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Comment by Jtsummers | Hacker News Reader

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/boeing-737... - Gift Link: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/01/boeing-737... (good for 14 days from today)

https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merg... - 2020 article on the topic

I'm trying to find an article from circa 2007 on the changes at Boeing but I can't find it right now. Read those two and follow their various links and you'll get more information.

The long story short version is that post McDonnell Douglas merger, Boeing's management culture was replaced with MD's management culture and things have only declined since.

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Thanks! A follow-up question would be why MD's management won, even though it wreaked havoc. Or it was really just the hindsight...

In almost all mergers the management of the worse comapny ends up winning, provided there was no loopsided difference in size. The thing is, since those executive were not good at creating product, they are more likely to be good at politics and hence they end up overtaking management of the new combined company, even if their company was the smaller one.

I’m curious to know of similar examples happening or references that back this up if you or anyone has them.

A good series of examples is in the book "Barbarians at the Gate", chronicling the career of F Ross Johnson. His company would get acquired and then he and his folks would outmanoeuvre the acquiring company management.

I enjoyed Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric by Ted Mann and Thomas Gryta

NeXt leadership completely overtook Apple. I don't know if it ended up panning out.

US Air buying American Airlines just to become American Airlines, is one of my (least) favorites

They should have fired the failing company's management after the merger. It failed due to the fact that they were incompetent.

Worse-is-better, it’s not just for operating systems. Or maybe management is just another operating system.

Boeing was known as a great engineering firm that was not that great at turning their engineering excellence into shareholder returns. The shareholders wanted executives more focused on said returns.

Sounds like the solution is to turn it into a privately owned company then. Of course, that's greatly simplifying things, but it would be a right step in the right direction.

Finance people prefer finance people. MD's bean counter management were seen as being more responsible and "hard nosed" than the Boeing management who were focused on things that "didn't drive the bottom line" like the product, culture, etc.

People like what they understand. But they need to respect what they don’t when the experts say so.

I recall that in a previous thread, someone had explained that the agreement between Boeing and MD was that MD's management would be retained at similar positions in Boeing, and that many of MD's management gamed this agreement by raising their position before the merger. Leading MD's management to end up higher in Boeing's management.

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