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Comment by 908B64B197 | Hacker News Reader

The original 737s by Boeing were all-American masterpieces that had pretty great safety records considering the sheer number of miles flown and delivered airframes.

The 737-MAX, courtesy of Post McDonnel Douglas-Boeing merger [0], with code written by offshored 9$/h Indian coders was a complete disaster.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...

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$9 converted to Indian currency is Rs720 with a conversion rate of 80Rs per dollar which is around 3 lakhs a month, which is a lot in India, equates to a mid six figure salary here based on what you can afford. I'm not sure how you are trying to make a point here. Also it's unfortunate that you retort to blaming the coders and mild racism, instead of accepting Boeing messed up. FAA not once in it's reports nor any aviation experts blamed the code, Boeing went cheap and removed a redundant device the MCAS system needs during a malfunction. Even during the incident HN was quick to blame pilots for being unskilled, now it's the coders mistake? The American company went greedy and went cheap, ignored its engineers, bent FAA over it's back to make rules that suit them, ignored all the warnings. Tried to brush away opinions. And was fully aware of the issue. Instead it tried to hide it. I'm not sure where your so called $9 coder sits here.

This is a great post, but I'm confused about your math in the first sentence. Maybe I misunderstand: 3 lakhs means 300,000 INR. If 720 INR per hour, that means 415 hours per month. If we estimate 4.5 weeks per month, that is 90+ hours per week! Where did I go wrong here? And there is no way Boeing is paying less than 20 USD per hour in India for people writing flight control software!

For other readers, if the monthly salary is 300,000 INR, that would be 3.6M INR per year, or about 45K USD @ 80 INR/USD.

> equates to a mid six figure salary here based on what you can afford.

So they can convert it to six figures USD?

> Boeing messed up. FAA not once in it's reports nor any aviation experts blamed the code, Boeing went cheap and removed a redundant device the MCAS system needs during a malfunction.

McDonnell Douglas-Boeing messed up indeed. The 9$/h coders are just one of the many symptoms of a culture that lead to this kind of reckless behavior.

You are just not able to comprehend, the difference in USD and INR. I will give you a simple example for you to comprehend. The cost of Unlimited 5G internet in India with 2GB allowance per day billed at 1 YEAR is 43 USD. It's 80 USD at minimum in US per MONTH. The cost of groceries for a 4 person family per month is 243 USD. The mortgage payment on a decent 3BHK house I pay is 182 USD per month. The cost of living and expenses in India is way cheaper. I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve by emphasising 9$/hr coders. It's less in US, it's a lot in India, you are not even in the middle class at that point. They hired some competent coders if they paid that rate in India. Comparing competency of a coder paid in USD vs INR is plain foolish.

The successful Indian Space Research Organization is probably paying $15/hr to it's engineers if you are to question their competency next, I'm not sure if you even understand anything.

I mean that's the reason they outsource, it's cheaper because they have to pay way less in USD, but can hire the same level of talent, if needed. Since in INR it's a lot.

And why should they convert to USD, that's completely foolish, they live in India LOL.

Why do you think a lot of people come to US, even if it means working low income jobs. They send their money to India where it's a lot. And hoard a lot of wealth there.

> The cost of Unlimited 5G internet in India with 2GB allowance per day billed at 1 YEAR is 43 USD. It's 80 USD at minimum in US per MONTH.

That's for mobile internet I can only use in India, getting an Indian IP address. It costs 43 dollars but it useless once I land in America.

> The mortgage payment on a decent 3BHK house I pay is 182 USD per month.

For a house in India, in an Indian school district, under Indian jurisdiction. It is not the same asset because there's more to it than the number of bedrooms. See how many Mainland Chinese purchase real estate in America specifically because the assets are now under US jurisdiction and can't be seized by the ruling party, only by a US court of law.

> but can hire the same level of talent

Can you? Last I checked, Silicon Valley talent was pretty expensive worldwide. Partly because it's easy to relocate to the valley.

Oh dear.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues

And speaking of safety records, A32* is better than B737* by any metric.

I'm not sure it's fair to compare the record of a plane family that's 20 years younger than the 737. The first 737 entered service in 1968 vs 1988 for the A320, and during those 20 years, airplane safety improved significantly. Airbus benefited a lot from Boeing's learnings over that time.

As long as Boeing keeps flying the same vintage airframe, they are comparable. Boeing could have also built a more modern, safer plane, but they chose not to, which is a defensible position IMO, as the 737 is pretty safe.

>all-American masterpieces

What's more all american than "Post McDonnel Douglas-Boeing merger with code written by offshored 9$/h Indian coders"?

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