[HN Gopher] Boeing ousts 737 MAX chief
___________________________________________________________________
Boeing ousts 737 MAX chief
Author : asn0
Score : 99 points
Date : 2024-02-21 19:02 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.seattletimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.seattletimes.com)
| skynetv2 wrote:
| I am surprised it takes this long to make someone accountable.
| But it is too little too late, though a step in the right
| direction. It is clear that this program was flawed right from
| the get go.
| credit_guy wrote:
| As they say, the best time to start something was 10 years ago,
| the second best time is today.
| tr_user wrote:
| accountable as a scapegoat
| bavent wrote:
| Yeah firing someone who was on the engineering side is not a
| good look when the problems are on the MBA side.
| ajross wrote:
| No, that's a meme. _Clearly_ the problem with the door plug
| was a production process problem. They engineered a bad
| process[1] and it led to a failure. Was that due to
| pressure or interference from someone on the "MBA side"?
| Well, maybe? But that needs evidence before you can make a
| statement like you did, and so far we don't have it.
|
| [1] Seems like consensus at this point is that the
| repair/rework review process had a hole
| contractors/suppliers could use to skip reviews by changing
| a category. Again, that might be done for "MBA" reasons but
| if the process allowed it it's still a bug in the process.
| jm4 wrote:
| Engineers designed and built that plane. The plane is
| fundamentally flawed. The engineer in charge absolutely
| deserves to be let go. Frankly, it should have happened
| after the first 2 crashes made it clear that there were
| problems with the plane. And they shouldn't stop there.
|
| The problems almost certainly go deeper than engineering.
| It sounds like there's pressure to cut costs. Still, an
| engineer has a responsibility to design and build a safe
| airplane. If the budget prevents that, it's still the
| engineers' responsibility to make sure that whatever plane
| they can build is safe or they shouldn't build it. It's a
| total cop out to put it all on the MBA's when it's layer
| upon layer of failures that result in a plane as bad as the
| 737 MAX. Engineers in commercial aviation shouldn't ever be
| afforded the luxury of pointing the finger at their bosses.
| Their job above all others is to protect lives by building
| a good airplane.
| dmix wrote:
| > The engineer in charge absolutely deserves to be let
| go. Frankly, it should have happened after the first 2
| crashes made it clear that there were problems with the
| plane. And they shouldn't stop there.
|
| This engineer guy was the one that took over after they
| fired the last one after the 2 crashes...
| class3shock wrote:
| This is not how companies work. Engineers at Boeing
| didn't have a design labeled "not-good-enough-but-cheap"
| and another labelled "more-skookum-but-is-expensive" and
| because they were bad engineers decided to go with the
| cheap one. It's a systemic issue due to cost cutting by,
| you guessed it, people MBA's.
|
| No engineer, if given the choice, would have re-used the
| old plane design instead of designing a fully new, modern
| plane, that was an MBA trying to cut costs.
|
| No engineer, if given the choice, would have put the
| plane through as little testing as they did or sold it as
| not requiring much training for pilots, that was an MBA
| trying to cut costs.
|
| No engineer, if given the choice, would have separated
| the manufacturing facility out of Boeing, that was an MBA
| trying to cut costs.
|
| These are decisions that were pushed by higher ups (with
| MBAs) that engineers have to live with. They aren't
| "wrong" decisions, there is nothing in them an engineer
| could look at and say "this will, 100% cause a failure
| down the road and I demand we not do this". What they are
| is steps in the wrong direction, steps away from the
| "best" decision that could have made from a safety and
| quality standpoint. Take enough and eventually they add
| up into what happened.
|
| I think the best way I can put it is if, as an
| engineering org that deals with real world things, you
| aren't pushing towards best practices, higher standards,
| and technical excellence than you are either stagnating
| or declining. In either case your quality will decline
| without anyone doing anything "wrong" as you end up with
| people with increasingly less experience and resources
| being asked to do more work. And the worst part is you
| can get away with that and often companies do. But if you
| go to far eventually you cross a threshold where
| cumulative effects push you over the boundary of failure.
| cryptonector wrote:
| And no engineer would have gone with only two AoA
| sensors.
|
| And no engineer would have made the computer ignore one
| of those two AoA sensors because two isn't enough and now
| you have a dilemma of which to trust.
|
| And no engineer would have cooked up the cockamamie idea
| of hiding the new CAS scheme so that they could claim
| that the new plane was the same type as the previous
| plane.
|
| And no engineer would have insisted that the new plane
| was the same type as the previous plane.
|
| And no engineer would have threatened the U.S. Congress
| with canceling the whole program if they don't get the
| waivers needed to get the plane flying.
|
| And...
| jm4 wrote:
| Yet, the engineers did go with two AoA sensors. The MBA's
| aren't putting the planes together. Ultimately, it's
| engineers who build the planes within the budget and
| parameters set by the bean counters. Somebody decided 2
| AoA sensors were good enough and the engineers built it
| that way, presumably giving the ok to use just 2 sensors
| or they would have cut some other corner instead.
|
| There's plenty of blame to go around and many people
| deserve to be fired, but this notion that the engineers
| should get a free pass because an MBA told them to do it
| is absurd. Obviously, it was engineers giving assurances
| they could, in fact, build a safe airplane per
| requirements. It's silly to think management would go
| through with building a plane if the engineers had told
| them in no uncertain terms that it had fundamental flaws.
| It's a big fat fail all around.
| ajross wrote:
| He's only been on the job for two years, coming in to manage
| the project _after_ the MCAS disaster. In some sense he 's the
| easy person to eject.
|
| I don't think the individuals really matter that much here. The
| point to firing executives in charge of big failures is to
| incentivize the ones remaining to get their ships under control
| before another disaster. Clark clearly failed on that front,
| but again the 737 MAX program isn't the end of Boeing's
| problems.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Oh, individuals absolutely matter.
|
| Just not this one specific individual.
| mikece wrote:
| A friend of mine who used to work for Boeing said the downward
| trend started when they acquired McDonnell Douglas and the MD
| bean counters took over a lot of top positions at Boeing,
| displacing engineers. After that cost-cutting became more of an
| obsession than building awesome aircraft. Makes me wonder how
| Boeing can avoid descending into bankruptcy at this point with
| multiple major projects having significant issues, recalls, and
| safety issues.
| brianwawok wrote:
| There is so little competition, and it would be so expensive to
| spin something up... I could see it sputtering along for many
| years. Who can disrupt this? Need space X level money and
| research, and not sure the profit potential is as high.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It is really hard. China, Russia and Japan have tried state
| sponsored schemes without success. Bombardier of Canada had
| to throw in the towel, and Embraer of Brazil almost did.
|
| Part of the problem is also that airlines have been very good
| at squeezing the duopoly while demanding ever more. The
| competition, if it manages to get a plane in the air, usually
| isn't as fuel efficient and so the airlines have mostly not
| been interested.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > Bombardier of Canada had to throw in the towel
|
| To be fair, that's because Boeing forced them to sell the
| rights to the A220 for $1.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_B
| o...
| zdragnar wrote:
| Boeing filed ta petition with the USITC, but it was
| ultimately the Department of Commerce that fined them for
| what they decided was unfair trade.
|
| The USITC reversed their own decision a year or so later,
| and Boeing chose to not appeal the decision, but
| Bombardier and Canada ended up deciding to not pursue
| things further.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Bombardier had a lot of other problems going on as well.
| Generally, their entire transportation division (they
| also had railcar manufacturing) had manufacturing and
| timeline issues. The price cut that resulted in the
| dumping penalties was an attempt to shore up a program
| that was already flailing.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Russia and Japan failed, but it's far too early to call
| COMAC from China a failure.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| C919 isn't China's first attempt. But they have a long
| term view of the industry and should be able to make
| progress even if they only satisfy some of their own
| domestic demand.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Russia just got a considerable motivation boost due to
| sanctions so the local order book for SSJ and MC families
| will be likely on the scale of hundreds of aircrafts.
| They are no longer a prestige project and Russia has the
| track record of building the necessary industrial
| capacity quickly (they ramped up military production to
| support war in Ukraine far beyond of what the West
| thought was possible in that time frame).
| genmud wrote:
| I doubt it will ever be certified by any aviation
| authority outside of China, which will pretty much make
| it the tu204 of CN.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Iran might certify it.
|
| Russia might certify it unless having a viable domestic
| alternative. Moreover, it could reuse parts _for_ its own
| planes.
|
| These three taken together are already a significant
| chunk of the global market, each having a large domestic
| demand.
|
| The problem with Tu-204 is that it wasn't a good market
| fit, like the current Chinese ARJ. It was certified OK
| and could fly abroad all right.
|
| People said the same about Chinese cars and they're the
| largest exporter in 2023.
|
| What if they have not one but _ten_ generic passenger
| plane brands by 2040?
| thriftwy wrote:
| Russia has a fleet of ~200 Superjet planes which are
| handling a significant fraction of domestic traffic, but
| it's indeed not clear whether any more may be built after
| the 2022 sanctions. They also currently do not have engine
| replacements.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| >They also currently do not have engine replacements.
|
| They demonstrated localized version of SSJ-100 with PD-8
| engine in 2023. I'm not sure if it actually flew, but
| there were at least ground tests of the fully assembled
| aircraft.
| thriftwy wrote:
| Even if it's possible to retrofit existing fleet with
| PD-8, I can't imagine this happening at the rate at which
| the old (partly French-made) engines will be going out of
| order. So even that fleet will dwindle in numbers in the
| next years. Perhaps to zero, perhaps not - we'll see.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Embraer does really well though.
|
| I much rather fly in an E195 E2 than a 737 or A320 Neo.
| Really next level. KLM has these, unfortunately they rarely
| use them to my destination because they can fill a 737 to
| there as well :(
| bombcar wrote:
| I'm sure SpaceX could build a jet if they wanted to.
|
| I'm also certain they don't want to.
| nickff wrote:
| Commercial aircraft are significantly more complex and
| regulated than rockets are (for now). Many companies can
| develop aircraft (e.g. bombardier), but few can actually
| get them into production.
| lp4vn wrote:
| >Makes me wonder how Boeing can avoid descending into
| bankruptcy at this point with multiple major projects having
| significant issues, recalls, and safety issues.
|
| Boeing is a duopoly with Airbus and for putting in your hands
| in a brand new Airbus you will have to join the queue and wait
| five years. So they benefit from the lack of competition, if
| the merger with McDonnel had never happened, probably this
| situation would be different. But today's capitalism is all
| about consolidating and eliminating competition.
|
| Embraer might try to venture in the wide body segment, but they
| don't seem willing to do that move.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Embraer seems to have the highest standards, or very close to
| highest, in the industry now. But I think it's unlikely that
| they'll be capable and willing to compete with Boeing or
| Airbus in the near future.
| mikece wrote:
| I can't help but wonder how successful a project it would
| be if Embraer built a 757 clone (but with modern engines
| and cabin). If executed correctly that could put Embraer on
| an equal footing with Boeing and Airbus in the narrowbody
| market (and their C-390 is a widebody that could be
| modified into a passenger carrier...).
| colpabar wrote:
| boeing also makes weapons and sells them to the us gov. the
| plane stuff is kind of a side gig. they will be fine no matter
| how many people they kill.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| They also have a space business which is losing staggering
| amounts of money due to incompetence.
| FourHand451 wrote:
| Their government programs have hit some snags recently too.
| The KC-46 and Starliner programs have not exactly been smooth
| money-makers for them.
| edward28 wrote:
| You could argue, they do better the more people they kill.
| legitster wrote:
| Well, the MD acquisition didn't happen in a vacuum. At the time
| Airbus was becoming a government-backed behemoth, and the US
| government was allocating all of their political capital and
| military procurement at MD. So the whole point of acquiring MD
| was to get more favorable government treatment.
|
| What followed was not necessarily even about cost-cutting -
| they wanted to spread out the production of their aircraft from
| centralized locations (easy to QC) to cover as many different
| congressional districts and reap the maximum amount of
| political capital.
| SleepilyLimping wrote:
| Isn't it wondrous what lobbying can do?
| nickff wrote:
| In this instance, it seems like the government was actually
| pressuring the government to do its bidding, rather than
| the other way around. There have been many articles written
| about the ways the Clinton administration pressured Boeing
| to purchase McDonnell Douglas (which was suffering from the
| cancellation of many military programs).
| legitster wrote:
| If you have a weed problem, I'm not sure it's worthwhile to
| blame the weeds. There's a higher level problem here with
| how government procurement and tax structures works, and
| just with how incentives are aligned this kind of stuff is
| bound to happen regardless of whether lobbying is
| explicitly allowed or not.
| nocsi wrote:
| The details of the MD acquisition is pretty crazy. It was like
| an unintentional SPAC whereby the company you're buying owns
| you
| cryptonector wrote:
| It's pretty common. Company A is doing well, company B is
| much smaller than company A, A acquires B, A's executives get
| wonderful retirement parachutes and promote B's executives.
| Thus A gets to be run by B as if B had acquired A rather than
| the inverse.
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I worked with several co-workers who were former Boeing, but on
| the software side. They all left to start a new startup, and
| they all said the same thing.
| tr_user wrote:
| Steps in the right direction, let's get rid of more engineers and
| replace them with more MBAs.
|
| > However, a person familiar with the decision and who asked not
| to be identified commenting on sensitive personnel decisions,
| confirmed that Clark's leaving was not voluntary.
|
| > Clark is an engineer. His successor Ringgold has business
| degrees. However she began her aviation career performing
| avionics systems maintenance and troubleshooting on C-130
| aircraft in the United States Air Force.
| varjag wrote:
| There are bad engineers too.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Absolutely, but systemically, that's not been their problem.
| Too many MBAs are making decisions without Engineering
| involvement. I know because my industry works the exact same
| way _le rage_
| slt2021 wrote:
| this is because shareholders (pension and investment fund
| managers) are all MBAs and they demand results a-la "quick
| wins" that forces management into short-term thinking,
| cutting corners and cutting costs
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| The MO of 'business people' isn't inherently 'quick wins,
| bleed the company dry'. I have absolutely no idea why
| techies can be so precious about every problem in their
| profession actually being a 'systems problem' yet are so
| quick to personally blame each and every person in
| another profession based on some 'YouTube video
| essay'-level understanding of the context.
|
| As usual, it IS a system's issue. It's an incentive
| issue. If the people that made decisions were
| incentivised to prioritise long-term stability and
| performance, they would. They aren't, and the reason they
| aren't isn't solved with a swift "get rid of them all".
| You think that these big scary business people you
| demonise don't themselves have KPIs? The pressure of
| corporate America, of short-term returns, is still going
| to be there. Have you seen how drastically the average
| shareholding lifespan has dropped over the last 10 years?
| Businesses are just operating in more of an environment
| where long-term stability and even growth don't matter.
|
| Boeing is such an easy target. It's very easy to just
| lazily say "Boeing is rotten!" and leave it at that,
| because then you get to pretend that the solution is
| easier than it is. Whilst there are definitely Boeing-
| specific circumstances that heavily heavily contribute,
| the reality is that Boeing has had few chances to
| 'innovate' in recent memory, especially with its new
| makeup. This is just what it looks like when they do. The
| reality is that this is merely a reflection of how the
| wider world works. And that's the thing with systems
| problems. It's intellectually dishonest to just sit back
| and "blame MBAs". These sorts of problems fester in the
| wiring and the mechanics, with unpredictable consequences
| that are almost impossible to reverse by the time they're
| realised.
|
| The wheels were set in motion before the Boeing merger.
| It wasn't a trigger, it was a consequence. Similarly,
| some "MBAs" making decisions, either with Boeing or
| investors, were themselves not the trigger. Fate had
| already been decided several layers up the stack when
| personal and organisational incentives were set as they
| are in the first place.
| pugworthy wrote:
| And good engineers that become bad managers
| legitster wrote:
| To be fair, the problem this time was with QC - not with
| engineering.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| The person you're replying to was being sarcastic. But -- to
| be clear -- this was clearly a problem with the defect
| tracking process, not like individual QC contributors.
| tareqak wrote:
| My question is, "was the defect tracking process influenced
| negatively by spending cuts?"
|
| Shareholders are more than willing to reward the relevant
| executives for cutting spending, but they rarely hold the
| same people who made those cuts for issues stemming as a
| consequence of the aforementioned cuts.
| pyrolistical wrote:
| I don't think they were being sarcastic
| gumby wrote:
| This was actually a QA problem -- a set of design issues
| starting at the front of the process. All QC can do is
| identify problems after they have occurred.
|
| As the saying goes, "you can't test quality into a product."
| legitster wrote:
| I guess I am a bit confused. Someone was supposed to be
| checking the bolts before the plane left the facility and
| they didn't. That seems to be a QC process issue more than
| a QA issue.
|
| But that also seems like splitting hairs. The problem is
| not one of engineering design, to OP's post.
| djmips wrote:
| How do we know that it was just 'someone was supposed to
| be checking the bolts before the plane left the facility
| and they didn't'. Because I'm not sure it's actually been
| fully revealed where the problem was. And despite the
| production issues, I'm of the opinion that the door-plug
| design should have been fail safe like the other doors
| where just pressure prevents them from being opened
| during flight. And another thing, passing the buck to QA
| doesn't let engineering off the hook since QC in this
| setting is a part of the engineering!
| itishappy wrote:
| I disagree somewhat. It should not be possible for a
| plane to leave the factory without completing all QC
| checks. People are fallible, so a robust process is
| critical, and designing/confirming a robust QC process is
| a QA responsibility.
| djmips wrote:
| And these QC design people are engineers.
| itishappy wrote:
| Right! It's engineers all the way down...
| gumby wrote:
| Well, it's _supposed_ to be, anyway.
| legitster wrote:
| Sure, but "did the plane leave with all of the bolts it
| was supposed to" does not seem like a question that needs
| to be answered by someone with mechanical engineering
| degree. Let alone the responsibility of someone sitting
| in a cubicle in Everett.
| itishappy wrote:
| Agreed, but "how do we design the process to ensure,
| structurally, we cannot kill our customers" starts to
| sound a bit more engineering-like, no?
| f1shy wrote:
| I see a lot of comments trying to pin point the problem with
| a name. People: if in an airplane some pieces are taken off,
| they have to be labeled. In fact _anything_ entering or
| leaving the airplane has to be noted, juat like in an op-
| room, to avoid for example forgetting tools (or loose bolts)
| somewhere. That is basic ABC 101 of working in an airplane.
|
| Why this happened? Massive cost cuts ordered by management,
| which led to cut corners, or cut trainings, or both. If ing.
| Or MBA is irrelevant. If I have to guess, I would point to an
| MBA
| mc32 wrote:
| Looks like MBAs doing a CYA and throwing the Engs under the
| bus.
|
| Why did this action take _this_ long for this to happen? To me
| it says they were burying their heads in the sand hoping things
| would blow over.
|
| I'll believe Boeing if they turn a new leaf and prioritize
| engineering over marketing and being number one in aircraft
| deliveries in the short-term at the cost of long-term
| viability.
| MilStdJunkie wrote:
| I know that there was a Boeing sub with a doc repository
| whose internal address was "TheBlameThrower". It had the
| explicit purpose of nailing specific people for saying
| specific things. So throwing people under transmissions is
| something of a company sport, with points awarded for
| distance and style.
|
| Mmmmm, there was a _delicious_ "Under-Bus-Throw Contest" in
| the wake of the MCAS fiasco, centered around their chief
| technical test pilot, Mark Forkner.
|
| Keep in mind that half of this is anecdotal, but the sequence
| of events was something like this. Crap goes down, Forkner
| gets canned. He leaks documents, and wow, that was super bad.
| Now something curious happens, _more_ docs get leaked - from
| <s>who knows where</s> - showing that Forkner was a bit of a
| burnt out cynical a-hole[1]. Now, imagine those chats going
| to the media - it would make that person seem like the real
| villain, yes? The DOJ thought so too, so the leak brought
| criminal fraud charges on Forkner. After that, _even worse_
| documents were leaked - probably from Forkner or his attorney
| 's people - and the charges get walked back, because it's
| insanely obvious that whatever fraud he might have been
| committing was done at the behest of his masters. A colossal
| cock up, part of the bigger cock up that was the PR blitz
| following the MCAS crashes, which was itself a subset of the
| Ubersturmbanfuhrer Cockup of the MCAS fiasco. It's cockups
| all the way up.
|
| In this tit for tat, the only one with the bomb craters
| showing was Boeing's rep, because, let's be honest here, at
| the end of the day even if Forkner was a horrible asshole he
| was still _Boeing 's representative to the goddamn flying
| world_.
|
| Terribly calculated, terribly executed, terrible results. A
| masterclass in how _not_ to do public relations and, failing
| that, dirty tricks campaigns.
|
| [1] You know the type. The guy who always ends each IM with
| some quip about what crap your company is making and how he
| feels like a con artist. His soul, hollow and shrivelled from
| all the sucking sounds, tends to kick cats and hiss at dogs.
| Leak _that_ to the media, see who the villain is now.
| lgleason wrote:
| It creates some good optics, meanwhile the execs can funnel
| more money out of the company and parachute out before the
| thing blows up.
| ics wrote:
| While many here won't disagree in general, be wary of holding
| this sentiment as dogma. There can be bad apples in
| engineering, and MBAs who can see that whether or not they have
| the knowledge or experience to make it better themselves.
| Whether or not they can (or want to) make the next step of
| hiring better or more honest engineers is what matters then.
|
| (I'm not optimistic about Boeing here, but hey.)
| pg_1234 wrote:
| > There can be bad apples in engineering,
|
| So true ... Jack Welch was an engineer.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| >Jack Welch was an engineer.
|
| That's a funny way of spelling "Self-entitled jackass, who
| would spit on his own mother for a nickel", but I'll accept
| it.
|
| Edit: I guess the DVs are just ignorant idiots. here is
| just one example of how stellar of a guy ole Jack was:
|
| Under Welch's leadership, GE waged a twenty-year battle
| with the Environmental Protection Agency and New York State
| over polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that the company
| dumped into the Hudson River at its capacitor products
| division plant in Hudson Falls, New York.
| x3n0ph3n3 wrote:
| The person you are quoting did not express approval of
| Jack Welch. You are being downvoted for being
| unnecessarily argumentative and inflamatory, not for
| being wrong.
| sonicanatidae wrote:
| Argumentative? I agreed that he was a jackass with a
| pithy comment about spelling.
|
| Inflammatory? What else do you call a clown that would
| spit on his own mother for a nickel?
|
| Point taken, but FFS. The man was a grand mal asshole and
| that should be mentioned every time his name appears.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| You aren't contributing to the conversation by going on a
| tirade.
| bombcar wrote:
| _Sometimes_ (as rare as you expect, likely) an MBA has the
| tooling to fight back against the standard business pressures
| to cut costs, whereas an engineer is basically defenseless.
|
| Quite rare.
| eastbound wrote:
| Yes but Boeing needs to send a message. A message that they
| understood how they failed, a message that they apologize, a
| message that they can be redeemed.
|
| Sometimes, it's about PR.
|
| And culture, they haven't changed. Boeing is still firing
| engineers, appointing MBAs, getting paid by politicians, and
| hiring on the revolving doors of local prisons. I wouldn't
| even trust a burger flipped by this bunch. Boeing factories
| also need to move to other states before we trust them again.
| passwordoops wrote:
| I've mentioned it somewhere else, and maybe I've just been
| _really_ unlucky with my experiences in industry but I 'm at
| the point where I feel like someone with an MBA or finance
| background should start any new company (regardless of previous
| experience) by sitting in the janitor's closet for a month. If
| the janitor says they're ok, the MBA can start following the
| janitor around at a distance of 10 feet. If they don't screw
| anything up, they're allowed to ask one question a day of said
| janitor. So on and so forth. I estimate 10-15 years of
| persistence before the MBA/finance can be in a position to make
| minor decisions
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| This is the completely and utterly insufferable mindset that
| one gets when they spend too much time around other engineers
| and actually begins to buy into the completely fabricated
| self-important narrative that they are God's gift to the
| world. It s a profession! Pull your head in. I'm not sure
| what sort of highschool bully trauma you're trying to make up
| for, but being a bully yourself isn't the answer. Interest
| rate rises couldn't come soon enough, because there's
| obviously at least one generation of techies that have been
| tricked into thinking that 'finance' starts and ends with
| "take a bunch of dumb VC money, build a completely
| unsustainable business, and change jobs every 18 months".
|
| I'm not for one second saying that Boeing hasn't been
| seriously mismanaged. The whole debacle has just inexplicably
| been some sort of lightning rod for people that want to flex
| their self-identified nerd cred by saying "ENGINEER GOOD
| BUSINESS BAD!"
| msie wrote:
| Can't tell if you are sarcastic or not.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Here's her LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-
| ringgold-88484140/deta...
|
| Interesting that she spent a few years in Belize after getting
| out of the Air Force. This is the description of her MOS:
| http://www.mosdb.com/air-force/2A133/mos/1559/
|
| I don't think you're being all that fair here. I have no idea
| whether she's going to do a good job or not, but there's more
| to a person than the degree they got. Former military getting
| business degrees is pretty common and often the only reason is
| they were the most likely program to offer distance learning
| and night class options back in 2001. I'll say, as an engineer
| with a CS degree who is also a former commissioned officer,
| former military can be hit and miss, but in many ways I'd be
| more confident going with prior enlisted who got a degree via
| the GI Bill than other commissioned officers. There can be a
| tendency with the way we get trained in the military to become
| serious yes men. You never say no to a commander and you always
| attempt to accomplish any mission without question, no matter
| how ludicrous or impossible it is. That makes sense in wartime
| but not in business and many do not understand that or know how
| to turn off that attitude.
|
| Prior enlisted, however, are usually not that fanatical about
| pleasing superiors. Their rating and promotion process is a lot
| saner and they tend to be more aligned and care more about the
| career field they were in. In her case, you can see this
| involved ensuring and maintaining the quality of aircraft comms
| and nav systems. That's probably not a bad place to come from.
| I was a tank commander back in the day myself, and I can say
| there was nobody who cared more that the tanks were reliable
| and safe than the career enlisted tank crewmen and tank
| mechanics. I would trust them with my life way before I would
| trust a career engineer who had never served on or with a crew.
| entropicgravity wrote:
| Ah the dominoes start to fall yet again. I wonder how many
| between this and the CEO this time?
| kazinator wrote:
| If you throw someone down an inflatable slide, does their golden
| parachute open?
| uuddlrlrbaba wrote:
| Has there been any word/news on addressing the self-certifying
| portion of these issues?
|
| From what I gather, in addition to management prioritizing the
| wrong things, there has also been the issue of not enough
| external oversight to hold them accountable for safety.
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| Ablative management: Layered heat shield of dispensable people
| that burn off to protect the capsule with the execs.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is the job description for the CSO (chief security
| officer): _Get fired when the inevitable security breach
| occurs_.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| In a way is this not an appropriate response for multiple
| breaches? If I was CSO and my company was plagued by breaches
| that came about because of my lack of oversight when it was
| my job I'd fully expect to be fired.
|
| I don't believe a single incident is equivalent in this case
| to what happened to the MAX platform, to much has gone wrong
| bombcar wrote:
| The usual problem is that the CSO is given things to do, no
| budget, and no authority.
|
| Which, again, if you go in open-eyed can be fine.
| dave333 wrote:
| Back in the day there were moderate bounties offered
| ($100s) for finding security holes. It was far more cost
| effective than organized security review and testing.
| Veserv wrote:
| Untrue (in general). The CSO is frequently given lots of
| budget and authority. Having talked to some of the big
| bank executive teams, they have thousands of employees
| and hundreds of M$ budgets with wide latitude to enforce
| restrictions. It is just that the best commercial
| cybersecurity processes and "best practices" are useless
| against professional attackers with even minimal budgets
| and staff.
|
| Any technically competent CSO knows they are totally
| screwed even if they implement everything feasible
| perfectly (i.e. no inane solution like shutting down the
| whole company). It is not a problem of resources or
| commitment (though you could also have those problems),
| it is a problem of impossibility due to the incompetence
| of commercial IT cybersecurity processes.
|
| The only way to survive in a environment where you
| literally can not do what you were ostensibly hired to do
| is to lie and take the fall. The only other alternative
| is being too stupid to realize you are screwed, but every
| bank cybersecurity executive team I've ever met knew that
| someone could go in and steal all of their documents for
| less than 1 million dollars (you could also change
| things, but the out of band cross-checking makes that
| hard without intimate knowledge of the specific financial
| checks, more a question of knowing how banks work than
| hacking, the 1 M$ gives you full access rights, but you
| need to be careful not the drive the tank through the
| wall of the general's office).
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| No it is not.
|
| Breaches can happen for many reasons, from we do not give a
| fuck to everyone knows and have accepted the situation.
|
| The job of the CSO is to bring things on the table even when
| they are not nice to hear, provide a solution and recommend
| priorities.
|
| When well documented it is a good bottom protector.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Exactly what I was thinking (but much less cleverly worded). We
| KNOW these issues are the result of pressure from the top to
| maximize profit despite pushback from engineers.
| echelon wrote:
| I love this term and I'm stealing it. Thank you.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Completely off topic, but I always wondered what was so special
| about _Deep Space 9 's_ USS Defiant and its "ablative armour".
| Sure, it was a plot device, but everyone who encountered it
| seemed astounded by it.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Instead of expending energy to deflect energy weapons fire,
| the ablative armor undergoes controlled ablation so the outer
| layers of the armor vaporize or erode when struck by weapon
| fire, taking the brunt of the attack's energy. This meant
| that the "total energy" available to defend the ship wasn't
| limited by the ship's power but by the starbase assembling
| the ship and the armor could survive a lot more malfunction
| and battle damage (the shields became completely useless once
| they burned out). Until the introduction of the armor
| everyone thought that physical defenses couldn't be used
| effectively against energy weapons.
|
| Voyager's ablative generator also provided regenerative
| capability so it didn't need a space dock to repair heavy
| damage.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I think it is important to note the Federation previously
| wasn't in the business of building warships. They are so
| technically advanced, they didn't need them.
|
| As a friend of mine put it:
|
| Everyone's best warships are in a dead heat with a luxury
| liner full of nerds that happens to have guns on it.
|
| Starfleet ships didn't need armor. Their materials science
| was already so advanced, they had to use structural integrity
| and dampening fields to push beyond what existing physical
| materials could accomplish.
|
| So when they roll out an actual warship using physical armor
| plating, it is an incredible advancement in materials beyond
| "simple" energy-reinforced hulls.
|
| Alternatively, it's really boring technology but the idea of
| a Starfleet warship is so new they are salivating over things
| everyone else has been using for centuries. It's like giving
| a tank to a soccer mom and telling her to have fun in
| traffic.
| g96alqdm0x wrote:
| I get the sentiment, but I much prefer this to the alternative,
| which is rank and file employees getting laid off. It's much
| better to have accountability that starts at the top and then
| trickles down. Too often it feels like workers are the only
| ones who suffer from the bad decisions of executive leadership.
| verve_rat wrote:
| But it doesn't start at the top, it starts at the middle.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Totally moronic to let someone go with 18 years of experience.
| Just move them.
| thefatboy wrote:
| > Totally moronic to let someone go with 18 years of
| experience. Just move them.
|
| What is your moronic comment based on? experience isnt
| everything.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Based on the fact that we are experiencing a competence
| crisis right now, particularly in aviation but also more
| generally. Someone with that many years of technical
| experience should probably just be mentoring 100% of the
| time.
| olliej wrote:
| Huh, does this mean they're going to oust all the executives that
| resulted in the environment that produced the 737max saga?
| everybodyknows wrote:
| And the board? But boards of directors do not fire themselves.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| anyone know if this guy came in with McDonnell-Douglas?
| nottorp wrote:
| > Mike Fleming, who led the 737 MAX return-to-service push after
| the two fatal crashes and has since then led the drive to certify
| the MAX 7 and MAX 10, has been promoted to replace Lund as senior
| vice president and general manager of all Boeing Commercial
| airplane programs
|
| Ooo pretty. The person responsible for the self certification
| failures is getting promoted.
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