The popular story is when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas in the late 90's, Boeing's engineering-driven culture was replaced with the more financialization

The popular story is when Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas in the late 90's, Boeing's engineering-driven culture was replaced with the more financialization-driven culture from McDonnell execs. The 737-MAX saga was kinda the culmination of when profit-motivated shortcuts bump up against realities of engineering safety margins. I'm sure everyone has their campfire variation on this, tons has been written about it. So yeah on the financial shenanery, but more culture/people-in-charge than conglomeration-megacorp per-se.