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Back in the day, Lockheed could move very quickly. The P-38 went from proposal to working prototype between February 1937 and January 1939. But there was a cost

Back in the day, Lockheed could move very quickly. The P-38 went from proposal to working prototype between February 1937 and January 1939. But there was a cost. Test pilots died The top American fighter pilot of WW2, Richard Bong was killed test piloting the Lockheed P80 jet fighter.

canucker2016 1y ago
Kelly Johnson, head of Lockheed's Skunk Works, worked on the P-38 (as well as U-2, Blackbird, and the F-117A). He had a list of rules for managing the design of aircraft. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly_Johnson's_14_Rules_of_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly.... There's an unwritten 15th rule (from the above-mentioned webpage): "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."
- LarsDu88 1y ago
  Rule 14 is pretty interesting. Keep the teams small and reward performance with compensation. Don't just reward increasing headcount. Could improve things at so many tech companies today.
  - iamtheworstdev 1y ago
    Rule 14 is why every government and large cooperation has an insane amount of bloat and middle managers, IMHO. People's power and pay are determined by two things - the number of people working under them, and their budget (which is often determined by the number of people working under them). It is rarely determined by positive outcomes, it seems, in the government world.
    - thmsths 1y ago
      Because when someone working for a public entity is rewarded with more money, eventually it results in someone else publishing something along the lines of "Our investigative team scoured records and sent a bunch of FOIA request, they found that some public servants make more than <insertLargeAmountOfMoney>", cue outrage, tightly defined salary bands set by the legislator and ultimately the problem you describe.

canucker2016 1y ago

Kelly Johnson, head of Lockheed's Skunk Works, worked on the P-38 (as well as U-2, Blackbird, and the F-117A). He had a list of rules for managing the design of aircraft. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly_Johnson's_14_Rules_of_Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Johnson_(engineer)#Kelly.... There's an unwritten 15th rule (from the above-mentioned webpage): "Starve before doing business with the damned Navy. They don't know what the hell they want and will drive you up a wall before they break either your heart or a more exposed part of your anatomy."

LarsDu88 1y ago
Rule 14 is pretty interesting. Keep the teams small and reward performance with compensation. Don't just reward increasing headcount. Could improve things at so many tech companies today.
- iamtheworstdev 1y ago
  Rule 14 is why every government and large cooperation has an insane amount of bloat and middle managers, IMHO. People's power and pay are determined by two things - the number of people working under them, and their budget (which is often determined by the number of people working under them). It is rarely determined by positive outcomes, it seems, in the government world.
  - thmsths 1y ago
    Because when someone working for a public entity is rewarded with more money, eventually it results in someone else publishing something along the lines of "Our investigative team scoured records and sent a bunch of FOIA request, they found that some public servants make more than <insertLargeAmountOfMoney>", cue outrage, tightly defined salary bands set by the legislator and ultimately the problem you describe.