A former classmate of mine had an internship as a line engineer at an aircraft manufacturer (not Boeing). To hear him tell it, you couldn't trust a line worker not to rivet his dick to the...
A former classmate of mine had an internship as a line engineer at an aircraft manufacturer (not Boeing). To hear him tell it, you couldn't trust a line worker not to rivet his dick to the airframe. To put it a bit more kindly: this isn't skilled labor, and the hiring manager is more concerned with whether an applicant has working thumbs than his higher math skills or whatever. The technicalities of the plane are the engineers' concern.
Point is, the line workers aren't falsifying anything because they have no idea what the hell they're making. It's the line engineer's job to make sure everything is within spec. So, we've got a few possibilities:
a) The line engineer is being pressured to pass planes that shouldn't be passed to meet quotas, etc.
b) The line engineer is overworked and unintentionally overlooking details during inspections.
c) The line engineer doesn't exist. Meaning the inspections are being rubber-stamped by someone who isn't qualified to inspect aircraft.
As mentioned by others, there are supposed to be multiple layers of inspections so there isn't a single point of failure, specifically to prevent option B. Of the remaining possibilities, I'm leaning toward C. The mistakes and defects that keep cropping up in Boeing products are too obvious. An engineer cutting corners would likely still reject, say, a door not being attached.
Yes, that does mean I think Boeing is just slapping planes together and shipping them as long as they basically look like planes. Yes, that is the worst of the possibilities I listed. Based on what I've heard from other engineers who have worked there, I would say this falls within expectations.
I'm sorry if it looked like I was framing someone (specific). I certainly didn't mean to. Even if some line worker or quality control or woever didn't the the job right, it's the company that is...
I'm sorry if it looked like I was framing someone (specific). I certainly didn't mean to.
Even if some line worker or quality control or woever didn't the the job right, it's the company that is at fault (in my eyes). If they don't take this seriously and just fire a few people and call it a day, then God save all the people who fly in their planes!
All of your three options are bad, but all of them bear some credibility of what may have happened. Boeing should realize they are making planes that cam fly hundreds of passengers. They are not making lawnmowers or washing machines. If their product fails, it will probably cost lots of lives. If your washing machine fails, you won't have your cothes cleaned today, if your lawnmower fails, your grass isn't going to be cut.
With problems crreping up lately, Boeing should really start doing something otherwise their name could (at the very least) mean nothing in the future ir (at worst) cost many people their lives.
Oh, I didn't think you were. I am quite sure Boeing is. For added context, I'm usually the guy who goes "well, it's actually really complicated" when there's some big public QA blowup like this....
I'm sorry if it looked like I was framing someone (specific). I certainly didn't mean to.
Oh, I didn't think you were. I am quite sure Boeing is.
For added context, I'm usually the guy who goes "well, it's actually really complicated" when there's some big public QA blowup like this. I'm an engineer myself (though not involved in aviation currently), so I have to be more informed on how things work than the average internet commenter. In this instance, I don't see much of an argument to be made other than what it appears. Boeing will pass anything vaguely airplane-shaped, and caveat emptor if the wings fall off, I guess.
I'm somewhat idealistic in that I tend to hope my colleagues in other industries try their best with the resources available. To use your example, lawnmowers actually kill people all the time. Just because it's mostly user error shouldn't stop us from trying to design safer lawnmowers.
The problem with Boeing is, if I'm right, it's a systemic problem within the company, from top to bottom. Firing a handful of execs and fining the shit out of them won't fix a damn thing.
I can believe this. My personal observation (not in engineering, but I imagine it still applies) is that companies can get themselves caught in an incompetence trap that is extremely difficult to...
The problem with Boeing is, if I'm right, it's a systemic problem within the company, from top to bottom. Firing a handful of execs and fining the shit out of them won't fix a damn thing.
I can believe this. My personal observation (not in engineering, but I imagine it still applies) is that companies can get themselves caught in an incompetence trap that is extremely difficult to escape. You can't identify who is competent enough to hire and promote if you, yourself, lack competence in the area that you are hiring or promoting for. Meanwhile, competent people can easily identify that a company has a fundamental competence issue, and they take their institutional knowledge and go. After that, it becomes almost impossible to hire competent employees even by accident (they quit quickly).
Every beloved, well-run company is potentially just one bad hire away from an incompetence death spiral. I saw it happen in a company I worked for—and loved working for—when the old (very beloved) director retired and was replaced by a new (let's just say not beloved) director. When the workforce is unhappy, a few key employees are usually leave first because their skillsets are in demand, and then it's all downhill from there.
This pretty much nails the sentiment I've been seeing from peers and acquaintances. I don't really know anyone in my field or adjacent ones who wants to work for Boeing anymore. That classmate I...
This pretty much nails the sentiment I've been seeing from peers and acquaintances. I don't really know anyone in my field or adjacent ones who wants to work for Boeing anymore.
That classmate I mentioned was a fairly conservative pro-corpo type and not given to extreme opinions. Yet, even his proposed solution to their issues started with making the executive board line up and face a wall. All I can really say is, it may well look even worse to us than it does to the non-technical types.
We don't tend to chase big paychecks because when your skills are in demand, you get paid regardless. That being the case, why go somewhere that expects you to work tons of overtime and damages your professional credibility by association? Anyone in this profession with even a hint of ethics, integrity, or even just self respect is already giving Boeing a wide berth.
I see we're on the same page in this. I'm afraid that you might be right your last paragraph. If you are then Boeing is destined to be doomed sooner or later. Seems like they may hetrading profits...
I see we're on the same page in this.
I'm afraid that you might be right your last paragraph. If you are then Boeing is destined to be doomed sooner or later. Seems like they may hetrading profits for safety, which is really bad in this industry. It's not great anywhere else, of course. But when you are transporting hundreds of people at once in something you made and didn't inspect before deeming it airworthy... That really is what we call "průser" here (I don't know the right English word - it means "trouble" or "problem" but is considered swear word or profanity and when someone uses it, it means the problem is really big - that big that is shouldn't have existed).
I get the point you’re going for, but even washing machines should be manufactured with care: Samsung recalls 2.8m washing machines after reports of explosions
I get the point you’re going for, but even washing machines should be manufactured with care:
Seems like I picked bad examples :-) But you and the lawnmower guy (and I hope everyone else) got the point. Everything can be dangerous and many things lethal. But even exploding washing machine...
Seems like I picked bad examples :-) But you and the lawnmower guy (and I hope everyone else) got the point.
Everything can be dangerous and many things lethal. But even exploding washing machine doesn't kill 200 people at once. I hope...
The posturing, fingerpointing, and obfuscation are predictable. So is the apparent lack of strategy regarding planes which have already been put in service. Is the FAA beholden to the public which...
The posturing, fingerpointing, and obfuscation are predictable. So is the apparent lack of strategy regarding planes which have already been put in service.
Is the FAA beholden to the public which pays for its supposed oversight, or to the industry it's supposed to be overseeing?
Just stumbled upon this. Seems like Boeing is in another trouble. The company says it's fault of individual workers and FAA says Boeing came to them by themselves informing about this issue. They...
Just stumbled upon this. Seems like Boeing is in another trouble. The company says it's fault of individual workers and FAA says Boeing came to them by themselves informing about this issue. They will do the inspection out of order which will slow down the delivery of new planes. Some planes are already flying, no solution for those yet.
Still, even if it may not be company's fault (but individuals) and they remedy the issue on new planes, it doesn't add much confidence in their planes in eyes of passengers, does it?
What an odd claim. The company as an entity can't physically do anything. A company can't sign off on inspection records, only a person can. A company is an umbrella sitting atop peoples' actions...
The company says it's fault of individual workers
What an odd claim. The company as an entity can't physically do anything. A company can't sign off on inspection records, only a person can. A company is an umbrella sitting atop peoples' actions and ideas so the legal system has a way to handle them as a collective.
When workers as part of standard process are falsifying records, then the company is falsifying records.
The idea that all of the good things that can come out of a company are "the company's fault" and the bad things are "the fault of individual workers" is absurd.
Also people don’t just break the rules for no reason. If they were being lazy, then a supervisor should have caught this and it’s management’s fault. If the workers were pressured to send more...
Also people don’t just break the rules for no reason. If they were being lazy, then a supervisor should have caught this and it’s management’s fault. If the workers were pressured to send more planes off the line and they cut corners with inspections that’s also management’s fault.
For all those leadership classes that MBA students and managers take, they sure don’t seem to exhibit much of it.
Ethics is the other one. I started working in the business school higher-ed space a few years after the MCI Worldcom and Enron scandals. There was a big push in business schools to include and...
For all those leadership classes that MBA students and managers take, they sure don’t seem to exhibit much of it.
Ethics is the other one. I started working in the business school higher-ed space a few years after the MCI Worldcom and Enron scandals. There was a big push in business schools to include and require ethics courses, if they weren't already present. My organization even had Cynthia Cooper, the one who exposed the MCI Worldcom fraud, come talk to business faculty members and students about the importance of ethics in business.
Yet here we are, nearly two decades later, and the same shit keeps happening. Not that it ever stopped.
Unfortunately most business students don't take those classes too seriously, it's more of an easy A than anything else. On par with the resume/digital profile "design" classes (in reality just...
Unfortunately most business students don't take those classes too seriously, it's more of an easy A than anything else. On par with the resume/digital profile "design" classes (in reality just very liberally massaging the shit out of your work history) most business schools also require. The IB and consulting focus students for sure don't care.
Much like the old saying "You are not in traffic, you are traffic." But yes, came here to say this. It's entirely possible it was rogue employees, but that does not absolve the company as a whole,...
Much like the old saying "You are not in traffic, you are traffic."
But yes, came here to say this. It's entirely possible it was rogue employees, but that does not absolve the company as a whole, as it means there were some significant gaps in the auditing process.
The entirety of the reason that commercial aviation is as safe as it is, is that they killed this mentality. Boeing trying to bring this general attitude from the rest of corporate America will do...
even if it may not be company's fault
The entirety of the reason that commercial aviation is as safe as it is, is that they killed this mentality.
Boeing trying to bring this general attitude from the rest of corporate America will do nothing but cost lives.
Aviation accident investigations specifically do not provide civil or criminal blame so that the root of the problem can be found, and the system fixed, so less lives are lost or damaged in the future. If the system was so full of holes that it relied on a single individual never having a lapse of attention or judgement, the system is at fault.
So if I'm understanding this correctly...Boeing, who recently heavily tried to lobby to deregulate plain safety, then attempted to cover up systemic safety issues with planes, had 2 big safety...
So if I'm understanding this correctly...Boeing, who recently heavily tried to lobby to deregulate plain safety, then attempted to cover up systemic safety issues with planes, had 2 big safety whistleblowers "mystery" die after releasing information...they're now saying line workers falsified safety records?
A former classmate of mine had an internship as a line engineer at an aircraft manufacturer (not Boeing). To hear him tell it, you couldn't trust a line worker not to rivet his dick to the airframe. To put it a bit more kindly: this isn't skilled labor, and the hiring manager is more concerned with whether an applicant has working thumbs than his higher math skills or whatever. The technicalities of the plane are the engineers' concern.
Point is, the line workers aren't falsifying anything because they have no idea what the hell they're making. It's the line engineer's job to make sure everything is within spec. So, we've got a few possibilities:
a) The line engineer is being pressured to pass planes that shouldn't be passed to meet quotas, etc.
b) The line engineer is overworked and unintentionally overlooking details during inspections.
c) The line engineer doesn't exist. Meaning the inspections are being rubber-stamped by someone who isn't qualified to inspect aircraft.
As mentioned by others, there are supposed to be multiple layers of inspections so there isn't a single point of failure, specifically to prevent option B. Of the remaining possibilities, I'm leaning toward C. The mistakes and defects that keep cropping up in Boeing products are too obvious. An engineer cutting corners would likely still reject, say, a door not being attached.
Yes, that does mean I think Boeing is just slapping planes together and shipping them as long as they basically look like planes. Yes, that is the worst of the possibilities I listed. Based on what I've heard from other engineers who have worked there, I would say this falls within expectations.
I'm sorry if it looked like I was framing someone (specific). I certainly didn't mean to.
Even if some line worker or quality control or woever didn't the the job right, it's the company that is at fault (in my eyes). If they don't take this seriously and just fire a few people and call it a day, then God save all the people who fly in their planes!
All of your three options are bad, but all of them bear some credibility of what may have happened. Boeing should realize they are making planes that cam fly hundreds of passengers. They are not making lawnmowers or washing machines. If their product fails, it will probably cost lots of lives. If your washing machine fails, you won't have your cothes cleaned today, if your lawnmower fails, your grass isn't going to be cut.
With problems crreping up lately, Boeing should really start doing something otherwise their name could (at the very least) mean nothing in the future ir (at worst) cost many people their lives.
Oh, I didn't think you were. I am quite sure Boeing is.
For added context, I'm usually the guy who goes "well, it's actually really complicated" when there's some big public QA blowup like this. I'm an engineer myself (though not involved in aviation currently), so I have to be more informed on how things work than the average internet commenter. In this instance, I don't see much of an argument to be made other than what it appears. Boeing will pass anything vaguely airplane-shaped, and caveat emptor if the wings fall off, I guess.
I'm somewhat idealistic in that I tend to hope my colleagues in other industries try their best with the resources available. To use your example, lawnmowers actually kill people all the time. Just because it's mostly user error shouldn't stop us from trying to design safer lawnmowers.
The problem with Boeing is, if I'm right, it's a systemic problem within the company, from top to bottom. Firing a handful of execs and fining the shit out of them won't fix a damn thing.
I can believe this. My personal observation (not in engineering, but I imagine it still applies) is that companies can get themselves caught in an incompetence trap that is extremely difficult to escape. You can't identify who is competent enough to hire and promote if you, yourself, lack competence in the area that you are hiring or promoting for. Meanwhile, competent people can easily identify that a company has a fundamental competence issue, and they take their institutional knowledge and go. After that, it becomes almost impossible to hire competent employees even by accident (they quit quickly).
Every beloved, well-run company is potentially just one bad hire away from an incompetence death spiral. I saw it happen in a company I worked for—and loved working for—when the old (very beloved) director retired and was replaced by a new (let's just say not beloved) director. When the workforce is unhappy, a few key employees are usually leave first because their skillsets are in demand, and then it's all downhill from there.
This pretty much nails the sentiment I've been seeing from peers and acquaintances. I don't really know anyone in my field or adjacent ones who wants to work for Boeing anymore.
That classmate I mentioned was a fairly conservative pro-corpo type and not given to extreme opinions. Yet, even his proposed solution to their issues started with making the executive board line up and face a wall. All I can really say is, it may well look even worse to us than it does to the non-technical types.
We don't tend to chase big paychecks because when your skills are in demand, you get paid regardless. That being the case, why go somewhere that expects you to work tons of overtime and damages your professional credibility by association? Anyone in this profession with even a hint of ethics, integrity, or even just self respect is already giving Boeing a wide berth.
I see we're on the same page in this.
I'm afraid that you might be right your last paragraph. If you are then Boeing is destined to be doomed sooner or later. Seems like they may hetrading profits for safety, which is really bad in this industry. It's not great anywhere else, of course. But when you are transporting hundreds of people at once in something you made and didn't inspect before deeming it airworthy... That really is what we call "průser" here (I don't know the right English word - it means "trouble" or "problem" but is considered swear word or profanity and when someone uses it, it means the problem is really big - that big that is shouldn't have existed).
I'd translate that to "huge fucking problem" because we really just use "fuck" emphatically a lot
I get the point you’re going for, but even washing machines should be manufactured with care:
Samsung recalls 2.8m washing machines after reports of explosions
Seems like I picked bad examples :-) But you and the lawnmower guy (and I hope everyone else) got the point.
Everything can be dangerous and many things lethal. But even exploding washing machine doesn't kill 200 people at once. I hope...
The posturing, fingerpointing, and obfuscation are predictable. So is the apparent lack of strategy regarding planes which have already been put in service.
Is the FAA beholden to the public which pays for its supposed oversight, or to the industry it's supposed to be overseeing?
Just stumbled upon this. Seems like Boeing is in another trouble. The company says it's fault of individual workers and FAA says Boeing came to them by themselves informing about this issue. They will do the inspection out of order which will slow down the delivery of new planes. Some planes are already flying, no solution for those yet.
Still, even if it may not be company's fault (but individuals) and they remedy the issue on new planes, it doesn't add much confidence in their planes in eyes of passengers, does it?
What an odd claim. The company as an entity can't physically do anything. A company can't sign off on inspection records, only a person can. A company is an umbrella sitting atop peoples' actions and ideas so the legal system has a way to handle them as a collective.
When workers as part of standard process are falsifying records, then the company is falsifying records.
The idea that all of the good things that can come out of a company are "the company's fault" and the bad things are "the fault of individual workers" is absurd.
Also people don’t just break the rules for no reason. If they were being lazy, then a supervisor should have caught this and it’s management’s fault. If the workers were pressured to send more planes off the line and they cut corners with inspections that’s also management’s fault.
For all those leadership classes that MBA students and managers take, they sure don’t seem to exhibit much of it.
Ethics is the other one. I started working in the business school higher-ed space a few years after the MCI Worldcom and Enron scandals. There was a big push in business schools to include and require ethics courses, if they weren't already present. My organization even had Cynthia Cooper, the one who exposed the MCI Worldcom fraud, come talk to business faculty members and students about the importance of ethics in business.
Yet here we are, nearly two decades later, and the same shit keeps happening. Not that it ever stopped.
Unfortunately most business students don't take those classes too seriously, it's more of an easy A than anything else. On par with the resume/digital profile "design" classes (in reality just very liberally massaging the shit out of your work history) most business schools also require. The IB and consulting focus students for sure don't care.
Much like the old saying "You are not in traffic, you are traffic."
But yes, came here to say this. It's entirely possible it was rogue employees, but that does not absolve the company as a whole, as it means there were some significant gaps in the auditing process.
The entirety of the reason that commercial aviation is as safe as it is, is that they killed this mentality.
Boeing trying to bring this general attitude from the rest of corporate America will do nothing but cost lives.
Aviation accident investigations specifically do not provide civil or criminal blame so that the root of the problem can be found, and the system fixed, so less lives are lost or damaged in the future. If the system was so full of holes that it relied on a single individual never having a lapse of attention or judgement, the system is at fault.
So if I'm understanding this correctly...Boeing, who recently heavily tried to lobby to deregulate plain safety, then attempted to cover up systemic safety issues with planes, had 2 big safety whistleblowers "mystery" die after releasing information...they're now saying line workers falsified safety records?
Yeah, totally checks out.
That's a lot of records!
/s