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Comment by IshanMi | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I think the issue isn't one of degrees or qualifications, but rather one of values.

The CEO prior to this one (Muilenburg) also had degrees in Aerospace Engineering, but chose to value profit maximization over things like security and a good engineering culture. Innocent people had to pay the price for it.

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Are we reading the same sources? The ex-CEO, David Calhoun, has a degree in accounting.

https://www.boeing.com/company/bios/david-l-calhoun

> Calhoun has a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Virginia Tech.

You're right about Calhoun- I was actually referring to Dennis Muilenburg, the CEO who was fired in 2019 after the two 737 MAX crashes and the subsequent groundings. My comment wasn't clear enough- I'll edit it for clarity.

The financialization of management at Boeing has been an issue since well before 2019. See:

https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=213075

The CEOs that triggered various financialization moves were engineers by background, too

They had previously worked under "Neutron" Jack Welch, who had a PhD in chemical engineering. What a wide trail of destruction that guy left.

> The CEOs that triggered various financialization moves were engineers by background, too

They were engineers by degree. When was the last time they looked at a CFD or FEA model?

I have an EE degree, but haven't looked at antenna or power systems design in many moons: I have no background in them (working sysadmin stuff).

What are you proposing then? The CEO not do…CEO stuff? This is a common no true Scotsman argument on HN, where ‘real engineers’ are treated as some sort of shorthand for “someone that has the same values that I do”.

I think he is proposing that tech company CEOs have some hands-on engineering experience at least for a short while. I agree with that - "MBA only" bosses really have no idea what it's like to be on the ground. I can't even emphasize how true this is, "no idea whatsoever" is a huge understatement. I thought they were faking to be lazy at first, but they really don't understand that some people need to actually do the work and what goes into it. And I say that as an MBA/CFA before engineering.

Many great CEOs of engineering-focused companies are pure suits with no engineering background.

The CEO is mostly a figurehead, whose only actual responsibilities are to manage the investors and build out a leadership team.

Some CEOs take on more, but they really don't need to in order to run a successful company.

The only meaningful proposal is to fundamentally rethink the culture that’s eaten American companies since the 80s.

The fundamental issue is fiduciary duty getting warped by people like Milton Friedman into the modern meme that executives are legally obligated to maximize shareholder profits (effectively always in the short term).

Boeing is just the next of many, many cases of companies being destroyed by capitalism run rampant.

The former CEO does (Dennis Muilenburg), but not David Calhoun.

David Calhoun is the current CEO until the end of the year.

Isn't accounting "finance engineering"? :-)

And cleaning staff are actually floor engineers. Everything is engineering if you are imaginative enough.

In my country to be an engineer I have to have a university degree of a certain kind, then do a state exam for the national engineering association, then pay a yearly fee to remain an engineer.

I'm a bit discontent how just about anyone of my coworkers in USA can be a whatever engineer :D

In America we look at the ideas someone has rather than what degree or membership they may have purchased.[0]

[0]https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2017/04/beaverton_man_cl...

That's why salesmen whose only job is to promise literally whatever to customers are called "sales engineers"… because of their superior ideas -_-'

Studying and learning and taking exams? Nah… that's boring.

I'm going to point out that you have this exact system for lawyers and doctors… you can't just have ideas and be a lawyer or a doctor.

Nah, cleaning staff are hygiene technicians.

Well, in English, "engineer" does seem to also mean technical worker (what we call "technicien" in French), in addition to "ingénieur".

No, they are obviously flat surface managers.

Despite the tongue in cheek sibling response, accounting is more like engineering than the holier than thou techies here would care to admit.

Are you implying techies are engineers? They are not. Just like accounting isn't engineering. Engineering is engineering.

I personally don't see a big reason why the CEO of Boeing needs a Engineering degree. This seems to me to be a scapegoat, there are plenty of bad CEOs with Engineering degrees.

I'd argue that the COO or another position needs to have this qualification and have the power to bring up these risks to the CEO/Board. Someone needs to understanding engineering, be close to the ground but also have the power to bring things up to the CEO to make appropriate decisions.

Clearly you don't have a degree in engineering.

If you had one, you would know how much you need to suffer to explain to non technical people why a development direction is better than another, and how much it will profit the company in the end.

You could tone this better. The clearest argument is that cost cutting for stock buybacks involves the same thinking, whether accountant or engineer. Since 2014, the CEO is explicitly compensated this way.

I can't tone this better. And a request about tone - while completely forgetting about the real problem - explains exactly what I mean with engineers not being listened to.

Non technical people are always talking about themeselves.

That's the whole point. That's precisely why you need managers with backgrounds in engineering in a business based on engineering.

The whole point is that the previous CEO and the one that arguably kicked off this whole mess did in fact have both a degree and background in engineering. Your mindset and business philosophy matters far more than your degree.

> Your mindset and business philosophy matters far more than your degree.

I completely agree with you, and therefore with the idea that having a background in engineering is still not a guarantee of success or even good practices or good business philosophy.

I disagree however with parent's implication about those difficulties being some sort of justification for malpractice, and my argument is that having engineering-capable managers should mitigate those issues in a properly managed company.

No, the whole mess was created by the old McDonald managers in the old merger. Muilenburg inherited the MAX from McNerney, but you can easily blame his predecessor Stonecipher for all that Boeing mess, when they moved to Chicago and outsourced everything.

Again, you can push the blame back and back and back in time, but putting an engineer at the helm doesn't seem to have righted the ship either. Then it's not clear why such a background is necessary or sufficient for the successor in that position. Arguably the more important criteria may be that a candidate be from outside the Boeing organization, thus making them better suited to see beyond the existing structure and culture.

Once a company like Boeing is put on the slippery slope, it keeps going down south, until you make radical changes. Notice that in most of these engineering driving businesses, the culture was built bottom up, right from the birth of the company. You are now trying to restore that top down. Its not really possible.

People don't realise how hard it can be rebuild the organisation once sufficient corruption has set in. If you do away with top talent, processes and promote regular career managers to run things for you, they will do everything in their power to ensure no right people will ever rise to a position of power. This is for a simple reason that they feel a threat to their jobs.

At that point in time, there is no way a company can resurrected bottom up. Your only options are getting some great talent and then tearing apart the whole company and rebuilding it over time. This is not even possible after a while.

Do you mean McDonnell?

pecunia non olet…

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