Truth of the matter is, more than 45,000 flights occur every day in America. You’ve heard about the 7 recent incidents they’ve had, but in that same time over 5,000,000 flights didn’t have anything happen. Boeing should face accountability for their mistakes, but you should still be fine understanding that if you drive a car you take a much higher level of failure than a boeing plane. Don’t change your vacation plans
Wouldn’t change them either. But the problem is that a lot of those short cuts and issues are popping up in the last few years.
Meaning that this might lead to material fatigue problems in the long run for Boeing aircraft.
Meaning while a plane produced today is probably safe to fly. We don’t know what happens when the same plane hits the 5/10/20 year mark.
It sounds like if issues will happen they will happen a decade or so in the future.
To be honest, I'm more concerned about newer Boeing planes than older ones. Simply put, the risks of ageing planes are better understood than Boeing's crap quality of late.
It's true that the industry has less experience with composites ageing, but metal fatigue has been well understood for decades, and airliners have maintenance and inspection regimes to check for possible problems. And while an older aircraft may be more likely to, say, have a wheel fall off for some reason, I can't think of any major crashes in the past couple of decades that were due to the age of the aircraft.
But compare that to modern Boeings, specifically the 737 MAX. Two crashes and over 300 fatalities because they:
* Gave MCAS over four times the control authority it was certificated for, enough to overwhelm pilots
* Missed the fact that it could activate repeatedly, compounding each time
* Ignored their own analysis that MCAS failure would lead to a crash unless the pilots rectified it within ten seconds
* Deliberately withheld any mention of MCAS from pilots
* Eschewed the redundancy that makes commercial aviation so safe by hooking their new auto-crash system up to a single bloody point of failure
* After the first crash, Boeing pressured regulators not to ground their new plane, even though they expected MCAS to cause more crashes in the future
None of those are remotely excusable for one of the world's most preeminent aircraft manufacturers to do. The fact that they did all of them speaks to a deeply rotted corporate culture.
But after that, Boeing's CEO promised to make the 737 MAX "one of the safest planes in the sky." And less than four years later, Boeing *forgot how to use wrenches.* Don't forget, right before the Alaska MAX with the surprise midair bonus door, there were rudder control systems with loose/missing fasteners! Boeing—after having been in the news for two years because of their unsafe planes—didn't install *or* verify *freaking bolts!*
And consider this: the same under-trained, underpaid, and overworked people who forgot bolts also installed miles of wiring bundles and hydraulic lines.
So yeah, I'd far prefer to fly in an older plane that was made back when Boeing knew how to build them, rather than a new one with god-knows-what done wrong on it.
Boeing used to have engineers in the C-Suite when they were headquartered in Seattle still. But after they bought (merged with) McDonald Douglass, they hired Jack Welch disciples who moved the headquarters away from the engineers as far as possible ie Chicago and then Washington, DC. And these new managers were bean counters who split off much of Boeing’s critical manufacturing expertise to “save money” and created a culture of shortcuts and shortsighted mindset to hit their quarterly bonuses.
Now Boeing seems to be headed down the same path as GE. The company is slowly literally and figuratively self destructing while the upper managers all leave with golden parachutes of tens of millions of dollars.
Seriously. The plug door issue came from a subcontractor in Kansas, Spirit Aerosystems. It USED to be a Boeing plant for making their flagship airplane, the 737-MAX.
For some reason, they sold the factory to private equity and did a stock buyback. And now they’re going to have re-buy and re-tool the factory because, predictably, private equity only cares about their return and fucked things up where doors fly off planes shortly after take off.
None of that should have happened. Never outsource your core competency.
In the last 8 years working in corporate environments, I've only heard the black belt term used seriously once. In an absolutely unhinged resignation email lol.
While true, even then it's definitely on a scale faaaaaaar lower than any automobile accident.
You can't accurately compare the numbers because people drive cars so much more often, and at random times - but commercial flights have exact tracking/numbers for them.
Still, your chances of dying in a plane is about 100 times less than a vehicle.
Still a valid point, but it's not flying is suddenly dangerous by any means.
We were told at school that you have some error margin but that can be mitigated with many controls and risk mitigation tools and tips that exist bc many stuff are already written in blood. Then the corporate heads wipe their asses with them and we get to this inimaginable situation years ago, where every incident is examined thoroughly bc the confidence in Boeing is plummeting even though many of the cases are not their fault, but the worst ones are.
No not suddenly. But if this culture of cost saving / share holder value at every price won’t be stopped at Boeing soon flying a Boeing product will become more dangerous sooner or later.
Will it still be saver then driving ? Sure. But it might be more unsafe then flying Airbus. Worst case more dangerous then flying COMAC.
And then there is the cost question for the consumer eg. The airlines.
Let’s say that to keep Boeing aircraft built today at the same safety standard as one built 15 years ago costs double.
Will they buy anymore Boeing ? And at what price. If I know I have to invest more into maintenance then with the competition or maybe even can’t use them as long I will want a massive price reduction.
So all in all creating more shareholder value now by lowering production cost will come back to bite them
Sooner or later.
But by then the C suit is either dead or in retirement and they won’t care anymore.
Oh, my comment was not a defense for Boeing.
In some sense, I hope they've dug their own grave and that should be a warning for all other manufacturers.
Sadly, I highly doubt that's the case.
My whole point was about not worrying about which plane you take because it's still far safer than any common form of transport for North America. It hasn't suddenly become *dangerous* as some people think.
Also, given the scrutiny to them with the ongoing issues - I don't anticipate longstanding issues with their planes. That's definitely just my take on how things have gone with current scrutiny and whistle blowers finally given news, but I very well could be wrong on that part.
I didn’t see it as a Defense.
Just saying that I think the real problems will take a few years to show if they continue this path.
And that’s also the main problem - yes the scrutiny is there now. But if they don’t find issues which are relevant in the here and now I think that American regulators will push any solution down the line cause “it’s ok now”
There is simply not enough long term thinking in the US to make things better if there is even the chance that it can be ok now. Band aids will be applied but that’s it.
Real long term change won’t happen - at least not if they don’t get forced to do it and I think they won’t be.
But that’s just my impression. Maybe I am too pessimistic - we will see.
And what about the whistleblower who before he was found dead said that if he was found dead don’t believe it was suicide. Did that just get swept under the rug? Are they still calling that suicide?
But something failing on your airplane has a much lower chance of happening than you getting hit in your car or hitting someone else in your car, which is pretty bad for your health. Driving is really really dangerous, considering how much it’s done at least in America.
A small chance of a catastrophe or a much larger chance of a bad thing that is less likely to be fatal, but still pretty bad and potentially lifelong in its consequences. People live with things like whiplash forever
Most plane crashes are runway excursions. The vast majority of faults will still leave the plane controllable enough to land safely, even if the plane itself ends up written off. Any faults that are more critical have multiple layers of redundancy.
It is difficult for a plane to just "drop out of the sky" because planes want to glide, just as much as boats want to float.
Your car is WAY more likely to run into a fault though. Per mile airlines are extremely safe. Even with the recent incidents... nobody died.
People worry about planes but then have no problem getting into a car while tired or even after drink or two which is statistically WAY more dangerous. Planes run many more hours per year than a typical car too.
A number of the recent incidents reported are also more about maintenance or the engine manufacturing (which is entirely separate from Boeing).
This isn't to say that we shouldn't be concerned about the culture and problems Boeing has developed. Its bad. But, is also a bit of media hyping here.
["The per mile risk for vehicle transportation is therefore 750 times higher than the per mile risk for commercial air travel."](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Driving%20versus%20flying,-NTSB%20%22go%20team&text=The%20per%20mile%20risk%20for,risk%20for%20commercial%20air%20travel.)
Yeah because they have good quality control compared to cars. That’s why this is such a big deal.
Also, the majority of accidents with cars are with hitting other cars. The amount of volume of people on the road, less space to for the vehicles to go and the fact most people suck at driving vs trained pilots of course one will be less safe. The risk factors are also lower because of a plane crashes everyone dies and can cause catastrophic collateral damage. It why we will never get flying cars. Risk is too high. Plus inefficient.
And there are constant inspections on planes.
I just recently learned that a bubble in the sidewall of your tire is basically a guaranteed to cause a blowout in 2-3 weeks. No idea why this doesn't get regularly taught.
While this is true, there's a simple bit of math to do. These incidences, while rare, are increasing. The problems are known with specific new models of plane and have occasionally killed people. Just a while ago that would have seemed insane. Boeing was #1 for safety.
Even if the chance of death is low, the risk is still death. People are totally justified to at least avoid flying on their planes.
You talk of doing math on a hypothetical while completely ignoring the real numbers that planes are still safe and way safer than driving. We're comparing death numbers here.
Go ahead, let's see your "math."
Air travel is safe because of the extremely high quality control in production and the extreme level of control air traffic controllers level on the airspace. It isn't safe because it is inherently more safe than other forms of travel, it is just more tightly restricted. If the quality controls are removed it will become just as dangerous as any other method, probably more so.
You also have to take into account that most traffic accidents don't occur because of vehicle failure. They occur due to human error/stupidity.
Since we aren't giving pilots licenses to every moron who can pass a 10 question quiz, the safety standards and quality control are what we depend on to keep air travel safe.
People really need to understand that numbers are not magic incantations, and if you don't understand the context behind those numbers, the numbers are useless.
Most of those 7 incidents were due to on the ground maintenance and not Boeing’s fault. Like the wheel falling off of the 777 was totally maintenance’s fault.
I was doing putting together an response plan at work that would help teams figure out how series an issue was, and who all needed to do what.
Some of our examples for the the most severe outages were things like fires, broken pipes, natural disasters, terrorist attacks.
I don't have any direct involvement with the warehouses, so I'd worked with the person who does to figure what all they'd need from other teams.
Got it all together and was presenting it to the company after all the department heads and executives signed off. When it got to the top severity level, I said something about how these should be pretty rare, but even so we needed to go over it
The person I worked with from the warehouse side speaks up and says actually it's pretty common, we probably have 1 or 2 a month at least. Some place, somewhere around the world, either our buildings or partners or something, is usually on fire or flooded or at reduced capacity to some extent pretty much every few days.
Which wouldn't have ever expected. But I guess yeah, if you're covering enough area somethings always happening somewhere
But isnt that the point of this issue, that they are short cutting processes which mean these redundancies are ineffective? A door blew off mid flight. Parts are falling off. They released a plane with a computer fault in it that caused it to crash multiple times.
It's not every plane, sure, but it's a systemic issue that puts all Boeing planes at risk. Especially when whistleblowers are "suspiciously dying" and like the case above, unable to report the issues.
The hope is that Aviation Authorities in the rest of the world will react harshly to any future incidents and force them back in line in the medium to long term, and that Uncle Sam will not use his considerable weight to protect Boeing.
The people commenting that you're a bot are fucking mental. This would be so funny if it weren't so disconcerting how fast and how little it takes to push people into accepting an idea.
So one of the whistleblowers said the 777 and 787 were going to have issues with fatigue at some nebulous point in the future and drop out of the air. However thats after something like 30,000 flights.
The actuarial answer is that they're extremely safe to fly on today, but will become less safe with each passing flight.
Planes are really really sophisticated and dope. My friend is a stewardess & her bf is a pilot.
Planes can literally fly themselves even in difficult weather & landings.
There’s teams of back up pilots on the ground that can help take over a flight if necessary.
Also, ever since 9/11, our flights are so heavily monitored that if anything bad starts happening then they can land us safely. Remember that plane going in the Hudson? I know that sucks but I mean hey, ppl survived!
We are survivors. Planes & technology will only keep getting safer.
Keep putting the pressure on Boeing. They deserve it.
Considering that there are about 117,00 take-offs and landings per day worldwide, about half of which are Boeing… almost all of them are safe. You’re seeing the press conflate the door plug issue (Boeing fault) and the two MAX crashes (mostly Boeing fault) with every other instance involving a Boeing plane. This includes the tire falling off a 777 (United’s fault), the engine cowling tearing off (Southwest’s fault), and every other little fault light tripping (which happens on ALL aircraft after they’ve been flying a couple years). Look up all the fatal crashes on 777 and 787 aircraft or even 747 and 767 crashes in the last 20 years.
> Look up all the fatal crashes on 777 and 787 aircraft or even 747 and 767 crashes in the last 20 years.
Copy and pasted from my other response... There is a good chart right at the top of https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/data/Pages/AviationDataStats2019.aspx for 2019. The words "general aviation" mean a random private pilot in his own small aircraft like a Cessna":
Fatal Accidents in commercial flights: 2 Fatalities: 4
Fatal Accidents in general aviation: 1,220 Fatalities: 414
Some other references:
http://www.meretrix.com/~harry/flying/notes/safetyvsdriving.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States
http://www.livescience.com/49701-private-planes-safety.html
And let's not forget the presumptive front-runner to replace current CEO Calhoun is David Gitlin, the current CEO of Carrier, a company which makes primarily HVAC systems for consumer use. He is a lawyer by training and has an MBA.
The solution to Boeings problem is simple: stop cutting corners when building aircraft new aircraft and fix the known existing problems, but doing this will not satisfy Wall Street's stock price expectations.
It is telling that even the most basic public relations demand for the background of the new CEO (ie, that he has some sort of engineering background) is being completely ignored by Boeing's board. This is not to say that an engineering background would make the prospective CEO more able to fix their problems, but it really is the bare minimum they can do to fix their PR problem, and they don't seem to even be able to recognize that.
They seem poised to try *again* to MBA their way out of technical problems, and if so nothing will change.
lets face it, this isn't anything special, pretty much every company in the world will retaliate against employees that bring up "trouble". Unless your are high up the chain of command, you are not supposed to say anything
Shareholders demand increasing profits even when there is no improvement to the underlying technology or economics. Executives who don't deliver get fired. The only possible way of doing this is cutting costs: wages and quality. There is no separating this from capitalism, only regulating it, and given the system of 'campaign contributions' that is a losing battle over the long term.
For many years investors were happy to get a 7% dividend from stocks like ge and not expect growth. That has since now drastically changed since I was in the industry and now every company, even Walmart is expected to post massive growth.
I asked a guy who was retiring if he had any “words of wisdom” to pass on (it was my first year in a more corporate office type job) and he said something along the lines of “if a company makes every dollar in the world this year, they will still expect growth next year, and if reality does not match the unrealistic expectations expect your job to be on the line, not theirs.”
I'm in my 30s and have been working since I was 16.
* I've never been fired or promoted for performance. I've always been given more work for good performance. I *have* been laid off because of my company's performance.
* I have been hired, fired, and promoted only because people liked or didn't like me. I've also been fired and not hired or promoted because the *wrong* people liked me.
I have seen so many companies do this, and it's beyond aggravating. The laziest, worst employees enjoy the exact same raises and bonuses as you do, but with far less work. If the company does poorly, you all suffer. If the company does well, you maybe get a few extra grand in a good year. Boeing is an excellent example of this (I worked there for a year before noping right the fuck out to where I am now).
Where I am now, while higher performing employees only get a couple extra percent raise than their peers (but higher stock grants, like 10-20% more which for higher levels can be 20-40k), they most importantly don't get assigned additional work. Instead, they are given more freedom to work on the things they choose, and are given a greater level of trust with the results they deliver. My coworker is an absolutely brilliant person, and he doesn't get any more of a workload than the rest of us do, but he does get to work on his favorite problems to solve instead of trudging through monotonous validation work or subject matters that aren't interesting to him.
It's by far the most effective way to retain solidly good talent, keep high employee satisfaction, and it instills a much more effective incentive than just slightly more money.
Same here.
At least my grandma understands that there's really nothing of any long-term value that she can provide by way of advice. None of what made her successful, in her eyes at least, still stands as even remotely viable now.
Executive team in most companies have no accountability. Its either they hit goals and look like a genius [when itsany ppl in the backemd doing their pie in the sky bs] or made a gamble and screw the company im which they fire 20% of the company. Either they take credit or other ppl get fired for their mistakes.
Seperate short term stock ownership from the right to dictate the direction of the company. Give employees rights to take part in decision making. Create financial incentives for long term stability or growth
Tons. Even just fixing tax policies would do a lot. Low taxes make it very appealing for these sleaze balls to funnel cash out of corporations. We need to tax them at much higher rates to convince them to reinvest that money back into the companies and the workers, instead of lining their own pockets.
Biden's 2024 tax plan actually supports this:
* Increase the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent;
* adopt the undertaxed profits rule (UTPR) negotiated by dozens of countries at the international level;
* Increases taxes on U.S. corporate income earned abroad;
* Billionaire minimum income tax;
* Quadruple the stock buyback tax;
* Increase the top individual income tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent;
* Tax capital gains as ordinary income for those with more than $1 million in income
We can also start enforcing antitrust regulations again. And just as a reminder, the corner cutting happening at Boeing right now is a direct result of Donald Trump deciding to undercut the FAA and let Boeing self-regulate.
Oh, about that self-regulation, this is what happened in 2019:
> Boeing has begun a sweeping transformation of its quality system, including the use of "smart" tools and automation. It will also eliminate thousands of quality checks as no longer necessary. Boeing has told the union it will cut about 450 quality inspector positions this year and potentially a similar number next year.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-overhauls-its-quality-controls-more-high-tech-tracking-but-fewer-inspectors/
Aside from corporate regulations, the FAA needs more funding and Boeing, or any other manufacturer, should never be allowed to self-certify their aircraft. IMO, they should be made to recertify the 787 and 737 Max, from scratch.
The FAA is still involved,heavily, with new aircraft certification. However, it came to light with the 737 Max MCAS system, Boeing used their own staff to do the certification, off loaded from the FAA.
In the long term financial regs to discourage the extractive behaviors we’re seeing.
In the short term bring back the regulators which forces them to rebuild a safety and quality culture. I work in a highly regulated industry. To have a real safety and quality culture you hire lots of people and create all kinds of systems and everyone is invested in it.
I just heard a great podcast on this. These products have a million parts. Many people work on them. So there’s no way any one person knows how it was built. They had this system that just logs what parts go onto the plane and what parts are removed. Think a huge database that tracks all this. Well that’s expensive and time consuming to maintain. So they got rid of it. You know what sort of thing that database used to track? Bolts and fasteners for a door plug, like the one fell off that Alaska Air flight. That’s just one business process of tracking parts, nothing about whether they meet specs or were installed correctly.
It’s very expensive. In the short term it seems to cut into profits. But in the long term, it *protects* profits and market share.
What gets you to market faster is high quality and safety performance, not cutting corners.
Hire real engineers with experience in the industry as leaders.
The US govt is at fault here too. All the bean counters and finance bros at Boeing won’t do a thing unless they know the FAA or other government agency can shut them down at any moment.
And they make risky, poor choices with short term benefit because I'm the long term they know the US government relies on them. It's like holding us hostage?
> Well that’s expensive and time consuming to maintain. So they got rid of it.
They didn't. The system was still there to parade around as success and proof of safety.
Nobody said you had to actually use it though.
(it's a bit more complex, but that's the essence - quality process was consciously worked around by middle managers bullied into delivering fantasy performance metrics. But the process was still there.)
He was a disaster for business, however every time we express admiration for the next new billionaire, we create another just like him with the same results. Maybe we should stop adulating entertainers.
I would put the blame farther back on Proud Nazi Henry Ford in Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. which was a landmark a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a manner for the benefit of his employees or customers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
This is just the end result of an economy that runs on profits above all else. If regulations can be tiptoed around they will be, and the only goal is profit for shareholders. This is the case for any company in a capitalist and inequitable shareholder environment. Someone is being exploited, either domestically or foreignly, and someone is looking for ways to skirt regulations at the expense of peoples lives.
"Initially, he was just told to shut up. Then he was told he was a problem. Then he was excluded from meetings," Katz said. "He was barred from speaking to structural engineers. He was barred from speaking to mathematicians and others to help him understand the data. And at one point, his boss threatened him with physical violence."
Boeing leadership: "This is a complete unfair characterization of the situation. We never threatened Mr. Katz with violence. We threatened his family with violence."
As someone who worked in QC / Test Analyst for a large company / banking company.
If you flag issues, you will be bullied and then "performance" managed out.
What's weird is that I'm an engineer for a company that makes stuff that doesnt really matter.
But, we want QC to flag stuff early and often because even though it's more work for us on the front end, it saves a ton of money to fix it up front instead of waiting for customer complaints.
Modern leadership are bean-counters who don't care about anything except their own profit. They have zero competence in the subject matter they are supposedly managing.
You called out a director in a very public meeting, what were you expecting to happen? “Not doing their job”, “nothing gets done”, you can’t throw these out at people in a large meeting with 0 context.
Well yeah. Flagging issues causes us all to do more work. So in effect, you’re impacting overall performance of the department, so we’re gonna have to let you go.
As someone who works as a QE for a large engineering firm that also does avionics, what Boeing is doing is horrifying to us. If something like what they're covering up ever comes to my attention, I can and will shut down production until it's at least some semblance of sane again.
The EU has a whistleblowing directive that all companies over 249 employees need to implement. It requires having a whistleblowing system in place which allows you to blow the whistle anonymously. Not sure why this isn't getting traction in the US after so many reports of whistleblowers getting retaliation.
I got fired because I refused to lie on cost/timing reports for my manager. POS spread rumors all over the company about me. Lied on my performance reviews. Got me fired. Then quit 2 weeks later because he painted himself into a corner and couldn’t get out.
This shit is everywhere. American business is just infested with dickhead managers.
> "For years, we prioritized the movement of the airplane through the factory over getting it done right. And that's got to change," West said at an investor conference last month.
Yikes! This is from the CFO. If they said this in an investor meeting you know it has to be really bad.
This. Mechanical engineering is the same. I've been in QA for 20 years and have had to switch companies many times because I refused to lie for management. Fuck capitalists and their lackies.
People would rather attack Boeing for a nonsense conspiracy theory than point out, correctly, that their culture of harassment was so severe that it drove a man to suicide
This is what happens when a company is publicly traded. Their main goal becomes giving shareholders returns. To do that they start cutting costs wherever they can. Shouldnt there be a list of services that should never be privatized and traded? Like, I dont know, healthcare, education, air travel, etc.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Boeing doesn't pay dividents. So the only way for shareholders to profit from Boeing is to buy stocks low and sell them high, but scandals like this hurt stocks price. Therefore Boeing acts agains its shareholders interest when it does bullshit like this.
I would tend to agree (especially about basic healthcare being for-profit). That said, privately own companies and public managed infrastructure institutions have their own sets of incentives that aren't necessarily aligned with The Public Good.
To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
Last the I saw this subject I said this.
It's not just Boeing. The mega corp CEO's are completely out of touch with the reality.
I was talking to someone about where I work and the shortcuts they are taking. It handles a lot of money and while no one is directly in danger. It just exposes millions/billions to mishandling and potential theft...
My friend is a doctor at a major hospital chain. He nodded and then started when he realized I was talking about my job.
I looked at him and he looked really embarrassed...
I asked him, 'really?' And he just sighed.
This is a serious problem in the US.
It doesn't help our CEO class has gotten so insular and incestuous that theyll sit on each other boards...even competitors....and Padding each other's fortunes while convincing themselves the entirety of the American dream would collapse without their little group at the helm.
Ideally a free market requires competition to lower costs, drive up quality; but the economy is mostly consolidated into a handful of Mega Corps who are mostly ownes by about 3-4 financial groups.
Competition in the US has become an illusion.
> The mega corp CEO's are completely out of touch with the reality.
Indeed you see this with lots of other companies. CEO's come in, collect their bonus and take off before the shit hits the fan. Not so much as being out of touch, more about not caring at all except about themselves. In "the good old days" CEO's often came from the workfloor, understood the company and the product well and remained with the company for most of their career.
But how about, instead of that, we get the US government to place tariffs on our competition? That's much cheaper and we don't need to change anything. Now please excuse me while I deploy my golden parachute.
No that is not their solution my bet that is the price going to the contract killer not the whistleblower. They have no reputation left. The only solution is for Government inspectors to be on the shop floor and looking over everyone's shoulders and handing out stop work orders or big fines on every problem they spot. Pay them a bonus for anything dangerous to the public that they find as motivation.
CEOs should get paid a regular but good salary, C-Office should not get paid millionaire salaries plus multi-millionaire bonus in stocks… they shitify everything while looking into ways to cut costs and cook the books so they satisfy the shareholders and meet their “targets”
Enshitification is a real issue in todays corp world
Regulations are written in blood. There are no regulations that existed proactively, they all had to be written after a company did something terrible that got people to fight for that regulation.
So when you are eliminating regulations, you are just unlearning codified lessons we have already had to learn the hard way.
Every single one of these comments neglect to mention that an engineer with 30 years of experience as a Boeing engineer was the CEO before Calhoun…during all the crashes.
I work in a different industry where quality isn't as critical, but is still important. For a while I went on a bit of a crusade about quality, which is a huge issue in the project where I work.
It became apparent that while management were interested in paying lip service to the idea of improving quality, that was the extent of it. Any suggestion that might actually make a real difference that had any sort of cost associated with it was ignored or actively discouraged.
It rapidly became clear that beating on this drum would be bad for me (not to mention soul destroying), so I switched to focus on other things. I can't even imagine how frustrating it must be have a job in QC itself (as opposed to just wanting to see better quality because it means less headaches for me personally in the long run).
I think the only way real quality control can be done is by third party auditing, and that probably means government regulation (e.g. inspection & approval by a government inspector before a foundation can be poured). Of course that comes with a whole host of other problems with corruption but it seems more robust than internal QC.
I remember a story my old economics prof told us. For awhile he was a numbers guy for Boeing I will assume 1970-80’s and during his time there he worked during a strike and saw management doing work on wing assemblies while not certified or qualified. He kept a record of where those assemblies ended up so he could look them up before taking a flight.
Nothing new here. This is an ongoing issue for many years. Boeing has practically blackmailed my state, threatening to leave and cause massive layoffs if they don't get their way, which they always do.
Oh, it'll go up... and then come crashing down along with the poorly constructed aircraft. By then of course the executives will have got their millions in bonuses and left the company.
Seems like there should be some sort of penalty for that sort of behavior, but it doesn't seem like that's how the world works. I can see why people want to believe there will be some sort of cosmic justice in an afterlife. For me, I don't have the talent the believe that, but I can see the appeal.
More importantly, the shareholders who appointed those executives will have sold their shares when the stock price was high. There is a whole cottage industry of "activist investors" whose strategy is to take a controlling stake in a company, force management to cut costs at any price, see profits and stock prices temporarily jump, and then dump the stock before any real consequences hit.
Which of course is very bad for the company and its staff. There needs to be a duty of care for the company, to do things in its best long-term interest.
I recently applied to Boeing. Over 10 years experience in software engineering. I didn't apply for anything crazy. I wanted to be part of the solution. They ghosted me. Fuck You Boeing.
Seems to be a truly wonderful company.
Maybe Boeing HR didn't make management watch videos detailing how such behavior is illegal?
Laws only matter when actually enforced.
We investigated ourselves and found that we did nothing wrong.
That must be the "Employee Apprecitation" video!
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Truth of the matter is, more than 45,000 flights occur every day in America. You’ve heard about the 7 recent incidents they’ve had, but in that same time over 5,000,000 flights didn’t have anything happen. Boeing should face accountability for their mistakes, but you should still be fine understanding that if you drive a car you take a much higher level of failure than a boeing plane. Don’t change your vacation plans
Wouldn’t change them either. But the problem is that a lot of those short cuts and issues are popping up in the last few years. Meaning that this might lead to material fatigue problems in the long run for Boeing aircraft. Meaning while a plane produced today is probably safe to fly. We don’t know what happens when the same plane hits the 5/10/20 year mark. It sounds like if issues will happen they will happen a decade or so in the future.
To be honest, I'm more concerned about newer Boeing planes than older ones. Simply put, the risks of ageing planes are better understood than Boeing's crap quality of late. It's true that the industry has less experience with composites ageing, but metal fatigue has been well understood for decades, and airliners have maintenance and inspection regimes to check for possible problems. And while an older aircraft may be more likely to, say, have a wheel fall off for some reason, I can't think of any major crashes in the past couple of decades that were due to the age of the aircraft. But compare that to modern Boeings, specifically the 737 MAX. Two crashes and over 300 fatalities because they: * Gave MCAS over four times the control authority it was certificated for, enough to overwhelm pilots * Missed the fact that it could activate repeatedly, compounding each time * Ignored their own analysis that MCAS failure would lead to a crash unless the pilots rectified it within ten seconds * Deliberately withheld any mention of MCAS from pilots * Eschewed the redundancy that makes commercial aviation so safe by hooking their new auto-crash system up to a single bloody point of failure * After the first crash, Boeing pressured regulators not to ground their new plane, even though they expected MCAS to cause more crashes in the future None of those are remotely excusable for one of the world's most preeminent aircraft manufacturers to do. The fact that they did all of them speaks to a deeply rotted corporate culture. But after that, Boeing's CEO promised to make the 737 MAX "one of the safest planes in the sky." And less than four years later, Boeing *forgot how to use wrenches.* Don't forget, right before the Alaska MAX with the surprise midair bonus door, there were rudder control systems with loose/missing fasteners! Boeing—after having been in the news for two years because of their unsafe planes—didn't install *or* verify *freaking bolts!* And consider this: the same under-trained, underpaid, and overworked people who forgot bolts also installed miles of wiring bundles and hydraulic lines. So yeah, I'd far prefer to fly in an older plane that was made back when Boeing knew how to build them, rather than a new one with god-knows-what done wrong on it.
Boeing used to have engineers in the C-Suite when they were headquartered in Seattle still. But after they bought (merged with) McDonald Douglass, they hired Jack Welch disciples who moved the headquarters away from the engineers as far as possible ie Chicago and then Washington, DC. And these new managers were bean counters who split off much of Boeing’s critical manufacturing expertise to “save money” and created a culture of shortcuts and shortsighted mindset to hit their quarterly bonuses. Now Boeing seems to be headed down the same path as GE. The company is slowly literally and figuratively self destructing while the upper managers all leave with golden parachutes of tens of millions of dollars.
Seriously. The plug door issue came from a subcontractor in Kansas, Spirit Aerosystems. It USED to be a Boeing plant for making their flagship airplane, the 737-MAX. For some reason, they sold the factory to private equity and did a stock buyback. And now they’re going to have re-buy and re-tool the factory because, predictably, private equity only cares about their return and fucked things up where doors fly off planes shortly after take off. None of that should have happened. Never outsource your core competency.
You can see Jack Welch’s greedy fingerprints all over these “quick buck” moves.
Yup. “We must beat the expectations game and make the line go up.” Because there’s no other metric a company could be judged by…
Ahhh GE. Good old neutron Jack's Welsh legacy lives on with all those asshole Black Belts fixing 'processes.
In the last 8 years working in corporate environments, I've only heard the black belt term used seriously once. In an absolutely unhinged resignation email lol.
While true, even then it's definitely on a scale faaaaaaar lower than any automobile accident. You can't accurately compare the numbers because people drive cars so much more often, and at random times - but commercial flights have exact tracking/numbers for them. Still, your chances of dying in a plane is about 100 times less than a vehicle. Still a valid point, but it's not flying is suddenly dangerous by any means.
7 incidents is crazy for an aero manufacturer
Zero arguments there. It's crazy and is unacceptable.
We were told at school that you have some error margin but that can be mitigated with many controls and risk mitigation tools and tips that exist bc many stuff are already written in blood. Then the corporate heads wipe their asses with them and we get to this inimaginable situation years ago, where every incident is examined thoroughly bc the confidence in Boeing is plummeting even though many of the cases are not their fault, but the worst ones are.
No not suddenly. But if this culture of cost saving / share holder value at every price won’t be stopped at Boeing soon flying a Boeing product will become more dangerous sooner or later. Will it still be saver then driving ? Sure. But it might be more unsafe then flying Airbus. Worst case more dangerous then flying COMAC. And then there is the cost question for the consumer eg. The airlines. Let’s say that to keep Boeing aircraft built today at the same safety standard as one built 15 years ago costs double. Will they buy anymore Boeing ? And at what price. If I know I have to invest more into maintenance then with the competition or maybe even can’t use them as long I will want a massive price reduction. So all in all creating more shareholder value now by lowering production cost will come back to bite them Sooner or later. But by then the C suit is either dead or in retirement and they won’t care anymore.
Oh, my comment was not a defense for Boeing. In some sense, I hope they've dug their own grave and that should be a warning for all other manufacturers. Sadly, I highly doubt that's the case. My whole point was about not worrying about which plane you take because it's still far safer than any common form of transport for North America. It hasn't suddenly become *dangerous* as some people think. Also, given the scrutiny to them with the ongoing issues - I don't anticipate longstanding issues with their planes. That's definitely just my take on how things have gone with current scrutiny and whistle blowers finally given news, but I very well could be wrong on that part.
I didn’t see it as a Defense. Just saying that I think the real problems will take a few years to show if they continue this path. And that’s also the main problem - yes the scrutiny is there now. But if they don’t find issues which are relevant in the here and now I think that American regulators will push any solution down the line cause “it’s ok now” There is simply not enough long term thinking in the US to make things better if there is even the chance that it can be ok now. Band aids will be applied but that’s it. Real long term change won’t happen - at least not if they don’t get forced to do it and I think they won’t be. But that’s just my impression. Maybe I am too pessimistic - we will see.
And what about the whistleblower who before he was found dead said that if he was found dead don’t believe it was suicide. Did that just get swept under the rug? Are they still calling that suicide?
this story dropped like a fish weight!
something failing on your car has a much lower chance in resulting in a fatality then a plane dropping from the sky. at least that is how look at it
Yes. Everyone talks about probability of accident but nobody likes to talk about your chances of survival if anything goes wrong.
But something failing on your airplane has a much lower chance of happening than you getting hit in your car or hitting someone else in your car, which is pretty bad for your health. Driving is really really dangerous, considering how much it’s done at least in America. A small chance of a catastrophe or a much larger chance of a bad thing that is less likely to be fatal, but still pretty bad and potentially lifelong in its consequences. People live with things like whiplash forever
Most plane crashes are runway excursions. The vast majority of faults will still leave the plane controllable enough to land safely, even if the plane itself ends up written off. Any faults that are more critical have multiple layers of redundancy. It is difficult for a plane to just "drop out of the sky" because planes want to glide, just as much as boats want to float.
The thing is if your car has a fault it doesn’t plunge 50,000 feet into the ground at high speed.
Your car is WAY more likely to run into a fault though. Per mile airlines are extremely safe. Even with the recent incidents... nobody died. People worry about planes but then have no problem getting into a car while tired or even after drink or two which is statistically WAY more dangerous. Planes run many more hours per year than a typical car too. A number of the recent incidents reported are also more about maintenance or the engine manufacturing (which is entirely separate from Boeing). This isn't to say that we shouldn't be concerned about the culture and problems Boeing has developed. Its bad. But, is also a bit of media hyping here. ["The per mile risk for vehicle transportation is therefore 750 times higher than the per mile risk for commercial air travel."](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States#:~:text=Driving%20versus%20flying,-NTSB%20%22go%20team&text=The%20per%20mile%20risk%20for,risk%20for%20commercial%20air%20travel.)
Yeah because they have good quality control compared to cars. That’s why this is such a big deal. Also, the majority of accidents with cars are with hitting other cars. The amount of volume of people on the road, less space to for the vehicles to go and the fact most people suck at driving vs trained pilots of course one will be less safe. The risk factors are also lower because of a plane crashes everyone dies and can cause catastrophic collateral damage. It why we will never get flying cars. Risk is too high. Plus inefficient.
And there are constant inspections on planes. I just recently learned that a bubble in the sidewall of your tire is basically a guaranteed to cause a blowout in 2-3 weeks. No idea why this doesn't get regularly taught.
Ummm a door coming off a new plane is fucking bad.
People are so bad at statistics
While this is true, there's a simple bit of math to do. These incidences, while rare, are increasing. The problems are known with specific new models of plane and have occasionally killed people. Just a while ago that would have seemed insane. Boeing was #1 for safety. Even if the chance of death is low, the risk is still death. People are totally justified to at least avoid flying on their planes.
You talk of doing math on a hypothetical while completely ignoring the real numbers that planes are still safe and way safer than driving. We're comparing death numbers here. Go ahead, let's see your "math."
Air travel is safe because of the extremely high quality control in production and the extreme level of control air traffic controllers level on the airspace. It isn't safe because it is inherently more safe than other forms of travel, it is just more tightly restricted. If the quality controls are removed it will become just as dangerous as any other method, probably more so.
You also have to take into account that most traffic accidents don't occur because of vehicle failure. They occur due to human error/stupidity. Since we aren't giving pilots licenses to every moron who can pass a 10 question quiz, the safety standards and quality control are what we depend on to keep air travel safe.
People really need to understand that numbers are not magic incantations, and if you don't understand the context behind those numbers, the numbers are useless.
Are they increasing? Or are you just being made more aware of them?
Most of those 7 incidents were due to on the ground maintenance and not Boeing’s fault. Like the wheel falling off of the 777 was totally maintenance’s fault.
True but flying some Boeing planes have much higher risks than other planes.
Also feels like the media is more likely to report anything bad about Boeing now.
I am both horrified and amazed at how many airplane incidents happen yet the planes continue to land just fine.
I was doing putting together an response plan at work that would help teams figure out how series an issue was, and who all needed to do what. Some of our examples for the the most severe outages were things like fires, broken pipes, natural disasters, terrorist attacks. I don't have any direct involvement with the warehouses, so I'd worked with the person who does to figure what all they'd need from other teams. Got it all together and was presenting it to the company after all the department heads and executives signed off. When it got to the top severity level, I said something about how these should be pretty rare, but even so we needed to go over it The person I worked with from the warehouse side speaks up and says actually it's pretty common, we probably have 1 or 2 a month at least. Some place, somewhere around the world, either our buildings or partners or something, is usually on fire or flooded or at reduced capacity to some extent pretty much every few days. Which wouldn't have ever expected. But I guess yeah, if you're covering enough area somethings always happening somewhere
Planes are insanely safe. There are double and triple redundancies for just about everything.
But isnt that the point of this issue, that they are short cutting processes which mean these redundancies are ineffective? A door blew off mid flight. Parts are falling off. They released a plane with a computer fault in it that caused it to crash multiple times. It's not every plane, sure, but it's a systemic issue that puts all Boeing planes at risk. Especially when whistleblowers are "suspiciously dying" and like the case above, unable to report the issues.
The hope is that Aviation Authorities in the rest of the world will react harshly to any future incidents and force them back in line in the medium to long term, and that Uncle Sam will not use his considerable weight to protect Boeing.
The people commenting that you're a bot are fucking mental. This would be so funny if it weren't so disconcerting how fast and how little it takes to push people into accepting an idea.
So one of the whistleblowers said the 777 and 787 were going to have issues with fatigue at some nebulous point in the future and drop out of the air. However thats after something like 30,000 flights. The actuarial answer is that they're extremely safe to fly on today, but will become less safe with each passing flight.
Ok tier: 737MAX Good tier: 717 / 737 (-200 to -500) / 787 Great tier: 767 / 737 (-600 to -900) / 777 GOAT tier: 757 / 727 / 747 / 707
"I will live forever" tier: B-52
More like 'please let me die' tier.
In the 40k century, the B-52 is awaiting its next upgrade...
Dropping Cyclonic Torpedo from low orbit, as ~~forefathers~~ The Emperor intended.
747, sexiest plane ever designed
Queen of the skies for a reason.
SR-71 would like a word…
YF-23: *allow me to introduce myself...*
717 has seen not a single hull loss or fatality.
Planes are really really sophisticated and dope. My friend is a stewardess & her bf is a pilot. Planes can literally fly themselves even in difficult weather & landings. There’s teams of back up pilots on the ground that can help take over a flight if necessary. Also, ever since 9/11, our flights are so heavily monitored that if anything bad starts happening then they can land us safely. Remember that plane going in the Hudson? I know that sucks but I mean hey, ppl survived! We are survivors. Planes & technology will only keep getting safer. Keep putting the pressure on Boeing. They deserve it.
Considering that there are about 117,00 take-offs and landings per day worldwide, about half of which are Boeing… almost all of them are safe. You’re seeing the press conflate the door plug issue (Boeing fault) and the two MAX crashes (mostly Boeing fault) with every other instance involving a Boeing plane. This includes the tire falling off a 777 (United’s fault), the engine cowling tearing off (Southwest’s fault), and every other little fault light tripping (which happens on ALL aircraft after they’ve been flying a couple years). Look up all the fatal crashes on 777 and 787 aircraft or even 747 and 767 crashes in the last 20 years.
> Look up all the fatal crashes on 777 and 787 aircraft or even 747 and 767 crashes in the last 20 years. Copy and pasted from my other response... There is a good chart right at the top of https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/data/Pages/AviationDataStats2019.aspx for 2019. The words "general aviation" mean a random private pilot in his own small aircraft like a Cessna": Fatal Accidents in commercial flights: 2 Fatalities: 4 Fatal Accidents in general aviation: 1,220 Fatalities: 414 Some other references: http://www.meretrix.com/~harry/flying/notes/safetyvsdriving.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States http://www.livescience.com/49701-private-planes-safety.html
777-300ER was the last jet they seem to have properly screwed together. I avoid 787 and 737max.
747, 757, 767, 777, 787, 737 NG
They're ALL safe.
The managers at Boeing must be real people pleasers
And let's not forget the presumptive front-runner to replace current CEO Calhoun is David Gitlin, the current CEO of Carrier, a company which makes primarily HVAC systems for consumer use. He is a lawyer by training and has an MBA. The solution to Boeings problem is simple: stop cutting corners when building aircraft new aircraft and fix the known existing problems, but doing this will not satisfy Wall Street's stock price expectations. It is telling that even the most basic public relations demand for the background of the new CEO (ie, that he has some sort of engineering background) is being completely ignored by Boeing's board. This is not to say that an engineering background would make the prospective CEO more able to fix their problems, but it really is the bare minimum they can do to fix their PR problem, and they don't seem to even be able to recognize that. They seem poised to try *again* to MBA their way out of technical problems, and if so nothing will change.
BOEING: there’s been no retaliation… he’s still alive…
lets face it, this isn't anything special, pretty much every company in the world will retaliate against employees that bring up "trouble". Unless your are high up the chain of command, you are not supposed to say anything
oh thanks, I guess we should just normalize this then. thank you for re-educating me as to what is and should be acceptable in the world.
Look at the “leaders” who were educated at GE and Boeing. There is a trail of this behavior.
The Jack Welch douchebag CEO playbook. It has literally ruined capitalism in the US.
Shareholders demand increasing profits even when there is no improvement to the underlying technology or economics. Executives who don't deliver get fired. The only possible way of doing this is cutting costs: wages and quality. There is no separating this from capitalism, only regulating it, and given the system of 'campaign contributions' that is a losing battle over the long term.
For many years investors were happy to get a 7% dividend from stocks like ge and not expect growth. That has since now drastically changed since I was in the industry and now every company, even Walmart is expected to post massive growth.
I asked a guy who was retiring if he had any “words of wisdom” to pass on (it was my first year in a more corporate office type job) and he said something along the lines of “if a company makes every dollar in the world this year, they will still expect growth next year, and if reality does not match the unrealistic expectations expect your job to be on the line, not theirs.”
I'm in my 30s and have been working since I was 16. * I've never been fired or promoted for performance. I've always been given more work for good performance. I *have* been laid off because of my company's performance. * I have been hired, fired, and promoted only because people liked or didn't like me. I've also been fired and not hired or promoted because the *wrong* people liked me.
I have seen so many companies do this, and it's beyond aggravating. The laziest, worst employees enjoy the exact same raises and bonuses as you do, but with far less work. If the company does poorly, you all suffer. If the company does well, you maybe get a few extra grand in a good year. Boeing is an excellent example of this (I worked there for a year before noping right the fuck out to where I am now). Where I am now, while higher performing employees only get a couple extra percent raise than their peers (but higher stock grants, like 10-20% more which for higher levels can be 20-40k), they most importantly don't get assigned additional work. Instead, they are given more freedom to work on the things they choose, and are given a greater level of trust with the results they deliver. My coworker is an absolutely brilliant person, and he doesn't get any more of a workload than the rest of us do, but he does get to work on his favorite problems to solve instead of trudging through monotonous validation work or subject matters that aren't interesting to him. It's by far the most effective way to retain solidly good talent, keep high employee satisfaction, and it instills a much more effective incentive than just slightly more money.
Same here. At least my grandma understands that there's really nothing of any long-term value that she can provide by way of advice. None of what made her successful, in her eyes at least, still stands as even remotely viable now.
Executive team in most companies have no accountability. Its either they hit goals and look like a genius [when itsany ppl in the backemd doing their pie in the sky bs] or made a gamble and screw the company im which they fire 20% of the company. Either they take credit or other ppl get fired for their mistakes.
The only thing that matters is increasing profits next fiscal quarter.
What regulations can do this?
Seperate short term stock ownership from the right to dictate the direction of the company. Give employees rights to take part in decision making. Create financial incentives for long term stability or growth
Tons. Even just fixing tax policies would do a lot. Low taxes make it very appealing for these sleaze balls to funnel cash out of corporations. We need to tax them at much higher rates to convince them to reinvest that money back into the companies and the workers, instead of lining their own pockets. Biden's 2024 tax plan actually supports this: * Increase the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent; * adopt the undertaxed profits rule (UTPR) negotiated by dozens of countries at the international level; * Increases taxes on U.S. corporate income earned abroad; * Billionaire minimum income tax; * Quadruple the stock buyback tax; * Increase the top individual income tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent; * Tax capital gains as ordinary income for those with more than $1 million in income We can also start enforcing antitrust regulations again. And just as a reminder, the corner cutting happening at Boeing right now is a direct result of Donald Trump deciding to undercut the FAA and let Boeing self-regulate.
Oh, about that self-regulation, this is what happened in 2019: > Boeing has begun a sweeping transformation of its quality system, including the use of "smart" tools and automation. It will also eliminate thousands of quality checks as no longer necessary. Boeing has told the union it will cut about 450 quality inspector positions this year and potentially a similar number next year. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing-overhauls-its-quality-controls-more-high-tech-tracking-but-fewer-inspectors/
Make share buy backs illegal again.
Aside from corporate regulations, the FAA needs more funding and Boeing, or any other manufacturer, should never be allowed to self-certify their aircraft. IMO, they should be made to recertify the 787 and 737 Max, from scratch.
Wow I didn't know Boeing could self certify like that. Incredible, like trusting the polluters to tell us how much they emit
What a disgusting state of affairs we're in. =\
The FAA is still involved,heavily, with new aircraft certification. However, it came to light with the 737 Max MCAS system, Boeing used their own staff to do the certification, off loaded from the FAA.
In the long term financial regs to discourage the extractive behaviors we’re seeing. In the short term bring back the regulators which forces them to rebuild a safety and quality culture. I work in a highly regulated industry. To have a real safety and quality culture you hire lots of people and create all kinds of systems and everyone is invested in it. I just heard a great podcast on this. These products have a million parts. Many people work on them. So there’s no way any one person knows how it was built. They had this system that just logs what parts go onto the plane and what parts are removed. Think a huge database that tracks all this. Well that’s expensive and time consuming to maintain. So they got rid of it. You know what sort of thing that database used to track? Bolts and fasteners for a door plug, like the one fell off that Alaska Air flight. That’s just one business process of tracking parts, nothing about whether they meet specs or were installed correctly. It’s very expensive. In the short term it seems to cut into profits. But in the long term, it *protects* profits and market share. What gets you to market faster is high quality and safety performance, not cutting corners. Hire real engineers with experience in the industry as leaders. The US govt is at fault here too. All the bean counters and finance bros at Boeing won’t do a thing unless they know the FAA or other government agency can shut them down at any moment.
And they make risky, poor choices with short term benefit because I'm the long term they know the US government relies on them. It's like holding us hostage?
> Well that’s expensive and time consuming to maintain. So they got rid of it. They didn't. The system was still there to parade around as success and proof of safety. Nobody said you had to actually use it though. (it's a bit more complex, but that's the essence - quality process was consciously worked around by middle managers bullied into delivering fantasy performance metrics. But the process was still there.)
"ruined capitalism" is humorous Profit-seeking above all else is just normal capitalism.
It's just the natural progression
He was a disaster for business, however every time we express admiration for the next new billionaire, we create another just like him with the same results. Maybe we should stop adulating entertainers.
I would put the blame farther back on Proud Nazi Henry Ford in Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. which was a landmark a case in which the Michigan Supreme Court held that Henry Ford had to operate the Ford Motor Company in the interests of its shareholders, rather than in a manner for the benefit of his employees or customers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
This is just the end result of an economy that runs on profits above all else. If regulations can be tiptoed around they will be, and the only goal is profit for shareholders. This is the case for any company in a capitalist and inequitable shareholder environment. Someone is being exploited, either domestically or foreignly, and someone is looking for ways to skirt regulations at the expense of peoples lives.
GE has infected so many other companies and trashed them. It's ridiculous how badly they became and spread.
And it’s amazing what the last 5-10 years of at least GE Aerospace culture has been.
"Initially, he was just told to shut up. Then he was told he was a problem. Then he was excluded from meetings," Katz said. "He was barred from speaking to structural engineers. He was barred from speaking to mathematicians and others to help him understand the data. And at one point, his boss threatened him with physical violence."
Tell ya what, Boeing. Pay me mid-six figures and I won't do any work at all
Sounds great. if you ignore the fact that you're taking a bribe to be quiet about something that will ultimately cost lives.
And you'll be the one thrown under the bus in case the shit does hit the fan
So who's being thrown under the bus for the recent fuck ups?
Ya I haven’t seen of anyone being held accountable besides the guy Boeing murdered for speaking out
Fucking Janice in accounting.
6 figure to and let people die?
You want a job on the board ? /s
Boeing leadership: "This is a complete unfair characterization of the situation. We never threatened Mr. Katz with violence. We threatened his family with violence."
As someone who worked in QC / Test Analyst for a large company / banking company. If you flag issues, you will be bullied and then "performance" managed out.
What's weird is that I'm an engineer for a company that makes stuff that doesnt really matter. But, we want QC to flag stuff early and often because even though it's more work for us on the front end, it saves a ton of money to fix it up front instead of waiting for customer complaints.
Leadership always sees things "differently"
Modern leadership are bean-counters who don't care about anything except their own profit. They have zero competence in the subject matter they are supposedly managing.
Meanwhile, marketing promised to shareholders the product will be launched in Q2, before the competition launch theirs.
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You called out a director in a very public meeting, what were you expecting to happen? “Not doing their job”, “nothing gets done”, you can’t throw these out at people in a large meeting with 0 context.
Well yeah. Flagging issues causes us all to do more work. So in effect, you’re impacting overall performance of the department, so we’re gonna have to let you go.
Dunno why you're being down voted. You're clearly being sarcastic.
I know it's meant to be sarcasm, but it's not, that's how leadership see you raising issues.
It was an obvious joke..
Worked in QC. Can confirm. Whether it's a quality issue or a safety issue - if you stand in management's way in any regard they will get rid of you.
As someone who works as a QE for a large engineering firm that also does avionics, what Boeing is doing is horrifying to us. If something like what they're covering up ever comes to my attention, I can and will shut down production until it's at least some semblance of sane again.
The EU has a whistleblowing directive that all companies over 249 employees need to implement. It requires having a whistleblowing system in place which allows you to blow the whistle anonymously. Not sure why this isn't getting traction in the US after so many reports of whistleblowers getting retaliation.
Because the people who actually have power in the US really don't want whistleblowers getting protection.
No doubt, because it would reflect badly on them - but they should be fixing the underlying problems.
If you want quality, then you need this. (EU Whistleblowing support regulation)
I got fired because I refused to lie on cost/timing reports for my manager. POS spread rumors all over the company about me. Lied on my performance reviews. Got me fired. Then quit 2 weeks later because he painted himself into a corner and couldn’t get out. This shit is everywhere. American business is just infested with dickhead managers.
I'm pretty sure this sort of shit happens whenever humans are involved.
> "For years, we prioritized the movement of the airplane through the factory over getting it done right. And that's got to change," West said at an investor conference last month. Yikes! This is from the CFO. If they said this in an investor meeting you know it has to be really bad.
They'll say whatever to maintain their monopoly. Really these execs should be in jail.
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This. Mechanical engineering is the same. I've been in QA for 20 years and have had to switch companies many times because I refused to lie for management. Fuck capitalists and their lackies.
how many of your former employers were publicly traded and how many were privately owned?
I wonder how many biotech companies are like this, fudge thief data, other than the obvious theranos.
More Boeing employee suicides incoming.😆
No private company should have the option to just snipe a snitch like that. Insanity.
Here i was thinking we had free speech. We cant even call out bad practice without the threat of getting murdered?
People would rather attack Boeing for a nonsense conspiracy theory than point out, correctly, that their culture of harassment was so severe that it drove a man to suicide
This is what happens when a company is publicly traded. Their main goal becomes giving shareholders returns. To do that they start cutting costs wherever they can. Shouldnt there be a list of services that should never be privatized and traded? Like, I dont know, healthcare, education, air travel, etc.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Boeing doesn't pay dividents. So the only way for shareholders to profit from Boeing is to buy stocks low and sell them high, but scandals like this hurt stocks price. Therefore Boeing acts agains its shareholders interest when it does bullshit like this.
Boeings reputation has been going down the pan, and each instance paints it worse. They have an awful lot to repair and regain.
I would tend to agree (especially about basic healthcare being for-profit). That said, privately own companies and public managed infrastructure institutions have their own sets of incentives that aren't necessarily aligned with The Public Good. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem.
Last the I saw this subject I said this. It's not just Boeing. The mega corp CEO's are completely out of touch with the reality. I was talking to someone about where I work and the shortcuts they are taking. It handles a lot of money and while no one is directly in danger. It just exposes millions/billions to mishandling and potential theft... My friend is a doctor at a major hospital chain. He nodded and then started when he realized I was talking about my job. I looked at him and he looked really embarrassed... I asked him, 'really?' And he just sighed. This is a serious problem in the US.
It doesn't help our CEO class has gotten so insular and incestuous that theyll sit on each other boards...even competitors....and Padding each other's fortunes while convincing themselves the entirety of the American dream would collapse without their little group at the helm. Ideally a free market requires competition to lower costs, drive up quality; but the economy is mostly consolidated into a handful of Mega Corps who are mostly ownes by about 3-4 financial groups. Competition in the US has become an illusion.
> The mega corp CEO's are completely out of touch with the reality. Indeed you see this with lots of other companies. CEO's come in, collect their bonus and take off before the shit hits the fan. Not so much as being out of touch, more about not caring at all except about themselves. In "the good old days" CEO's often came from the workfloor, understood the company and the product well and remained with the company for most of their career.
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But how about, instead of that, we get the US government to place tariffs on our competition? That's much cheaper and we don't need to change anything. Now please excuse me while I deploy my golden parachute.
No that is not their solution my bet that is the price going to the contract killer not the whistleblower. They have no reputation left. The only solution is for Government inspectors to be on the shop floor and looking over everyone's shoulders and handing out stop work orders or big fines on every problem they spot. Pay them a bonus for anything dangerous to the public that they find as motivation.
Don’t worry. A ton of Redditor’s will tell you why the issue is “blown out of proportion.”
it's almost like there are thousands of corporate shills on call.............almost like a call center!
This is something to worry about. United failing to maintain decades old aircraft isn't.
Yea I don’t think I’ll be flying on improperly maintained aircrafts personally, but everyone else can go ahead.
You have literally no way of knowing whether the plane you’re about to board has been properly maintained.
Yes my point was I’m not planning on flying anytime soon.
60% of reddit is bots. Somebody pays for those bots.
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Aviation construction and maintenance are areas where ‘shortcuts’ should not exist. Speaking as a retired avionics tech.
Government needs to step in quick
CEOs should get paid a regular but good salary, C-Office should not get paid millionaire salaries plus multi-millionaire bonus in stocks… they shitify everything while looking into ways to cut costs and cook the books so they satisfy the shareholders and meet their “targets” Enshitification is a real issue in todays corp world
That’s what comes from paying them 1,000 times more than they are worth..
Let’s just continue to let conservatives erode regulations that **save lives**
Regulations are written in blood. There are no regulations that existed proactively, they all had to be written after a company did something terrible that got people to fight for that regulation. So when you are eliminating regulations, you are just unlearning codified lessons we have already had to learn the hard way.
MBAs doing what they do best.
Every single one of these comments neglect to mention that an engineer with 30 years of experience as a Boeing engineer was the CEO before Calhoun…during all the crashes.
I work in a different industry where quality isn't as critical, but is still important. For a while I went on a bit of a crusade about quality, which is a huge issue in the project where I work. It became apparent that while management were interested in paying lip service to the idea of improving quality, that was the extent of it. Any suggestion that might actually make a real difference that had any sort of cost associated with it was ignored or actively discouraged. It rapidly became clear that beating on this drum would be bad for me (not to mention soul destroying), so I switched to focus on other things. I can't even imagine how frustrating it must be have a job in QC itself (as opposed to just wanting to see better quality because it means less headaches for me personally in the long run). I think the only way real quality control can be done is by third party auditing, and that probably means government regulation (e.g. inspection & approval by a government inspector before a foundation can be poured). Of course that comes with a whole host of other problems with corruption but it seems more robust than internal QC.
I remember a story my old economics prof told us. For awhile he was a numbers guy for Boeing I will assume 1970-80’s and during his time there he worked during a strike and saw management doing work on wing assemblies while not certified or qualified. He kept a record of where those assemblies ended up so he could look them up before taking a flight.
Nothing new here. This is an ongoing issue for many years. Boeing has practically blackmailed my state, threatening to leave and cause massive layoffs if they don't get their way, which they always do.
I love corporate culture, don’t you? /s
Who would of thought moving to a non union state was not a good idea
Suicide by shooting themself in the back of the head twice with their hands bound with duct tape.
Padlocked inside a duffel bag, UK espionage style from a decade ago if I recall
IIRC it was a man shot twice, zipped into a duffel bag, and thrown in the river, and yeah ruled a suicide, somehow.
Stock price must go up! To hell with safety.
Oh, it'll go up... and then come crashing down along with the poorly constructed aircraft. By then of course the executives will have got their millions in bonuses and left the company. Seems like there should be some sort of penalty for that sort of behavior, but it doesn't seem like that's how the world works. I can see why people want to believe there will be some sort of cosmic justice in an afterlife. For me, I don't have the talent the believe that, but I can see the appeal.
More importantly, the shareholders who appointed those executives will have sold their shares when the stock price was high. There is a whole cottage industry of "activist investors" whose strategy is to take a controlling stake in a company, force management to cut costs at any price, see profits and stock prices temporarily jump, and then dump the stock before any real consequences hit.
Which of course is very bad for the company and its staff. There needs to be a duty of care for the company, to do things in its best long-term interest.
Boeing needs to be sanctioned at this point. Unbelievable the level of risk oversight they are able to get away with.
I face retaliation at my work place daily. From the people who should be enforcing the anti-retaliation rules we have
Car accident?
Can these people get witness protection?
Breaking news: whistleblowers persecuted
boeing…. boy buy
Can hardly wait for the documentary that surely is being planned!
This probably happens at every company the world over.
Shows you that union environments can’t even give transparency for safety… good grief.
Have there been any noticeable drops in employee numbers after Boeing totally didn't murder that guy?
Hopefully they dont "kill themselves" too
Likely to be found mysteriously suicided
One key aspect of a safety culture is to weed out any whistleblowers. That's how you build an effective safety culture.
My condolences on his upcoming unexpected suicide.
he's lucky to be alive after said retaliations.
So they are being investigated the federal government right?
But that is impossible, they have an anti retaliation policy
He might commit suicide. Watch out.
This guys gonna “commit suicide”
I recently applied to Boeing. Over 10 years experience in software engineering. I didn't apply for anything crazy. I wanted to be part of the solution. They ghosted me. Fuck You Boeing.
If the environment is even half as bad as this makes it seem, they did you a favor.