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Comment by pasbesoin | Hacker News Reader

IIRC, the Washington workers are union while the South Carolina workers are not? (Though I don't know about the specific roles/titles involved in this round. But the article raises the open question about S.C. jobs.)

Also, I wonder whether and how much of this work is moving overseas.

P.S. Quick google reveals:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/15/these...

http://www.engineering.com/AdvancedManufacturing/ArticleID/1...

http://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeing...

The last two are talking about fit, finishing, and parts, and they cite the machinists' union. One might call that a bit apples versus oranges with respect to the OP. Nonetheless, at the time there was language (PR and corporate-speak) about no jobs leaving Everett and potential increased demand increasing headcount there.

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I have a friend who's a long-time engineer at Boeing (in Washington). He'd always complain that union rules were strict to the point of ludicrousness, eg. if he got a new desktop computer he was prohibited from plugging it in himself; he had to file a ticket and get it plugged in by a member of whatever union had staked a claim to that task.

Not really related to the article, but yeah, I can't imagine that level of union-driven bureaucracy is good for productivity.

This isn't union - this is just how huge corporations work. I worked for Verizon and they did the same thing - everything was locked down and you had to file a Remedy ticket to get anything done (ugh).

Verizon is union too.

Perhaps, but the point is true. Large, traditional companies do this sort of thing.

Sometimes because of unions. Others times for "security reasons" or "3rd party contract" reasons, etc.

I don't know... I work for a (non-unionized) company about half the size of Boeing, and we don't have anywhere near that level of bureaucracy, so I have a hard time accepting the premise that "that's just how things have to be." I'm sure there are a lot of contributing factors, but I don't have a hard time imagining unions contributing to process creep by mandating the allocation of tasks in a non-optimal way.

I'm no hardcore anti-unionist, but this particular situation seems like a very plausible late-stage union failure mode.

But your company is smaller. I work for a company smaller still and the amount of dumb bureaucracy is even less than yours probably.

Also, culturally the aerospace industry is very rule and procedure heavy, for good reason.

I've seen it in big and small (10 people companies), it just depends on having someone in HR that cares about shit like this and the authority to do something about it.

Sometimes you can't change a light bulb at a small company, sometimes at a big one you're first job is to assembly you're own desk.

I could easily imagine an incident where someone plugged something in the wrong socket, something got destroyed, and it was codified in policy that only the people who certifiably know what they're doing are allowed to plug stuff into sockets. It takes just one to ruin it for everyone.

Like plugging a vacuum cleaner into a UPS.

Which actually happened at a subsidiary of British telecom I worked at - the cleaners unplugged the accounts receivable unix system.

It was a POS system the finance director brought and caused no end of problems at one point we were unable to cut a BACS tape for over 6 months

I work at Verizon and they gave me a MBP with root access...so this is not universal at the company.

I think both sides think it's ridiculous. But it serves a purpose for the union: job protection.

Corporations want as few people doing as much work as possible. And they will have no qualms about laying people off to achieve that (TFA). Putting absolute restrictions on tasks puts a floor on employment. It's not ideal, but somewhat effective.

It is indeed effective, and interesting.

Whenever people talk about unionizing or professionalizing software development, I think things of this. Even if it ridiculous for both sides, it is indicative of a group of workers, and an employer, who have decided exactly what their job is (and is not), and what the rules and training pertaining to that job are.

Contrast with software development, which is a free-for-all - mainly for good, but the complete absence of standards or authorities doesn't always seem like a good thing. Just occasionally I find myself thinking that some baseline standards for, say, source control or testing would do everyone a world of good.

You get to appreciate the idea more as you get older too.

There's a reason you see more older (and expensive) aircraft mechanics working on the latest greatest tech, as opposed to older developers.

>> There's a reason you see more older (and expensive) aircraft mechanics working on the latest greatest tech, as opposed to older developers.

What do you suspect those reasons may be? Also, what would you describe as latest greatest tech in the context of aerospace industry?

> What do you suspect those reasons may be?

Not gp, but in the context of this thread, the answer is obvious: Unions.

I was alluding to unions, and age discrimination. The tech part isn't really interesting in this context.

Imagine if you weren't allowed to debug or write tests for your own code.

Until we come to a mature understanding of the place that unions have in our working economy, I hope we never see this kind of bureaucracy form in our profession.

Writing tests for your own code is a relatively recent phenomenon.

When I worked at MSFT as a developer in the early 2000s, we had dedicated test developers who wrote tests. You wrote your code and checked it in after a code review and as long as it passed the integration tests, the test developers wrote their (what would now be called) unit tests and checked them in to make sure someone else didn't break your code.

I think writing your own tests gained favor in the early/mid-2000s with the "extreme programming" and TDD movements (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Test-driven_development)

Exactly. If union rules had been written down, even in 2005, developers would be forbidden from writing, possibly even running, tests, lest they take away the jobs of the testers. Unit testing would in practice be illegal, never mind (gasp) DevOps.

>If union rules had been written down, even in 2005

What are "union rules"? Each union is free to bargain their demands collectively with the employer. If your members think such a rule is stupid, they won't demand it. But your lack of knowledge and disdain of unions is noted.

Even running itself. That would actually mean seeing what you wrote. That would be bad. Takes away potential job creation opportunities.

Actually that's exactly how it is done in highly structured "clean room" software projects. If you fixed the "bug" in your software, then the process team couldn't fix the "bug" in the process that resulted in the bug in the software.

Could you give me an example of such a project with this kind of restriction?

Space industry software is siloed in exactly this way. I write code, someone else unit tests it (C), someone else entirely writes integration tests (Java), then someone else writes a final integration test (Java).

It's horrendously redundant and wouldn't be applicable to most software, but it does work well; when bugs are picked up by the third or fourth layer of testers, which happens from time to time.

Neat. As long as there is reliable communication throughout the different teams, I guess this kind of thing makes sense for space tech and other highly critical software.

Is this based on seniority, as in the new guys have to write the tests? That way you would at least have some experience with how to code in an easily testable fashion.

Imagine if you weren't allowed to debug or write tests for your own code.

Yes, this is exactly how we QA in fields where software errors can cost lives.

I could see the merit in this, would you mind elaborating a little bit?

My experience is in medical equipment -- not quite the mess that medical devices are, thankfully. The general idea is a combination of redundancy, clean-room methods, and people whose domain expertise is in testing and edge case analysis.

From a personal perspective, I find that trying to design tests as the developer of the code to be tested is fundamentally difficult -- I have embedded assumptions around the functionality of the code that make it cognitively difficult to fully envision complex failure scenarios. Some of the best test producers I've worked with have had no development background at all.

> Whenever people talk about unionizing or professionalizing software development, I think things of this.

There would never be a union so long as fully-qualified software engineers are in-demand - even the deluge of web-designers from the dot-com boom (and today's coding-camp graduates) haven't seen a rise in poor working conditions or unemployment because of the over-supply of labor.

I do advocate some kind of professional certification or charter status for software-engineers involved in safety-critical systems - like how a certified civil engineer needs to sign-off on bridge and building designs - but that's largely for the public's benefit, not solely their own.

Corporations, startups, small/medium sized businesses - and yes even average people want as few people doing as much work as possible. Would you want 3 plumbers to show up to your house to fix a leaking toilet? I do understand the history behind the rise of unions. And I generally think that unions have been a positive force in the world (and some current industries could probably benefit from unionization), however plenty of unions to this day give unions a bad name. Unions should protect workers against egregious corporate retaliation. They shouldn't be protecting workers jobs at the expense of a companies fiscal survival.

Depends. I have 11 bathrooms in my house, so I might need 3 to get the job done properly. Also, I bet one of those plumbers could fix the leak in my pool.

Ah yes, lets all gather for some ol' union tales. The evergreen of US politics, taught to high school students all over the country.

Meanwhile there is a mandatory arbitration clause in your contract and the Department of Labor says you are exempt from overtime pay because ???

But not to worry, all switchboard operators working for a company with less than 750 stations also don't get paid for all hours worked. There is no fairness and reason to the Fair Labor act, it just means someone who is probably long gone lobbied to royally fuck computer specialists over. And here we are today.

Can you imagine police unions agreeing to arbitration?

Not sure what your point is but police union contracts have arbitration clauses.

When I worked at Boeing as a design engineer, at one point my design was put on a test rig out at the factory. Some adjustment was required, and I stepped forward to do it. Some union rep stepped in front of me, and told me I wasn't allowed to touch a tool. I was supposed to direct some union guy to turn a wrench this way or that.

That's not union, any place I've ever worked the bigger the IT department grows the tighter the computers and networks are locked down.

This reminds me of an article about unions in hollywood i read sometime ago. It wwnt somewhere along the lines of a guy talking to an actor on a set, and he brushes some dirt off the actor's shoulder. Later, he is approached by a women who asks him never to do that again because it was her union approved job to brush the casts clothing.

union driven bureaucracy is known to have extreme consequences in the name of job security

Movies are different. That could be a continuity problem. Actors are clean or dirty for a reason. 24, for example put a lot of effort into costume continuity. Shot over months, 10 copies of the same clothes, looking slightly worse as the day wears on.

For every anecdote one unearths about bad union work rules, I'm sure that you can find a hundred about a union successfully looking out for the interest of a member. Is best not to be distracted by anecdotes.

Speaking of anecdotes, my best union anecdote was when I was working at a construction company as a seasonal general laborer.

One day my job was to clean out some office trailers out in the back lot so they could haul them to a new site in a few days. To do this I needed a vacuum cleaner (which they had) and a generator to run it (which they also had). No problem, I said.

Until I found out that the generator was so low on oil that it wouldn't start due to the low oil cutoff switch. The oil was black and needed to be changed.

No problem again, I knew where the oil was, and I knew how to change it so I started to do just that. Until a union mechanic yelled at me and asked me what the H I was doing and that only a mechanic could do that job. I said "Ok, I'll just top it off so I can start it" ,and he said "Nope, you can't do that". I thought he was joking and kind of laughed until he called my boss over to explain it to me.

The mechanics, of course, were busy, so wouldn't get a chance to change my oil until next week, so I told my boss that I wouldn't be able to do my job. He said he'd take care of it.

And take care of it he did -- he said to go to the trailers and wait, and sure enough, a union driver showed up with a tractor trailer towed generator -- it must have been a 500KW generator, maybe larger. The union generator operator showed up soon after and started it up for me, and said he'd be back at quitting time to shut it down.

So all day long a 500KW generator sucked down 10 (?) gallons of fuel per hour (not to mention the wear and tear on that huge generator and the cost of the driver and generator operator)... just so I could run a shop-vac.

All because I wasn't allowed to put a few dollars of oil into a 5kw generator due to union rules.

That is when I lost all respect for unions.

So, because of one incident you lost all respect for all union activities? That's like losing respect for all Chinese because one wasn't acting rationally.

There are a dozen examples of similar incidents in this thread alone.

I've not witnessed such an incident first hand, but as soon as I do I'll likely think "wow, they weren't kidding" and lose all respect for union activities from one incident.

>There are a dozen examples of similar incidents in this thread alone

By anonymous posters, most likely who have never actually worked a union job and are just repeating something they've read in threads like these.

Yes, unions have dumb rules. Do you think those rules were developed before or after corporations dictated onerous policy? So who are the good guys?

That's not the only incident of inane situations due to blind adherence to union rules that I saw, just the most egregious. Even among union workers the rules were sometimes unpalatable like the strict seniority rules that make it impossible to hire the best person for the job since the most senior person gets his/her pick of new jobs -- they supported the rules only because they knew that one day they would be the senior one.

I don't think "losing respect for all Chinese because one wasn't acting rationally" is a fair analogy, more like "losing respect for all Chinese because they not only follow arbitrary and counter-productive rules, but they actively support them and will fight to keep them"

So we should just accept a verifiable stupid state of affairs because there's probably a good thing on the flip side? Never mind that part of looking out for someone's interests could well be expected to include coming up with a way of doing so that doesn't require your members to behave in a verifiably stupid way?

We usually call that "ideological blinkers".

I worked at Boeing as well with a few guys that had been programming since the 60's. They did a pretty good job of walling us off from the rest of the company so we could get things done ourselves. We ran everything. Version control, Jenkins, our computer lab, etc. It was great, but the best part was getting to pick the brains of people who'd been in it for 40 years. Them being in the missile warning field, they witnessed, up close, communication networks and related technologies grow from the beginning.

But we shouldn't dissolve worker protections entirely just because you don't like some of the rules

These anecdotes are always fun but do they really provide much insight into the role played by a union? I've never worked a union job but I have family that do (railroads in US) and while they complain about these kind of things and wish they didn't have to be in the union, when something bad happens the union is basically the only thing keeping them from getting canned for something not their fault. My cousin got hurt on the job because of another worker just making a mistake but he was going to get canned for it anyways. The union prevented it and saved his job (and healthcare etc). But at the same time there are a ton of anecdotes about similar silly-sounding situations, so where is the truth?

I feel like union bashing has just become part of our culture, just like complaining about state road crews (always 1 guy working and 5 guys standing around!) but the joke may be on us when we allow our infrastructure to be privatized and our unions to be killed and we realize that we work for the market, not the other way around.

Correct on SC being non-union

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/15/these...

Despite a very active campaign for several years.

The headline says "engineers", so they're probably not in a union no matter what location they occupy.

Nope, Washington State Boeing engineers are 100% in a union.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Professional_Engine... http://www.speea.org/

IIRC, even most (all?) software engineers working for Boeing in Washington State are required to join the union.

I worked for Boeing in Colorado on a major govt satellite program several years ago (non-union in CO of course), and when I received a WARN notice when our contract was ending I began looking around the company for other positions. All the SW Eng jobs I could find in the commercial aviation BU in Washington were listed as being "Union." Blech.

I ended up leaving the company after I figured out that Boeing's hiring and transfer policies meant it was easier to quit and apply for jobs as an external applicant, rather than applying as an internal candidate.

I don't know if it's any different for software engineers, but I have a friend who did an industrial engineering internship there a couple years ago. He was treated exactly like a full-time employee (full benefits, 401k, etc.) and had the option to join the union or not. It was barely any more for him to join so he did.

False. As an engineer you have the option of joining SPEEA, but it is not a requirement.

Joining the union offers some benefits, and some people do so for personal/political reasons.

One useful benefit was publication on anonymous salary information around raise time. You see exactly where you stand without violating the privacy of your peers.

Source: I'm a former Boeing employee (DS9 - Real-time systems simulation engineer)

Right. But if you don't join, you still have to pay union dues, right? That requirement kind of blurs things in my mind.

I believe many of the engineers are in the SPEEA:

http://www.speea.org/

"Since January 2016, Boeing has cut 1,332 engineering and technical jobs from its Washington workforce".

As a Washingtonian I am _so happy_ we gave Boeing 8.7 billion in tax breaks and incentives. They're taking that money and using it to maintain their work force elsewhere :/

Is there any information indicating that they are moving their workforce elsewhere?

The select quoting of the article here implies that the market demand is waning:

> The latest job cuts followed a prior involuntary reduction of 245 workers set for May 19 as the company responded to increasing competition and slowing aircraft sales.

> "We are moving forward with a second phase of involuntary layoffs for some select skills in Washington state and other enterprise locations," the memo said. "We anticipate this will impact hundreds of engineering employees. Additional reductions in engineering later this year will be driven by our business environment and the amount of voluntary attrition."

Sounds like cuts across the board, not cuts in Washington and growth elsewhere.

I haven't read anything specific and I could be wrong but it feels like it's just the trend: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance-...

>>taking that money and using it to maintain their work force elsewhere

I'd look at Chicago. That's where the HQ and executives are, right?

Very common. Another fun example is the huge tax break MN gave to Northwest Airlines to build an Airbus maintenance facility in northern MN. They took the tax break and never built the facility. Or how about cable companies getting tax breaks to build out high speed internet in rural areas? One could go on...

It's also a sign the company is circling the drain, it's the more qualified people that tend to take voluntary redundancies and take their chances in the job market. This leaves a lot of dead weight behind.

If you do layoffs repeatedly while not hiring anyone, yes, it can be very bad. But the aircraft industry is cyclical. I suspect Boeing has done layoffs/hiring/layoffs/hiring cycles repeatedly in the past.

Tax breaks simply should not exist on any level. I can't think of something more absurd than picking people to give tax breaks to.

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