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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

On one hand I can't blame any engineer that wants to flee, but on the other Boeing really can't afford any more brain drain. We are already seeing the results of years of forcing experienced but well paid engineers out and outsourcing their jobs. Planes literally falling out of the sky, but some nice fat executive bonuses.

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Anecdotal, but out of my graduating class in chemical engineering from a University in Seattle, the top 20 students went into tech and finance. The worst performing students (by academic metrics) went to Boeing. Over time, I expect decisions to be made by engineers which are not stand outs. Coupled with the MBA trainwreck prioritizing profits and cost cutting, I expect Boeing has a very rough patch ahead.

I always wonder who these folks who graduate with excellent STEM degrees are who can't land a job.

I had a similar experience with my graduating class in undergrad computer science at a no-name state university. Of the graduating class (significantly smaller than when we started), I don't know of a single person who couldn't find some kind of gainful tech related employment - including the few folks who somehow could not code! by the end of our program. My experience is circa 2014, so only shortly after the great recession.

Where are these people who just can't get any kind of work with real CS degrees? Even the many hardcore cheaters I know of found ways into the FAANG (some have been promoted several times now too!)

I suggest you come over to the UK.

I know several guys with postgraduate STEM degrees and 10 years of development experience who can’t even get interviews.

It’s very bad here.

Things are a bit sketchy at the moment. Had a recent get-together including a former co-worker who was an obvious hire-this-person. They got hit in a layoff and they're still essentially out of work after a year.

Job postings that don't respond to inquiries about the role are a waste of your time, and it's possible to spend all day every day applying to them. Job postings without a method of contact are probably some kind of scam.

The easiest step, IMHO, is to start by ignoring employers who use a service to filter applicants.

Top 20 students in chemical engineering went into tech and finance.... two professions that at the first sight have nothing in common with chemical engineering... Tech and finance must really be looking for a lot of employees....

Or they just pay a lot more.

If Boeing was paying $500K+ TC for engineers in their early/mid career, you'd see a lot more expertise enter the field. Instead you basically have to go into tech or PE/IB to see that type of compensation fresh out of school. Especially when students are taking on hundreds of thousands in debt, the payback period becomes really important when considering career paths.

I completely understand graduates would choose higher TC from tech/finance vs TC from Boeing. What I do not understand is why tech/finance companies would want to hire chemical engineering graduates.....

I know a few people who changed careers from biology to finance - but that was only after going back to school and getting some business degree....

because they solve a lot of math problems very well.

No doubt, Big Tech prints money and absorbs all available talent. Boeing's troubles are surely compounded by having all the best new talent hired away from them, because Big Tech pays much better.

There is literally nothing actually preventing Boeing from:

1. Firing 100% of management between CEO and lowest level supervisors that make things happen. All of middle management should go.

2. Promote supervisors into middle management.

3. Promote ground level employees into supervisor roles.

4. When human problems happen (and they will), spare no expense with resources and training. Remember, the reason for firing management is because they had the interpersonal talent, but fundamentally lack aeronautical talent. Interpersonal talent is of minimal value at Boeing.

3. Never do this! Good engineer should get paid better over time and do good engineering. Being for a long time in a role doesn’t make you better at different ones like supervising from engineering. Few bigger companies in EU wasted a lot of tech talents this way and people most often leave job after being leaders for a moment.

That is a feature of capitalism and effective market. If a company falls a little bit below competition -- market forces it do dive even deeper, die quicker.

I'm not saying it's good or bad. I've seen communism, and it's much worse to help failing companies -- they tend to fail even more instead of improving.

The problem now is that international market is not really fair, trade treaties help too little.

> If a company falls a little bit below competition -- market forces it do dive even deeper, die quicker.

Feature of nature too, the jungle forces the weak to die quicker.

One more argument for companies != people: we will be a lot more ok for this to happen to companies vs it happening to people.

Solution: for e supremacy of compliance with regulations over fiscal performance. You have to be able to check all of the boxes reliably before we can talk about innovating or optimizing.

Companies = people + assets + organizing structure

boeing isn’t a company the us government will let fail. it’s too important to have as a domestic ability.

This is true and I wonder if it's going to put them even more into a zombie state of existence. Their bad business practices will keep getting bailed out and they'll never really improve until a better company comes along.

The problem is that the "competition" aspect assumes low barriers to entry. We're not talking about the corner diner or a bank or even a large insurance company. There's very little substitute for what Boeing does, and the barriers to entry for new competition are (quite literally?) astronomical. Boeing can't just be replaced; even to allow it to fail would be a major problem for the western economy.

Why it should be the engineers problem?

It isn’t. But Boeing failing and turning the commercial airline market into an Airbus monopoly is bad.

Pivoting to a remote-first culture would be a great start. Tons of talented engineers angry about RTO to draw from.

Why would a manufacturing company - who is clearly having manufacturing problems - pivot to a remote-first culture? What problem would that solve? It's hard to build airplanes in your driveway, but I can't say that I've tried.

That door-blowing-off thing wasn't a design issue. "It's hard to forget to install the bolts when you're working from home" is a bit of a logical fallacy.

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