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> specific steps to weaken the engineering leadership

What in the world are you talking about? There’s been no reporting of anything like that. The MAX engineers failed all by themselves. No management told them to design MCAS in a brain dead fashion. Nobody “weakened” engineering leadership.

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When management makes statements like "we don't need [to pay for] senior engineers here, these are mature products... ", and clearly putting finance first among corporate goals, the natural result is that engineering dies a death by a thousand cuts...

> When management makes statements like "we don't need [to pay for] senior engineers here

The problem is that Boeing management never said that. Moreover, the fired CEO was an engineer.

The important word being "was".

As an engineer, he was accountable to reality. As a CEO, he was accountable to the board and the financials.

Guess which won.

Muilenberg became CEO in 2015. The McDouglas thing happened in '97. He inherited an existing management structure that was already primarily interested in profit over all other concerns, especially engineering.

Moreover, the 737 Max program ran from 2011-2015. The CEO at the time was an MBA.

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