though so of course they say money is speech. I wonder when they say that bribing politicians is speech as well so there can't be laws against direct bribes.
      - 2y ago

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

I don’t doubt that prioritizing leadership with a finance background over engineering is a huge contributor. But friends who worked on the Dreamliner also complained about the cliques of older long time Boeing engineers that seemed to do little work, and contributed little to innovation. They also pointed out the inefficiencies and internal politics of union labor that showed up on the assembly line, with redundant staffing and aggressive territorial attitudes creating serious limitations. These issues aren’t talked about in news or social media, but they matter and I think it would be odd to pin everything just on executives.

lovich 2y ago
Their compensation is arbitrarily high because they are responsible for the results of the business. If the rewards are being pinned on them then why wouldn’t responsibility?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
sonofhans 2y ago
Consider that you’re not describing an “old guard engineer” problem but a management problem. People will behave as they are motivated. Good management would detect that and shut it down, redirect the energy somewhere productive.
dccoolgai 2y ago
It would be odd, if the executives weren't paid 300x what the union assembly line workers were... This "heads they win tails we lose" system is the thing that seems odd. They make millions on the theory that they take responsibility for things... If the union guys aren't doing their job: fix it. If some engineers aren't doing their job: fix it. Otherwise what are they getting paid so much for?
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  You can’t just “fix” the union situations because of how the labor relations act (and other legislation at different levels) limits the speech and actions of corporations. A union basically creates a monopoly around labor within the company, and that monopoly creates rules that result in benefits for members at the expense of the company. And overcoming that is hard unless you resort to things like outsourcing, which happened to significant portions of the Dreamliner despite how awkward it was. The ideal fix would be to have competitive in house labor without these restrictions. Also I don’t think executive pay has any relation to what I am alleging, which is that part of the blame lies on old boys clubs and unions. Executive pay is determined by its own market of supply and demand. Sure they get some of the blame but there are limits to what is possible even for the best of executives. Also consider that the sum of executive pay is a lot less than the sum of the assembly line pay, so even by your own logic the responsibility cannot be solely at the top. That said I totally agree that Boeing executives have largely failed, and the choices made by the board in appointing finance people or old guard from other aerospace companies is a big part of the problem.

kristianp 2y ago

The article is about Starliner, not Dreamliner. Just to make that clear for people skimming the comments.

watersb 2y ago
Right, so to be super pedantic: Dreamliner is the Boeing 787 passenger jet. Starliner is the spacecraft that has been on orbit for the past month, not cleared to return to Earth due to multiple attitude-control thruster failures.

sidcool 2y ago

Why do managers dislike engineers?