
Boeing falsified records for 787 jet that developed a fuel leak - thereare5lights
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/boeing-air-canada-jet-fuel-leak-1.5193550
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mopsi
Air Canada and fuel issues - Gimli Glider deserves a mention!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider#History)

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koolba
That was an intense read!

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beanjammin
Metric, Imperial... whoops!

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tomglynch
All the revelations regarding Boeing are pretty damning. Though it seems they
are too big to fail with defence contracts, huge market share and thousands of
planes already in service, that will need continued maintenance. It is a
worldwide duopoly, just Boeing and Airbus.

So where too from here? I can't see the USA ever jailing executives - but
potentially they could ramp up the fines?

In my opinion we need Europe and other countries to begin heavily fining
companies skirting their responsibilities, because what we are doing at the
moment is obviously not working.

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dheera
We also need to think of ways to invert the incentives. Right now, most of
these are public companies, who are incentivized to hide details because
(mostly idiotic) shareholders do bad things to the stock price when they
reveal any kind of technical issues.

If I were a shareholder, I'd actually bid _up_ a stock if they were
forthcoming and honest, because I value transparency, scientific rigor, and
admitting fault where it is due. I would inherently consider such a company to
be more valuable in the long term.

Unfortunately 99.99% of investors would do the exact opposite and short the
stock; their actions are the exact opposite of an honesty-valuing system.

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zapita
You may find LTSE.com interesting. It stands for “Long Term Stock Exchange”.
It is an ongoing attempt to create a new stock exchange, with rules meant to
discourage short-term minded investors.

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chvid
You incentivise your employees to manipulate, misrepresent or outright lie.

Then when it is found out; you throw your employees under the bus.

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Ice_cream_suit
The employees responsible for the falsification should be jailed.

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aaronbrethorst
The executives who created and sustained the culture where this was considered
acceptable should too.

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Ice_cream_suit
Should you be jailed for your employees crimes?

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jacquesm
That's a simple question with a complex answer. The answer is 'it depends'.
Yes, there definitely are cases where execs should be jailed for their
employees crimes, and others where that definitely should not be the case.

For instance, if an employee of a company embezzles a bunch of money from
either a customer or the company itself then the execs should typically not be
culpable. _But_ , if the execs themselves were the ones that ordered the
employee to do this, either directly or through the 'nudge, nudge, wink, wink'
method of communications (and there is corroborating evidence that this indeed
happened, for instance the issues not being limited to single employees but
being institutionalized) then yes, they should definitely be punished as
though they themselves were the ones doing it.

It should not be possible for executives to use employees as a cut-out layer
when crimes are committed.

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tempguy9999
> But, if the execs themselves were the ones that ordered the employee to do
> this...

 _or_ (and this often seems more likely) if the execs have not _clearly_
instituted _reasonably sufficient_ protocols to prevent X from happening...

They are the buggers abundantly paid for good governance, after all.

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jacquesm
Sure, but the more likely way in which these things go is: "Do what you have
to do to make us pass those emissions tests" and "Get rid of that industrial
waste" and so on.

No clear command to do something illegal but the employee is left with two
choices: do something illegal or end up not doing what they were told to do.

Culpability is a thing that can be smeared out effectively across the layers
of a large organization where each layer only sees the delta between the one
above it and the one below it, the people that know the law and the
consequences are safely (or so they think) insulated from the hands that
commit the crimes and the hands that commit the crimes typically don't know
the law.

This situation has - as far as I know - never really been addressed explicitly
in the law hence the institutionalization of 'the buck stops at the top'.
_Even_ if you don't know and _even_ if you did not order it explicitly you are
- and should - still be held responsible. The question at hand is if that
should include criminal liability for all cases where the employees break the
law and I think there are plenty of cases where employees breaking the law
should not lead to culpability of management, for instance, those cases where
employees gain an advantage for themselves at the expense of the company, the
customers or the society they operate in. But in most other cases where the
company gained an advantage the execs should be liable. That alone will get
companies to behave like good (immortal) citizens.

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tempguy9999
My point is to exactly prevent this level of leeway being given to an
employee. The execs _must make it clear in writing_ how to do a significant
task. If they do not, they are culpable for the outcome just as if they eg.
forged the results themselves.

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jacquesm
That has a serious problem: you can not possibly see in advance what people
are going to do and if there is one thing I've learned from a couple of
decades of programming and working with teams no matter how clear you thought
your writing was there will always be something or someone that will take the
last bit of ambiguity and interpret it in some creative way.

That's why there is such a huge gulf between US law and EU law: in the US, the
letter of the law is all that matters, in the EU, where laws are a lot more
ambiguously specified it is the spirit of the law that matters. So an EU
executive could be found liable because the company violated the spirit of the
law whereas a US executive would walk even though both companies would do the
exact same thing. But once the letter of the law is violated - especially in
so-called white collar crime - there is still no guarantee of a conviction
because corporations have very large budgets to protect their execs and to try
to find some legal loophole.

I'm (very well possibly because I'm European) more in favor of laws that are
interpreted as to the spirit of the law, simply because it makes people reason
from some level of goodwill rather than by trying to maximize the take by
legal hair splitting.

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0815test
> in the US, the letter of the law is all that matters

This is very wrong. In common-law jurisdictions (which the U.S. is broadly-
speaking one example of - some exceptions may apply which are not relevant
here), judicial precedent is a key factor in interpreting "the letter of the
law", which is _not_ the case in continental/civil law. This means that a
vaguely-written statute can still provide some meaningful legal certainty in
the U.S., where precedent provides some commonly-understood and commonly-
developed guidance to what "the spirit of the law" might be; whereas in civil
law jurisdictions, overly vague or ambiguous laws can only result in judges
and government officials exerting arbitrary power (and in fact this happens
routinely!), with not even consistency over time (much less some even more
consistent "spirit of the law"!) as a real check and constraint.

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gouggoug
What a sensationalist headline.

> Boeing said it self-disclosed the problem to the U.S. Federal Aviation
> Administration after Air Canada notified them of the fuel leak.

> The records stated that manufacturing work had been completed when it had
> not.

> "immediate corrective action was initiated for both the Boeing mechanic and
> the Boeing inspector involved."

So "Boeing" didn't falsified records, 2 of their employees did.

Now, whether Boeing's company culture (tight deadlines? overworked employees?)
contributed to this or not, is another story, but, the headline is misleading;
borderline dishonest.

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OpieCunningham
Wouldn’t that mean that a company can never be responsible for the output of
the company? At every level, anything is just “a couple of employees”. The
headline is reasonable.

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n_o_u
I would agree with you if they had not self reported and taken immediate
corrective action.

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everybodyknows
Boeing self-reported after Air Canada had already created a "paper trail". At
that point, they could hardly hope to keep the failure secret.

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_Codemonkeyism
I've met executives who said 'Don't mail me problems, always call me.' or who
said 'Don't ever tell me problems'.

Because the moment there is a paper trail, they can't hide.

As an employee you always want to create a paper trail otherwise they will pin
it on you. Print emails if necessary.

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salawat
Absolutely this. There is a tendency in higher management circles to only want
paper trail created after a decision to deal with or dismiss an issue is made.
I never realized why until I found out about e-discovery.

You can get around this somewhat by fulfilling their request to be notified
without paper trail, then immediately e-mailing them and everyone involved
with a copy of the problem discussed, the decision made, the reasoning behind
the decision (including attribution to who said what), and the the action plan
moving forward.

If you really feel uncomfortable about it, include the weather outside the
office day. It seems silly, but it can lead to some interesting lines of
questioning in legal proceedings, and it also serves as a canary to those
paying attention to what you are concerned may be in the future moving
forward. Sometimes this may kindle a more in-depth review of the subject
matter at hand.

People may think you're weird. However, most just file it under "there is no
communication like over-communication."

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_Codemonkeyism
"If you really feel uncomfortable about it, include the weather outside the
office day. It seems silly, but it can lead to some interesting lines of
questioning in legal proceeding"

Will remember this!

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tomohawk
Problem caught during self audit, self reported.

Seems like they're being transparent, and the auditing they have in place has
found a problem which is being addressed.

Talk about a misleading headline.

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bilbo0s
I don't know man?

I wouldn't characterize being caught out and warned about it, and then saying
"Oh... you're right, let's report this." As necessarily the same thing as
"self-audit"-ing and "self-report"-ing.

If we're going to characterize the article as misleading, I think the same can
be said of your post.

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java-man
nothing will change until we start holding executives responsible (i.e. jail
time).

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akira2501
We license engineers and many other similar professions.. perhaps we need an
"executive" license, complete with certifications and standards and a long
"journeyman's training" period before we trust you with the massive amount of
power, both real and abstract, that can come with one of these positions.

We may never be able to hold them criminally liable with much success, but we
could much more easily invalidate their license and prevent them from holding
any similar position for a very long time. Which, for some reason, seems far
more just than simply jailing and possibly fining them.

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perl4ever
Would it make sense to you to also have a licensing scheme for politicians?
After all, we don't even require them to be non-criminals under existing law
(at least in my jurisdiction).

~~~
nraynaud
In France a lot of politicians went to an administration school (real dorky
stuff, state accounting rules, procurement rules, how to interact with other
countries etc.), but we have the same complaints about them. Also to be fair
they have slightly better objective result with a longer life expectancy, but
nothing extremely better.

