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Boeing CEO says the company must fundamentally change
- andyish 2y agoIt's crazy that whatever happens to Boeing their leadership team will bounce onto something else and won't be avoided like the plague.
- mattgreenrocks 2y agoUndoubtedly, whenever they move on the execs will be proud to talk about their time there as part of their journey. And the world will be happy to pull up a stool and listen.
- bubblesnort 2y agoThey could close shop and start a really cool aviation museum. Plenty of relics to come by.
- com 2y agoHard to see them turning this around, it’s a good 10 year program (optimistically) to develop a new aerospace platform like a 737 replacement. I don’t really see it happening. Does Embraer have a program in the works? I like what they build.
- euroderf 2y agoHold onto your wallet, bailout is a sure thing
- rbanffy 2y agoBoeing falls in the category of "too strategic to fail". Wither a bailout or an acquisition (which would create an even bigger TSTF hazard).
- ceejayoz 2y agoAlternatively: nationalize it under the Defense Production Act.
- rbanffy 2y agoEven the far right would call that communism.
- morkalork 2y agoThe far rights calls everything they don't like communism.
- adamhp 2y agoYes, we should instead offer Boeing 50+ billion tax-payer dollars like true capitalists.
- rbanffy 2y agoDepending on how much money you have, the US experience varies from utopian socialism for the top brackets all the way to ruthless savage capitalism for the disenfranchised. Admitting to it is the first step towards fixing it.
- adventured 2y agoThen why is there such a gigantic welfare state for the poor in the US? Why do the top 50% fund nearly all of the government (97% of all taxes)? The top 25% pay around 90% of all income taxes. Why does the US have an aggressively progressive taxation system if it's so utopian for the rich? That's quite obviously not how the rich would choose to arrange things at all. The top 1% take in 26% of income and pay 44% of all income taxes. The top 1% pay the highest average tax rate of any group (26%), over double the median figure. Medicaid + SS disability + all state and local healthcare programs cost over a trillion dollars per year and are free for the poorest 1/4. The US Govt alone (not including local or state) spent $200 billion on all of its food assistance programs in 2022. These programs go toward people who contribute almost nothing in taxes.
- KingOfCoders 2y agoBoeing culture has been going down for quite some time. The pivotal point to me was, when Airbus launched the A380, Boeing thought they would have an easy home run with the Dreamliner, Airbus would be doomed as competition as no one wants the A380, Boeing slacked off, and then Airbus came back, listened to the customers, changed the A350 to a new plane and had a runaway success (on top of the bread and butter neos).
- lotsofpulp 2y agoThe pivotal point was when they physically moved the leaders away from the people that engineer and build the planes, ensuring the creation of a management class of employees who only cared about squeezing the working class of employees.
- mmaunder 2y agoI think this antipattern kills many engineering businesses.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoThe abstraction that is created to isolate against empathy, also isolates against functionality and longterm reality. Who knew.. certainly not the process designers..
- mmooss 2y agoI haven't seen evidence, or heard people say, that engineers have more empathy. Usually the stereotype, fair or not, is the reverse. Many of the more reviled SV CEOs are engineers; many engineers openly reject humanism like it's the latest 'smart' ideological movement.
- albrewer 2y agoEarly in my career as a brand new baby mechanical design engineer, I would have absolutely made some huge mistakes were I not able to pick up my drawings and ask a machinist with 30 years of experience if I was being an idiot or not. I learned just as much from the welders and machinists as I did from my boss.
- snapcaster 2y agoHave been following Boeing, watching docs etc. Does anyone have any examples of a company this financialized and hollowed out making a comeback? I'm kind of skeptical it's even possible
- junaru 2y agoWont it just get bought out by the gov/taxpayer because it's a strategic asset etc. ?
- renegade-otter 2y agoLet's talk when GE becomes GE again?
- adventured 2y agoJust one piece of GE (GE Aerospace) is worth $200 billion now. The stock has tripled in eight months, with the company tracking to $5-6 billion in operating income and looking very healthy. GE Vernova (energy) is worth another $75 billion and is back in the black after years of losses. It's all probably going to be a lot healthier split up. That might be the case for Boeing as well. It's often the best way to restart failed old conglomerates (no Steve Jobs scenario is going to save Boeing).
- renegade-otter 2y agoI actually didn't know that. It's been a zombie stock for years, so I just stopped checking.
- adventured 2y agoFunny enough maybe GE Aerospace should buy the commercial plane division of Boeing. Take the business, engineers, IP and plants, ditch the management.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
- HacklesRaised 2y agoI wonder if that fundamental change involves sacking their entire executive team for their incompetence and mismanagement, or whether they'll just shove it down the throats of regular employees?
- thinkingtoilet 2y agoThe obvious answer is to hire more consultants. It's the only way.
- sidewndr46 2y agoThey need to hire a firm with experience in operationalizing the existing market synergies that Boeing already possesses to maximize profit opportunities. Normally I'd suggest firing all of the experienced, well-paid staff and offshoring as much of the work as possible. It appears that may have already happened however.
- stavros 2y agoGuess!
- rbanffy 2y agoYou wonder what their entire executive team will prefer, sacking the entire executive team for their incompetence and mismanagement or shoving it down the throats of their employees. I guess I can predict how that comes out.
- sidewndr46 2y agoRealistically if they all have golden parachutes, it might work out well enough for them. They can probably walk into other jobs anyways. I don't know if this is true however, just speculation on my part
- bobim 2y agoIt's infuriating that high compensation comes with zero responsibility. Broken system.
- lucidguppy 2y agoHahahaha, wait you're serious? Let me laugh even harder HAHAHAHAAHAH. In all seriousness - Boeing should be called McDonnell Douglas - the merger was encouraged by the Pentagon after the cold war. Don't let bad management team infect your company - there's a reason why this company you want to buy is on a fire sale.
- markus_zhang 2y agoWhile you laugh, he collects big bucks. I mean really BIG bucks. He probably laughs too.
- lucidguppy 2y agoDon't CEOs care about their legacy when they play the "big boy" game with all the other oligarchs?
- renegade-otter 2y agoIn the era of 6-hour news cycles, the term "legacy" is kind of meaningless.
- markus_zhang 2y agoI think they mostly care about how many powerful people they can connect to so they can advance their careers further. They are just manager drone, and like all drone including us, we don't care about "legacies" because we don't have the impact to have any.
- mway 2y agoFascinating that things only need to change when profits are at risk.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mdorazio 2y ago> Going forward, we will be focused on fundamentally changing the culture, stabilizing the business, and improving program execution, This is corporate speak for “I don’t have a real plan and probably won’t gut leadership and start over like I should.” I wish the board would force some bigger changes already.
- ceejayoz 2y ago"We'll try stock buybacks, that always works."
- rob74 2y agoA stock buyback only makes sense if they think the stock is undervalued, which I'm not sure is the case...
- immibis 2y agoThe comment above this one relies on the unproven assumption that facts and calculations matter.
- ceejayoz 2y agoIf your only goal is to be fiscally responsible, sure. If you want a short-term boost to share values and don't care about the long-term damage (as is demonstrably the case in Boeing), no.
- 93po 2y agoDoesn't it also make sense if they have a ton of cash and not a good place to spend it? It's basically like a dividend right?
- markus_zhang 2y agoWhatever the words are, I read that as "More cost saving measures e.g. outsourcing and labor cut". That's the only thing they know.
- renegade-otter 2y agoSort a bunch of spreadsheets by the "Cost" column, descending, get rid of the top rows. That ought to make the shareholders happy and buy the C-suite some reprieve.
- Dalewyn 2y agoEven as someone who indirectly holds Boeing stock, I am pleased at this $6.2 billion dollar bleeding, more please. I hope the strikers vote to reject. The only language Boeing understands at this point is bankruptcy.
- whiplash451 2y agoCome to think of it, there's got to be a financial product like: a passive index, minus a few stocks that you hand pick :)
- hprotagonist 2y agofall on your sword, resign, and appoint a c suite with engineering chops? unlikely.
- metalman 2y agoBoeing is a perfect cross section of what is an epidemic in western business/government where it is litteraly impossible to say where one ends and the other begins same with communications technology the people, institutions and companys that are missmanaging and hurting our civilzation need to start facing catestrophic personal and collective repercussions for there moronic grasping greed and the license to act against populations as a whole by small self serving groups must end now the rest of the world is,as we speak, running the fuck away
- WesolyKubeczek 2y agoThey will likely purchase a bigger rug to sweep the problems under. The current one looks more like a mound, and this is the problem.
- omgJustTest 2y agoEven the headline about Boeing includes the stock price reference.
- dtquad 2y agoIt has been said before but I still find it insane how separate Boeing R&D is from Boeing manufacturing. Boeing manufacturing has been butchered into several independent organisms and scattered across the US states that gives most tax benefits. Meanwhile Airbus R&D engineers in Toulouse and Hamburg just have to walk a few minutes and they are in the factory hall that is manufacturing the parts they have designed.
- ceejayoz 2y agoAirbus has ships going back and forth between the EU and their plant in Alabama, and ships fuselages between Germany and France. They're plenty distributed. https://simpleflying.com/airbus-ships-aircraft-parts/ https://simpleflying.com/airbus-ships-aircraft-parts/
- FooBarBizBazz 2y agoSo, SpaceX is disrupting Boeing on the space front. Who is disrupting Boeing on the aviation front? Airbus and Embraer are great, but they're not based in the US. Where's the homegrown challenger? Or is this going to turn into another TSMC situation where the US has to look outside for competence?
- Dalewyn 2y agoLockheed Martin has absolutely murdered Boeing in the jet fighter market. USAF sourced the F-15EX Eagle II because Lockheed can't make F-35 Lightning IIs fast enough, but even that was a flop because guess what: Boeing forgot how to install the F-15EX's fuel tank. The same fuel tank the F-15E and all its derivatives have used. As for the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, it lost to the F-35 Lightning II in every single foreign market bid. Boeing literally lost multiple times to the worst-run jet fighter programme in US history. Fuck Boeing. Airbus is poised to win without contest if and when USAF goes for bids on a new tanker again. The KC-46A Pegasus still isn't in active service due to ongoing refueling problems; yes, a tanker that can't tank. Fuck Boeing and fuck the Government Accountability Office who threw out Airbus's winning bid. As a NATO resident, there is no national security concern with going Airbus. Northrop Grumman has murdered Boeing in the new bomber programme, the B-21 Raider, after USAF finally got around to a successor for the B-52, B-2, and B-1. This was next to the Joint Strike Fighter programme in terms of how coveted it was. SpaceX as you mentioned is putting everyone in space out to pasture, not just Boeing. So really, the only replacement we don't have for Boeing is commercial airliners and military heavy cargo which Airbus could be but can't because their production lines are already full. Northrop Grumman could be interested, I guess.
- indoordin0saur 2y agoJust find an employee within the company who is exceptional at both management and engineering and promote him or her to CEO.
- someonehere 2y agoYou won’t. It’s essentially an arm of the federal government. No efficiency.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tananaev 2y agoLet it burn. No bailouts please. Free market will sort it out one way or another without interventions.
- jmyeet 2y agoThis is really a systemic problem and I'd honestly be shocked if it's even possible for Boeing to dig themselves out of the hole they've dug for themselves. The core problem is the market demands ever-increasing profits and at a certain point the only way to achieve that is to cut costs. Executive compensation won't ever be cut. The management consultants will never be fired because they provide plausible deniability for the executives should anything go wrong. The inevitable result here is that the financial people end up running the company, not the engineers. The old Steve Jobs Xerox quote [1] applies. No, Boeing wasn't technically a monopoly, but in a duopoly where it's supported by the captured US government, it really operates like one. So you have a series of short-term decisions to increase profits that hurt the long-term viability of the company. Layers of subcontracting that add friction but marginally increase profits and lose quality control and institutional knowledge. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3NASGb5m8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3NASGb5m8s
- binary132 2y agooptimism for a bright long-term future for late capitalist endeavors seems possibly ill-advised.
- readthenotes1 2y agoThe downside of being a minor shareholder in a criminal enterprise is the loss of value when the negative consequences arrive. The last dividend in 2020 should be the least of the losses
- rasz 2y agoSpeaking of Boeing, Hunterbrook just dropped a piece on Universal Stainless. 'Universal Stainless, Set To Be Acquired, Behind Fatal Bell Boeing Osprey Crash' https://hntrbrk.com/usap/ https://hntrbrk.com/usap/ Boeing has been killing US Soldiers with V-22 Osprey since 2007, 50 and counting.