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Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

Someone like Dennis Muilenburg then?

If the last one was an engineer, why would another engineer restore your confidence any more?

I mean, I wasn’t particularly down on Muilenburg, I’m aware of his credentials, but haven’t followed this Boeing story closely enough to have an opinion on his culpability with respect to the 737 MAX.

So yes, if they were going to replace the CEO for the optics, “someone like Dennis Muilenburg” would have been the best-case scenario for me, rather than someone with non-engineering background/specialty.

For a sports analogy, CEO shuffling is kinda like coach/GM shuffling of pro sports teams - they’re there to take the blame when things go wrong, but picking a CEO without a related background is like picking a new coach from a different sport.

I think Boeing's problems are related to leadership and having the courage to do the right thing. Good leaders can come from accountancy or engineering or wherever. We shouldn't be snobby about it and insist on an engineer when the issue at that level is not an engineering problem.

Yes, I agree! My problem is with the juxtaposition of the new CEO's background and the statement from Boeing that states only that the CEO change is to "restore confidence" rather than something like "ensure a rigorous, confidence-inspiring culture and processes from top to bottom". PR can't have its cake and eat it too.

Maybe they're leaving it up to him to work out what the real underlying problems are and how to restore confidence? Mission command, and all that.

> If the last one was an engineer, why would another engineer restore your confidence any more?

He's probably talking more about mindset than educational and professional background.

You can have a leader with the mindset of an ornery engineering-first engineer. You can also have a leader who's an ex-engineer with the mindset of a business executive. There's a big difference between the two.

I personally do not know which of those categories Dennis Muilenburg fell into, though.

An engineering background is the bare-minimum requirement, not all engineers are equal capable (or capable at all).

> An engineering background is the bare-minimum requirement

But why?

Is their problem an engineering one?

Or a culture, leadership and values ones?

Everyone's saying that they put profit before safety. That's a financial decision that they need to address not an engineering one!

You have to be an engineer to understand safety. We're talking about world-leading aerospace engineering, not producing some SaaS product. You need someone that understand the technology involved better than anyone else in the industry.

> You have to be an engineer to understand safety.

You're just restating the same thing without any actual arguments. Why do you need to be an engineer to understand safety? I don't know what magic training or experience do you think engineers get that nobody else does? And as I've already said, it looks to me that Boeing's chronic problems are leadership not technical. Get a leader in.

You have to be an engineer to understand safety. It should be abundantly clear what is meant by this. They're building aircraft. What do accountants know about building aircraft? Nothing, nothing at all. How can the buck stop with them? It can't. It has to stop somewhere lower, with an engineer, that understands safety. Unfortunately, a non-engineer won't know if their engineer underlings are A) Qualified or B) Competent.

You don’t need to be able to do your subordinates’ jobs in order to be able to lead or manage them or to take responsibility. In a big company like Boeing you can’t possibly know the job of all your subordinates so your elitism is never going to work.

How do you think for example the President of the United States effectively line manages people as diverse as defence and national parks without simultaneously being a soldier and a geographer? How do you think he judges qualification and competence of these people in globally significant safety jobs and how does he manage the buck stopping with him?

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