3 ms·
> - The government is not a good allocator of funds, free market competition works a lot better for creating the best product. This is irrelevant here; the onl
by lenerdenator 2y ago
> - The government is not a good allocator of funds, free market competition works a lot better for creating the best product.
This is irrelevant here; the only people buying most of the products that Boeing makes are governments or airlines (many of which have government backing, because countries find it advantageous to have an airline). Without government, there's just no Boeing, or SpaceX, or Lockheed Martin, or Airbus, or...
The problem ultimately goes back to 1996 when Boeing was more-or-less taken over by McDonnell-Douglas management, and quality engineering took a back seat to quarterly results. Everything, from bad QA to "greasing the wheels" with lobbyists, ultimately goes back to someone with an MBA deciding that those behaviors were worth it for the stock price increase.
And to be fair, they were... until they weren't. But by then, the guy with the MBA has either left or divested, and it becomes someone else's problem.
SpaceX's success can be in a large part contributed to the fact that they don't have a bunch of retirement and pension funds demanding a chunk of the profits every quarter regardless of actual market space performance.
- Dalewyn 2y ago[flagged]
- nemothekid 2y agoBlackberry's revenue peaked in 2011, and things didn't really appear to be hopeless in 2014, with the iPhone 6. Apple had gone through roughly 3 major hardware revisions (3G, 4, 6) before RIM's hopelessness was reflected in their yearly revenues. I'm not unconvinced that organizational rot in a slower moving company like Boeing took 3 decades to fully spoil the org.
- Dalewyn 2y ago[flagged]
- Angostura 2y agoI think you’re being pretty flippant yourself with the claim that it doesn’t explain anything
- Dalewyn 2y ago[flagged]
- xcv123 2y agoThe McDonnell Douglas takeover is where the shift started. Profit became the priority above quality. Straightforward. Explains most of it.
- stackghost 2y agoI think the point is that "Internet experts" (derogatory) believe they are being knowledgeable and clever when they ascribe any and everything that goes wrong with a Boeing product to McDonnell Douglas. I believe there's also an element of "MBA bad, engineer good" resentment of management at play. But the real truth is much more nuanced, no matter how satisfying it is to drop pithy one-liners about the MD merger.
- Dalewyn 2y ago[flagged]
- throwaway2037 2y agoI like this: "MBA bad, engineer good". As a joke: If you ask an LLM trained on HN discussions to describe, in its best "cave man speak" how to HN views MBA vs engineer, you will get exactly this phrase. It is also crazy to me that people speak as if Boeing is "falling apart", but managed to produce many successful models since the MD merger, including the amazing 787.
- hungie 2y agoI worked at Boeing. The reason people attribute McDonnell Douglas is because it caused a fundamental shift in leadership expectations. It was clear as day on the ground that something had switched, suddenly every conversation was about minimizing cost. Every meeting was about maximizing value. Efficiency above safety. I cannot overemphasize that it really did fundamentally shift the language, the incentives, etc. I started having to prove I needed vms to two different business panels. Sometimes you are right, the root cause is too simple, but I was there for this one. It really was that simple this time.
- idunnoman1222 2y agoLol blackberry fail due to organizational rot and not because apple had bought the global run of next gen touch screens for three years
- nebula8804 2y agoBlackberry failed because they didn't spend 5+ years building a complete mobile OS that carried all the amazing stuff that desktop OS had at the time (top tier, networking, graphics multi tasking etc.). By the time the iPhone launched, all the competitors were already screwed.