I don't think the issue is really outsourcing in the sense of sending this work overseas, as contracting important functions outside of Boeing. Sending this work to an entirely US firm would also have been a problem given the way their interactions with Boeing worked:

> The coders from HCL were typically designing to specifications set by Boeing. Still, “it was controversial because it was far less efficient than Boeing engineers just writing the code,” Rabin said. Frequently, he recalled, “it took many rounds going back and forth because the code was not done correctly.”

Key attributes here are:

- The engineers at the external firm isn't necessarily incentivized to get it right the first time.

- Boeing still has to have engineers on staff to write the specs, and the evaluate the work product of the contractors _repeatedly_ to see whether it meets the specs.

- If it's wrong, it's really really costly.

In that context, I think it makes way more sense for this stuff to be built entirely by people on staff.

The article doesn't discuss it and I don't know to what degree this is still at play, but for years after the merger with McDonnell Douglas, a lot of the Boeing people were frustrated with how processes were changed to depend on many more outside firms. Most of what I have heard centered on other firms producing substantial components that previously would have been done by Boeing itself. Whenever there was an issue with some sub-assembly, the Boeing people felt that if the work hadn't been contracted out, the issue both wouldn't have happened, and would have been faster to resolve.