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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

This is the “everybody knows” narrative that seems to get trotted out whenever modern Boeing has problems.

I’m curious - how much of it is true? Is it really systemic, or has it manifested only with one specific model plane?

It seems to fit very well with the “financialization is bad” narrative, too, but is there any other data to support the claims?

It’s possible that engineer-driven Boeing could have fucked up the Max, too.

I am skeptical of simple, tidy explanations regarding actions and arcs of any organizations as large as Boeing.

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If it was only 1 isolated issue ok sure...

But there are now several serious safety issues. The 2 crashes killing hundreds in 2018. The quality issues with the manufacturing of the pressure bulkheads with "snowman" holes thst had to be fixed or the rudder bolts that thst hold the assembly to the fuselage that an employee noticed that weren't the same as the spec drawings?

There are probably more cases...

With the multiplication of these problems. It's obviously a systemic issue and a corporate culture that doesn't put as much importance on safety.

Ho and there's this one where Boeing is asking the FAA for a safety exemption so they can ship planes faster while they try and fix the problem...

https://fortune.com/2024/01/06/boeing-737-max-safety-exempti...

I was going to say that Boeing had already gotten that exemption, but I was thinking about a different exemption:

https://simpleflying.com/boeing-737-max-10-certification-fli...

This also presumes that an engineering-driven Boeing would have even built the 737 MAX in the first place. In all likelihood, they would have stayed the course in building a new middle-market, narrow body aircraft rather than continuing to retrofit the aging 737 airframe.

That's the real counterfactual here. Would Boeing have iterated yet again on the 737, or would they have done a clean sheet design instead?

Yeah, agreed, it makes intuitive sense and also neatly fits an emotional "finance bad" story, but shouldn't we then also expect the 787 to have similar problems? Or, why would the 787 with its entirely new airframe exist in the first place? As an outside observer with no particular knowledge of the industry it at least seems like Boeing was able to produce a high quality new plane more than a decade after the 1997 merger.

The claim isn’t exactly “Boeing can’t make a good plane anymore”, though.

It’s more like non-engineering culture resulted in a push to create a new plane as quickly and cheaply as possible. In other words, the execs at the start of the process created an impossible task that the downstream employees couldn’t follow through on. In this sense, it is consistent that under “normal” conditions, Boeing could still produce a good plane; the problem is that nobody wants to or is able to enforce those conditions.

You're only looking at this airplane. What about the space capsule that cannot be built correctly for a test launch? What about the planes to replace the ones the secret service uses to ferry around POTUS? What about the stories from employees saying they are punished from bring up issues they see? So much more than just this one plane (and its variants)

And before the 737 MAX, in the 90's there were a number of 737 accidents related to rudder control units. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues.

And that space capsule, Starliner, was contracted in 2011 and has yet to be safe enough to carry humans. Meanwhile in the same time, the upstart competition has gone from zero to flying some 11 crewed missions (not all were to ISS) and charged the government much less than Boeing charged, and that despite Boeing's storied 100 year aerospace history and culture.

Boeing had an amazing engineering record, then it merged with a company known for having a terrible engineering record. The executives who ran the shoddy company basically took over Boeing from the old management. Now Boeing is a company with a terrible engineering record. Look at what happened to GE, it was the same style of management that ruined Boeing.

Answering the question by repeating the myth doesn't really seem to be what they are asking for.

Well it's the way GE was run and look what happened to them. Caring only about your share price is a great way to ruin a company. The share price should be the result of a well run business not the true north of the company. By making the metric into the goal it totally defeats the purpose of the metric.

So basically Goodhart's law in action then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

There is this example of Boeing cutting between 450 and 900 quality inspectors after replacing them with software and “smart tools”.

Boeing said at the time the changes would improve quality.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...

Or this whistleblower Boeing engineer who has been outspoken about the sefery concerns of the max planes?

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boein...

How about internal documents that were released showing discussions between engineers decrying the pressure received to cut costs by ignoring safety régulations?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/boeing-fifth-estate-costs-s...

The same thing happened with the Starliner, Boeing's space vehicle. Shoddy engineering, failed tests, long delays. Plus there's plenty of anecdotal evidence from current and former employees.

Also, there is this video I watched just yesterday that explains some of the quality issues with their main supplier thst used to be Boeing's prpperty in the past. This just adds to the finance over safety narrative and kind of confirms what this article is saying.

https://youtu.be/wyJFnPWe-gs?si=DS_3Ea0wMTor14EO

A family friend who worked at Boeing with a tenure that spanned the merger reported that the management completely went to shit and the engineering culture followed, so it does seem plausible.

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