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Any Boeing engineers who may be looking for alternate paths, please know that I've known many great aerospace engineers who have made a pivot to medical device
by iancmceachern 2y ago
Any Boeing engineers who may be looking for alternate paths, please know that I've known many great aerospace engineers who have made a pivot to medical devices very successfully and many of the best medical devices to come out in recent years are due to such. It seems very different but really it's very similar.
- bibelo 2y agoor they could come here to Toulouse to work for Airbus ^^
- echelon 2y agoBoeing engineers should leave and start their own company. "American dynamism" is hot right now and there should be ample funding available. Lots of the old dinosaurs are being nipped at by nimble upstarts like Anduril.
- fragmede 2y agoHave you seen how much lambasting Boom Aerospace gets every time they come up? Starting a new aerospace company isn't for the faint of heart!
- sealeck 2y agoI agree but not because "boohoo people aren't nice enough to us" – because it's a tough market to break into with (justifiably) high regulatory scrutiny, high R&D costs and few investors who know what they are doing. It's very natural that any company be subject to scrutiny – this doesn't mean that you shouldn't set up a company or that the environment for setting up a company isn't favourable.
- GuB-42 2y agoWell, Boom is not any aerospace company, they want to make supersonic planes. Supersonic travel is expensive and environmentally unfriendly, and it will probably always be, because it requires more energy, because physics. All that for the minor advantage of saving a couple of hours on select flights. What it means is that it is a privilege for the wealthy (because it is expensive for what you get), at the expense of everyone else (because of the environment). So of course it is going to be unpopular, except to the wealthy in question. It doesn't mean Boom can't be successful because the public opinion is negative, if the rich can pay. I am still not convinced though, after all, Concorde didn't fail technically (and it still flew after that one accident), it failed commercially. Boom is not taking the easy path here, since it is a technically hard problem with a dubious market.
- beaned 2y agoI think that take is a little cynical. If it's only for the rich then the prices will be high. Meaning the capitalist mechanism of resource distribution will be even higher (more paid by the rich received as income by the non-rich). It will also take demand from existing airlines making fares lighter for everyone else. It also employs people. It also drives technology forward. And ultimately it does let people travel in less time, and why wouldn't we want that? To some extent emissions are not as bad as you'd think since they are being emitted over less time in the course of a shorter journey. Success in this category will also drive competition in every metric and work to bring cleaner, shorter flights to everyone over time. There is a lot to love about the idea of supersonic flight.
- AlexandrB 2y ago> It will also take demand from existing airlines making fares lighter for everyone else. That's not how airline economics work. The first class passengers (the ones who could afford to leave for supersonic) subsidize the economy seats[1]. If they left you would probably see worse prices, worse amenities or both. There are airlines that don't have business or first class seats (e.g. Spirit), and they're generally a terrible experience. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-class-vs-coach-a-game-of-square-inches-11556098201 https://www.wsj.com/articles/first-class-vs-coach-a-game-of-...
- beaned 2y agoOn the other hand demand for premium seats would be down, lowering their price and making a nicer ride more accessible. Overall this would net to lower prices for the same distribution of amenities on a given plane ride. Supply and demand theory would seem to suggest that equal supply with lower demand leads to lower prices overall. Supply could of course adjust as more people move to supersonic, but that means more people are now getting a better product than before. And if supply of regular jets remains (they're pretty expensive to just have sit there and not try to use for income), lower-end fares and seat availability invite people at the lower end of the resource spectrum to now buy more plane tickets.
- 2y ago
- WarOnPrivacy 2y ago> much lambasting Boom Aerospace gets If Boom wants respect, they should merge with Sergey Brin's LTA Research. Supersonic airships are the future's future.
- orbisvicis 2y agoSupersonic dirigibles? Isn't that an oxymoron?
- tjpnz 2y agoThey're an aerospace company? It seems I've been confusing them for a lobby group trying to remove urban noise regulations.
- fragmede 2y agoSee what I mean?
- Maken 2y agoI seriously wonder how long it would take for a team of engineers to produce a competitive commercial airplane, from planning to the first prototype, if they started right now. Also, is it viable to produce something like the A320 in low quantities when airlines need fleets in the hundreds?
- badpun 2y agoI remember reading that one engineer spent 6 years designing „ventilation for seats 40-80” on one of the larger Airbuses. It seems like the amount of design and engineering work required for a prototype of a complete aircraft (assuming you buy the engines) is just immense.
- kevindamm 2y agoHow much of that time was actual engineering-tradeoff decision-making and how much of that was working in a large corporation with abundant communication overhead?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- badpun 2y agoI'm betting a lot of that is reviews, approval, documentation, testing, re-testing etc - but it may be required for building a safe aircraft, and for getting it licenced to fly.
- seabird 2y agoFor a safety critical system, the work documenting, explaining, testing, validating, etc. a decision outstrips the work it took to make the decision. It is that way for a very good reason. The problem with it requiring so much work and time isn't that there's BigCorp bureaucracy that needs disrupting, it's that there isn't a problem with the amount of work and time required.
- 2y ago
- zooq_ai 2y agoEngineers always over value their ability to start companies on their own. There is a lot to building a successful company and needs irrationality and risk-taking (not exactly traits of a median engineer). Engineers like Musk, Zuck, Gates are outliers than the norm. If you are a Boeing Engineer and had above average risk-appetite, you wouldn't be stuck in Boeing for 10+ years.
- extraduder_ire 2y agoDo they do any applicable work down in Alabama, or is that just manufacturing?
- coderjames 2y agoThat's who went on strike. "Tens of thousands of machinists voted Thursday to reject a proposed deal between the company and the union." This was the IAW manufacturing folks rejecting a contract, not the SPEEA engineering folks.
- benhurmarcel 2y agoThat's not a great plan if what they're looking for is a higher salary though. Engineering in western Europe doesn't pay nearly as well as in the US.
- mricordeau 2y agoYes but Toulouse is way cheaper than any Tier 1 city in the US and you have to include insurance/health, school cost in the US (I'm from Toulouse and living in the US for more than 10 years). If you make 250k/year in Tier 1 city in the US it's probably as good as making 80k/year in Toulouse.
- Rinzler89 2y agoDon't Boeing engineers also get insurance and 401k from their employer? Plus, they'd have to learn french also. France is not very accommodating to non French speaking foreigners. Trying to get around in life with just English there outside of Paris is not easy.
- benhurmarcel 2y agoThere are quite a few employees in Toulouse that don't speak French, the company is very international. That being said I agree that daily life is much easier if you speak at least a little bit.
- hobs 2y agoThat's funny you say that because my experience of France is that everyone outside of Paris seems to hate the Parisians more than me, an American.
- FireBeyond 2y agoMy experience, although 20ish years ago now, was that France was very accommodating to people who were trying to make an effort to speak French, however badly, and would help correct pronunciations and other little errors, whereas their patience for foreigners who thought that the locals English would get better if they just spoke more loudly and slowly was thin.
- fecal_henge 2y agoThey have nothing Tolouse right now.
- Avshalom 2y agoThat feels like too lousy of a pun to be making when we're talking about peoples lives here.
- fecal_henge 2y agoSorry for boeing so insensitive.
- atlantic 2y agoGood puns. Just out of curiosity, is your name a synonym for sh*tpost?
- fecal_henge 2y agoNo. I get fixated on made up phrases. My wife is horrified by this username.
- gaius_baltar 2y agoJokes on Boeing are ok, they are just people with some loose screws.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- SecretDreams 2y agoConversely, I've seen a lot pivot from aero to auto and flounder. They are kind of opposite industries in terms of pacing and design compromises, as well as the fact that most of a car has to plasticize in crash events which is not a primary consideration in aero.
- Zigurd 2y agoCounterexample: Mulally
- SecretDreams 2y agoI was moreso referring to ICs, but fair point.
- Balgair 2y agoI'll echo this and have done something of this path. It's a very similar field surprisingly. Quite rewarding too. The timelines for products are also about the same (years-decade). The one tip is to not bother applying to Medtronic. They don't actually hire anything outside of interns. All the job postings are for internal roles (but required by federal law to be ... blah blah blah). Suffice to say, don't bother.
- eddd-ddde 2y agoI'm curious. So this company basically only hires newbies and trains them from zero to any role they might need? That's kinda cool.
- behringer 2y agoExcept for the worker that will see stagnant wages.
- mbrameld 2y agoCouldn't they change employers after leveling up their skills?
- ghaff 2y agoI suppose the theory is that people won't see significant pay increases if they stay with the same company (but also presumably that if everyone leaves after training, the company will just stop training workers).
- giantg2 2y agoJoke's on you - my wages are already stagnate.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoIt’s not true, I have many colleagues that have made lateral movements into Medtronic (and out… and back).
- 2y ago
- RSHEPP 2y agoConsider valves or pressure regulators also! Lots of shared fundamentals with the flow of gases!
- jandrese 2y agoOn one hand I can't blame any engineer that wants to flee, but on the other Boeing really can't afford any more brain drain. We are already seeing the results of years of forcing experienced but well paid engineers out and outsourcing their jobs. Planes literally falling out of the sky, but some nice fat executive bonuses.
- wetpaws 2y agoWhy it should be the engineers problem?
- onepointsixC 2y agoIt isn’t. But Boeing failing and turning the commercial airline market into an Airbus monopoly is bad.
- wetpaws 2y ago[dead]
- deepsun 2y agoThat is a feature of capitalism and effective market. If a company falls a little bit below competition -- market forces it do dive even deeper, die quicker. I'm not saying it's good or bad. I've seen communism, and it's much worse to help failing companies -- they tend to fail even more instead of improving. The problem now is that international market is not really fair, trade treaties help too little.
- noisy_boy 2y ago> If a company falls a little bit below competition -- market forces it do dive even deeper, die quicker. Feature of nature too, the jungle forces the weak to die quicker. One more argument for companies != people: we will be a lot more ok for this to happen to companies vs it happening to people.
- ajross 2y ago> Any Boeing engineers who may be looking for alternate paths The strike in question is the machinists' union, engineers aren't involved.
- carabiner 2y agoThis is correct and I'm not sure why it's downvoted. The engineers at Boeing are still going into the office and not on strike.
- patmorgan23 2y agoI can see how they'd be similar. They both have lots of Real-time, must work, critical type systems.
- ska 2y agoIn the other direction, I’ve hired engineers out of aerospace into medical devices and can confirm it’s a pretty easy fit.