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Comment by beeboobaa3 | Hacker News Reader

These "software engineers" also killed 189 people. I don't think Boeing losing billions is all that important in the grand scheme of things.

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I really do not think the programmers are the responsible in this case. I'm not sure, but for what I understood, it was not a failure in the SW, but a failure to explain the pilots the changes in the behaviour of the plane.

On whole failure of the goal. Change a plane in big way, but try to get it act like it did not change. To avoid explaining and training pilots. So instead of training pilots to expect plane to act certain way in certain scenarios, it was instead fixed in software and hardware. But well that combination was done poorly and it should have still been explained.

They're not solely responsible, but they are responsible.

If they fulfilled the requirements provided to them I don’t see how that could be the case. Even if they didn’t it was Boeing’s job to verify that.

It’s a bit like blaming low level construction workers for a bridge that collapsed (assuming they didn’t sabotage anything on purpose).

You should always question if the requirements you get make sense.

And? How would that help if they have no clue about how that specific system was supposed to work?

You find out. Doubly so if you're working on safety critical systems like an airplane

Management at Boeing killed those 346 passengers.

Shareholders of Boeing killed them in the end. They wanted these profits and stock prices, but sadly they are the group that is protected.

So at the end of the day it was you and me killing those poor souls by investing our pension money in those companies?

Exactly. Whole current financial system is build on this.

Don't your investors oversee cutting of corners like recycling old designs to the breaking point? Or hiding critical new workarounds in the shallowest possible training?

"the sole fiduciary duty is to deliver profits" is a reductive meme at this point. The problem is putting short-term over long-term, and that's a choice Boeing executives made. Of course the system incentivizes this, especially if you get away with it. But they didn't.

Most shareholders hardly have a say on how major public companies are run. Thr Only signal they have is by buying/selling stock or not even that if you only own your shares indirectly through an ETF.

If your bad code gets through to a literal airplane, then the entire QA Process is to blame, not just the software engineers/programmers.

> killed 189 people

$396 million is all that would cost. That is a fraction of the damage to shareholder value.

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