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Comment by sitharus | Hacker News Reader

He initially turned down the job because he felt that a lawyer wasn't the right person to run an engineering company, and from reports of people who worked with him he knew his knowledge limits and listened to the engineers. He took serious risks with the 707 and 747 projects because he trusted the people who understood the technology.

MBAs and final-gasp lawyers concentrate on making the reported number go up in the short term, they won't take a hit now for a payoff in ten years.

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Fun fact the 707 had the first implementation of “MCAS” because the plane had a tendency to pitch up in a certain flaps configuration. They added a stick nudger which applied light pressure in said config. Not a stick pusher, as it did not alert the pilots, it simply applied an extra input independent of the pilots. However this was made aware to all pilots of the plane and likely contributed to its certification.

Also the 707 tail was extended by 40ft to give it better minimum ground speed control, this was retroactively applied to already built planes. Very interesting to see how this was applied in the past with a lawyer at the helm vs the current ceo during the launch of the 737Max

I think there might be some confusion here. The vertical stabiliser (not the tail) was extended by 40 inches [0] to combat concerns about poor yaw control.

Although the Wikipedia article cites the UK ARB as the influence, it was also in response to the 1959 crash [1] of a 707 being used for training, in which Dutch roll was induced and later became so violent it ripped 3 engines off the wings.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_707#707-420

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1959_Washington_Boeing_707_cra...

Assume 40 inches rather than 40ft

Adding 12 meters to an aircraft is quite a big change.

Mistake on my part they extended the tail to 40ft from 32ft

Hmm, you now highlighted an interesting thing - every company (I've seen) being run to the ground by MBAs and Lawyers was done so because they outright refused to trust their employees. The usual playbook is severance of any transparency and communication and implementation of more and more paperwork and oversight over their employees with no nuance. In other words - complete lack of trust into employed specialists being able to do their work.

yep, that's the most important thing about his operation of Boeing.

Both the 707 and 747 were "bet the company" projects, in particular the 747 pushed Boeing to the brink of bankruptcy. However both were major successes because they took a gamble on the future of the aviation industry.

In these days of "fiduciary responsibility" it's difficult to imagine any public company taking that kind of risk. Risk is what should make returns.

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