
Boeing cutting more than 12,000 U.S. jobs with thousands more planned - hhs
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-jobs/boeing-laying-off-6700-u-s-workers-with-thousands-more-planned-idUSKBN2332EP
======
marcus_holmes
This is what happens when you let the accountants run the business.

First the research goes. Then the product engineering drops. Then there's mass
layoffs. Then the whole thing falls apart.

To an accountant, a drop in costs is as valuable to the business as a rise in
revenue. To everyone else, this is obviously not true. Risking future profits
to cut current costs is a great move according to an accountant. For everyone
else, it's corporate suicide.

Edit: I realise COVID. But that's the excuse, not the reason.

~~~
_bxg1
I think it would be more accurate to say this is what happens when you let the
shareholders who are too far removed from the business itself run the
business. Those are the people who'd like a company to be a simple growing-
asset in their portfolio, who specifically don't want to be bothered with its
nuances or long-term health, and who have the leverage to impose their ill-
informed will on everyone else.

I have a pet theory that a large portion of the decay in our society can be
traced back to the layers of abstraction between stakeholders and the things
(and people) they have power over. Usually this kind of thing doesn't happen
before a company has gone public.

~~~
michaelt
If you're interested in corporate governance, you might enjoy reading the book
"Pay without performance"

One of the points it makes is that shareholders have very little power in
practice, as even if you own a million dollars of Apple shares, that's only
0.00007% of the company. Not exactly enough to force through a motion on your
own.

And if you think you'll build up a coalition to get a majority? Good luck
doing that when you can't even find out the names of other shareholders.

Minority shareholder lawsuits? They're actually a negligible force; rare,
unlikely to succeed, and low impact even when they do.

And that's without getting into 'preference shares' that grant CEOs outsized
voting rights.

The book argues management can neglect shareholders' interests with impunity
for these reasons.

~~~
_bxg1
Well there are two kinds of public shareholders, right. There may be a small
number who own large enough shares to bother attending board meetings and
voting, and then there are the millions with pensions, 401ks, index funds,
etc. I think you're talking about the latter, who have the same issue but a
slightly different version of it. In their case, the "ill-informed management"
comes down to "price goes up, buy, price goes down, sell". Through share price
they wield an extremely blunt version of the same weapon.

This is almost worse, because it very explicitly cares only about the short-
term price. It's also a much harder problem to solve, because you can't just
tell those people "think long-term and ethically when you're exercising your
impact on the marketplace!". No matter how ethical they may be as individuals,
most of them probably don't even know _which_ companies they have stakes in,
much less whether those companies are heading in the right direction!

~~~
coredog64
I think there’s a third class: Institutional investors like CalPERS or NYSLRS.
CalPERS has something like $300B in assets. When they talk, companies listen.

While they might be implicitly in your first group, attending significant
meetings AND ensuring long term growth are primary responsibilities.

~~~
rdtwo
Calpers is like a king with no pants everyone pretends to respect them but
they are as dumb as money gets

------
DC-3
This is just the start of the trouble for Boeing. They are technologically
quite substantially in arrears to Airbus, and with none of their products able
to pull in particularly hefty profits anymore they don't have the funds to
make the necessary investment in R&D to close the gap. The double-punch combo
of the 737 MAX scandal and the pandemic will have left them in serious strife.

~~~
noir_lord
US Gov will bail them out (even if optically it doesn't look like a bail-out),
boeing is a huge defence contractor.

~~~
danans
The article is about the jobs disappearing, not Boeing disappearing.

Any such bailout isn't going to be enough to bring back jobs in the commercial
aircraft business, which is likely where most of these job cuts are coming
from.

~~~
munk-a
The original comment was that Boeing is in trouble itself - and the parent
comment was addressing that trouble and what the US response will be.

I agree that those jobs are likely not coming back, but the company isn't
going anywhere since the US just lost a lot of clout covering Boeing when the
MAX incident happened - they're not going to give up on it now.

------
aluminussoma
A lot of Boeing's current dilemma is the failure of executive management. A
commonly written story is that the competent executives at Boeing, who were
focused on solid engineering, were pushed aside by the political McDonnell
Douglas executives.

McDonnell Douglas was purchased almost 25 years ago, so perhaps it may be a
little unfair to ascribe all of Boeing's current problems to that one event.
Still, as an engineer, I can't help but notice executive management operate in
similar politically-bent ways at some tech companies I've worked at.

~~~
subzidion
"McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeing's money" as the saying goes...

------
MattGaiser
Aviation is going to be the last thing to recover so this is unsurprising. I
could easily see it being years before new aircraft are ordered as there are
just so many parked right now.

~~~
misiti3780
hopefully flights will be cheaper too, but i doubt that will happen.

~~~
Avalaxy
Even cheaper?! If anything I think prices should be tripled. It's ridiculous
how cheap it is to fly nowadays. Often cheaper than way more environmentally
friendly ways of travelling.

~~~
KptMarchewa
First of all, they should be seriously taxed. It's ridiculous that air fuel is
untaxed.

~~~
dannyw
Have you checked the breakdown of a ticket lately? Taxes accounted for 45% of
my Sydney to San Francisco ticket.

------
cs702
No matter how you look at it, Boeing's business appears to be in terrible
shape. The Atlantic has a decent article on how the company lost its way: "a
company once driven by engineers became driven by finance."[a]

However, from "the stock market's perspective," everything at Boeing is _honky
dory_ \-- the stock is _up_ +2% today.

\--

[a] [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-
boeing...](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-
its-bearings/602188/)

~~~
skny
Stock being up 2% today is myopic and meaningless. Look at the performance
over the last year. FWIW, Wall St isn't a bunch of morons trying to
financially engineer an airplane to take off.

[https://imgur.com/a/lv0yYq9](https://imgur.com/a/lv0yYq9)

------
euix
What's going to happen to all the highly skilled and specialized labor of
building aircrafts? Where would they go? I wonder if we won't see a situation
like the early 90's when suddenly all the top scientific and engineering
talent of the USSR migrated to the US looking for work. If China was smart
they would try to poach as many of these guys as possible. Layoff the
propaganda and pay the top guys well. You could be looking at massive
knowledge transfer in the years to come.

Securing IP and existing tech within borders is much easier then preventing
people from moving around.

------
hn_throwaway_99
Really feel for those employees in a time like this. I mean, if you're a web
software engineer and you get laid of, there are literally many thousands of
companies who would have a need for your skills. If you're an aerospace
engineer, how many options are there really besides Boeing and a couple of
other big guys?

Curious what folks in the aerospace community think.

~~~
jw887c
Ex-aerospace engineer here, now software developer. This is one major reason
why a lot of younger folks at Boeing leave (at least the ones with a more
broader view of their industry).

A lot of "engineers" at Boeing are actually project / program / product
managers and can pivot to similar roles at tech firms. The stress engineers
have it a lot tougher.

~~~
raverbashing
> The stress engineers have it a lot tougher.

Well, there's always automotive, aerospace, manufacturing, etc.

For mechanical engineers, market is not great, but not too bad I guess.

------
bastardoperator
Seeing Boeing engineering practices first hand gave me anxiety and concern for
the safety of air travel and US defense. Boeing is basically 100's of siloed
companies living under a broken umbrella. Everyone is reinventing the wheel.
Sharing code is not possible. No inner sourcing. Tons of duplication
everywhere. It's crazy the amount of waste. I watched nothing happen for 3
years other than catastrophic failure and honestly I'm glad to be gone and not
working with them.

Military projects have it the worst. Depending on the program and funding,
they either have access to modern tooling or such little funding that it
prevents them from using something made in the last century. This company
probably has one of the most impressive development tool catalogs a company
can have, but most developers can't even take advantage of it. They have
everything and a lot of the teams I worked with just couldn't use the stuff so
the licenses sit on shelves burning cash. They renewed software we migrated
away from, just in case... for auditing purposes. WTF?

They always had a crazy security protocol for why they cant do something too.
I get it, defense is important. They tell me they want an air gapped system
for X, cool here is the link to software X and MD5 from our authorized
site/customer area. They're not allowed to download it, I still get it. Looks
like I'm traveling to Colorado to hand over a USB stick. Without a second
thought, I watched the SRE plug it right into his machine. Dude no. WTF? This
would have been safer to download. Countless screen shares with people
exposing private keys and passwords. The list just goes on and on and on. It's
security theatre.

This company is also in love with the H1-B program. I don't mind H1-B at all,
but when companies exploit humans from other countries so they don't have to
pay American wages, that's where I draw the line, it's bad for everyone except
Boeing. They are specifically gouging people from India. Couple this with
their time tracking policies which I wont cover, their business practices are
fairly absurd and rather disgusting.

Purchasing, holy balls. Every team purchases software differently. There is no
consolidation or money saving practices. This has to do with funding, but
someone could do this more intelligently. I tried having the conversation with
them. Boeing, we want to give you back 250K in savings a year by not having 45
pieces of paper, it's a burden for us too. They don't care. Nothing matters
over there. You follow the policy or look for a new job/vendor. It made me
really sad having to work with them. I was so excited too, and it quickly
faded with all the stupid stuff they've imposed on themselves which has led to
lives being lost and costing people jobs.

~~~
screye
> This company is also in love with the H1-B program.

What ? That rings completely counter to everything I know about the aerospace
field.

I spent my whole undergrad (Indian citizen) building planes and the big reason
I left it was that no one in the airplane industry would hire engineers
without security clearance. H1B engineers were legally impossible.

One of my aunts (US citizen) was a top level exec in GE Aviation, and she
straight laughed in my face at the possibility of non-permanent residents /
citizens getting jobs at any company deeply involved in defense. I have
interviewed (2019) with Pratt and Whitney, and they too made it clear they
won't apply for H1bs but they would apply for EB1 Green Cards...until which
point (first 2-3 years) I would have to work on the small subset of non-
defense projects. My friends who went to US top 10 universities for their
masters in Aerospace literally returned to India because no one would hire
them and another of my friend who was a scientist at ISRO (and more
prestigious Indian defense programs he can't even state on his resume) hasn't
gotten any call backs for job applications at Aerospace companies in the US
because of being Indian. He has now pivoted to Applied Math as his graduate
education.

As an Indian, I literally do not know a single person in the US with a job in
the aeronautics industry. (Bar one that works at NASA-JPL in robotics and got
his PR on hire, but he is literally one of the smartest and hardest working
guy I know)

Now I understand that you aren't lying. But I would actually love to know more
about the type of roles these H1Bs fulfill and how they get past these very
real security issues.

~~~
bastardoperator
Easy, they bring most of the people in through the front door aka Boeing of
India ([https://www.boeing.co.in/](https://www.boeing.co.in/)). Do a Linkedin
search. I will admit most of H1-B is on the commercial side of the house which
doesn't interact with the defense side at all.

------
totaldude87
May 7th: Boeing has raised $25 billion in a massive debt sale, allowing it to
avoid tapping a $17 billion coronavirus bailout fund meant to shore up
businesses critical to national security.

[https://metroairportnews.com/boeing-passes-on-accepting-
fede...](https://metroairportnews.com/boeing-passes-on-accepting-federal-aid-
via-cares-act/)

[edit]

"That stance concerned lawmakers from Washington state, who urged Calhoun in a
letter to “consider utilizing the economic assistance provided by the Cares
Act to safeguard thousands of jobs at Boeing in Washington State and across
the country.”"

These corporate only care about bottom line

------
lfrmgnd
If markets continue to behave as they have, this job cut is a signal that BA
is going to soar in the next few days.

~~~
Frost1x
I suspect you're, unfortunately, going to be correct.

[https://www.nasdaq.com/market-
activity/stocks/ba](https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/ba)

It's interesting how the common narrative uses metrics like low unemployment
rates during certain touted "economic highs" and claim correlates, yet the
popular narrative casts aside the correlation during times like this and jump
into ambiguities and positive outlook for justification during certain
"economic downturns."

It really, IMHO, helps illustrate just how disconnected many of these metrics
are from economic prosperity for the vast majority of Americans.

------
nelaboras
Can someone explain to me how this works? Weeks ago they had a backlog of
several thousand orders, getting a plane takes years of waiting.

Airbus says they still habe a queue of 7000(!) planes to deliver, with only a
few cancellations.

[https://www.airbus.com/aircraft/market/orders-
deliveries.htm...](https://www.airbus.com/aircraft/market/orders-
deliveries.html)

How is there a need to fire people if there is still so much demand?

------
coliveira
Boeing will survive on the backs of the government, but GE is going to have to
do a lot more to survive this. Every time people mentioned that GE is going
belly up they said: no, GE is still the leader in aviation engines. Also, GE
has billions of dollars in loans that need to be repaid, and they were
counting on selling some of their business to make the payments. Some people
thought that they were in great shape for "recovery".

------
markrages
From article:

> The company announced in April it would cut 10% of its worldwide workforce
> of 160,000 by the end of 2020.

From boeing.com:

> The company employs approximately 145,000 employees across the United States
> and in more than 65 countries.

90% of 160 is 144. The math checks out.

~~~
hhs
That Boeing website you note may be referencing old data. Based on their 2019
annual report, on page 18 under item 6, Boeing cites that they had a year-end
workforce of 161,100 employees. The annual report is available here:
[https://investors.boeing.com/investors/financial-
reports/def...](https://investors.boeing.com/investors/financial-
reports/default.aspx)

So, the article is roughly correct.

------
seanmcdirmid
Boeing busts aren't a new thing in the Seattle area. My dad was involved in
one in 1969 or so...that bust is where "will the last person leaving Seattle
please turn out the lights" came from.

~~~
balls187
Exactly. I've been in the PNW since the mid-80's and Boeing issues are not
unusual.

They are one of the largest military contractors (who supplies the country
that spends the most on military), and it the only National aircraft
manufacturer.

I feel for the people affected by this, but I don't doubt that Boeing will
turn things around.

[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
xpm-1998-dec-02-mn-49854...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
xpm-1998-dec-02-mn-49854-story.html)

------
wongarsu
> The company announced in April it would cut 10% of its worldwide workforce
> of 160,000 by the end of 2020

With production halted for indefinite time for the 737 MAX, and no new orders
for other planes due to covid that seems reasonable.

Still, even if planes don't do well right now and they had a few setbacks in
their space business (Starliner delayed, and Boeing's moon lander proposal
losing to competitors), they are still one of the largest defense contractors.
They will be just fine.

~~~
rhizome
Wars are a cost center. The US is eventually going to have to start
redirecting tax revenue back to taxpayers, away from the military.

~~~
rayiner
U.S. governments spend almost $7 trillion annually. Federal defense spending
is a bit over 10% of that. Does 90% not count as "redirecting tax revenue back
to taxpayers?" At what point does it count?

~~~
deathanatos
Federal defense spending is a bit over 25% of the federal budget. Adding _all_
US government spending together to make the point you're trying to make is
highly misleading; any given tax payer likely only pays into one, maybe two
state governments in any given year; cuts or spending in other state
governments don't effect them. (I would entertain summing an _average_ of
local, state, and federal, to compare to, but not _all_.)

~~~
rayiner
Defense spending is about 15% of the federal budget. Which makes sense,
because defense one of the key areas entrusted to the federal government, as
compared to state and local governments. Leaving out spending from the layers
of government assigned primary responsibility for things like health and
education is a deception intended to make defense spending look artificially
large.

As to your other point: my calculation results in an average. Total spending
on defense divided by total spending gives you the average spending on defense
as a percentage of average spending at local plus state plus federal levels.

------
hhs
This is the letter from the Boeing CEO: [https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-
releases-statements?item=1...](https://boeing.mediaroom.com/news-releases-
statements?item=130684)

------
eric_khun
Bad news for the economy. Market is going to new highs today

~~~
sharkweek
pRiCed iN.

I joke, but also, I throw my hands into the air and say, "damn, I honestly
have no idea how this all works, best just stick to target date mutual funds."

~~~
bcrosby95
Free money has to be put somewhere.

------
netjiro
Let it die. Free up lots of skilled engineers to work in smaller more
productive enterprises. E.g. the Nokia collapse [1]. The growth a few years
after the dinosaur death is significantly better for society than keeping the
beast alive on life support.

[1] [https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/10/surviving-nokia-how-
oulu-...](https://venturebeat.com/2019/05/10/surviving-nokia-how-oulu-finland-
rebounded-from-the-collapse-of-its-largest-employer/)

------
Avicebron
Now maybe we can acknowledge the US shouldn't have axed development of a
robust high speed train system.

~~~
rayiner
Why is that? Bailing out Boeing every now and then is almost certainly cheaper
than bailing out a rail operator to the tune of tens of billions of dollars
_every year_ , and still having them teeter on the verge of insolvency:
[https://skift.com/2018/03/05/frances-rail-system-is-
falling-...](https://skift.com/2018/03/05/frances-rail-system-is-falling-
apart/)

> Underused stations on expensive tracks are one of the many reasons France’s
> vaunted rail system is insolvent, subsisting on life support from the state.
> Rail operator SNCF runs an annual deficit of 3 billion euros despite
> receiving 14 billion euros of public subsidies annually—just under half the
> defense budget. Its debt, at 45 billion euros, equals the national debt of
> New Zealand.

~~~
simias
It's important to point out that it's low speed, aging infrastructure that's a
big problem for French rail. Bullet trains make a lot of money and in general
people complain because as a result the SNCF invests a lot more into the high-
speed infrastructure than to maintain the old, slow, regional lines.

The high-speed axes like Paris<->Marseille or the Paris<->Bordeaux are
definitely not underused and the tickets are quite expensive, often more so
than plane tickets but trains are generally a lot more comfortable and
convenient (and about as fast or even faster door-to-door).

More broadly the problem is whether you consider that the SNCF should be run
uniquely for-profit (in which case they'd probably end up closing all the
small regional lines and only run the bullet trains) or if it's a public
service that can lose money if it provides an important service for the
citizens (in which case it makes sense to maintain the local lines even if
they lose a lot of money).

------
tjohns
I'm curious if this impacted the Foreflight development team, since they were
recently acquired by Boeing.

I'm really hoping not, since Foreflight is my favorite app for aviation and up
until now has been doing a great job of adding new functionality.

~~~
ccostes
Totally forgot that Boeing owned them. They have been on fire lately with all
the new features and I hope this doesn't impact them.

------
wiremine
> Edit: I realise [sic] COVID. But that's the excuse, not the reason.

Not sure how it's not the reason? (Or, at least a major reason?)

I think there's two things going on:

1\. The long-term vision at Boing: the investment in R&D, etc.

2\. The short-term cashflow issues.

No amount of vision is going to save you from the cashflow crunch that a 96%
drop in air travel is going to cause. [1]

[1] [https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/politics/airline-
passengers-d...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/09/politics/airline-passengers-
decline/index.html)

To put this a different way: How could Boing have positioned itself to handle
a dramatic drop in orders?

------
IOT_Apprentice
Boeing spent $43B on buybacks last decade - 74% of free cash flow. _Got record
$8.7B subsidy from WA state, then cut 17,000 jobs there_ Fired its CEO over 2
plane crashes/jet grounding & gave him $80.7M on the way out

------
tschellenbach
This is one of the hardest things as you scale the business. Make sure that
the company's hiring effort isn't captured by politics, but stays aligned to
the mission and rewards those who are competent. In a startup it's easy. You
have direct market feedback. In a big company it's one of the most difficult
problems to solve.

Feel pretty sure that in those 12k people fired were some of the most
competent people at Boeing, while some of those better at politics were
retained.

------
mensetmanusman
I wish I could fast-forward 5 years and see how America has responded to the
pandemic.

Will America’s economic system have finally met its match with COVID, or will
they be churning along with lower unemployment numbers than the EU as they
have post-2007/8 pre-COVID?

------
smithza
I know someone in data analytics as Boeing. As of Sunday he had a job.
Obviously Boeing is in multiple sectors and don't have all of their eggs in
the 737-Max basket, working in other areas of aerospace and rocketry (see
ULA).

------
option
this is a good time for Boeing to invest into R&D so that when aviation does
recover (a while from now) Boeing would be ready with a novel high quality
offering.

~~~
Antecedent
Happy I studied engineering in university at times like this.

------
dsuarez4
Boeing has been bloated for a while. Seems likes covid was just a good excuse
to lay off.

------
amarant
It's funny these news are published the day spaceX launches their first crewed
mission

------
hinkley
Boeing kinda does this though. The fact that Boeing benefits accumulate based
on time employed and not duration of employment is a nod to this.

They have a reputation for building a 'company within the company' for new
plane models, which basically means there's a lot of vertical integration that
goes on, and you will know a great deal about one airplane but maybe not much
about any of the others. At the height of each cycle they have far more people
than they can sustain. They seem like a huge company but they're market cap
isn't that high. Yes, they have a bigger market cap than Detroit, but it's
also been over 10 years since Apple had enough money its war chest to buy
Boeing _for cash_.

So when a plane hits pre-production they start to get an itchy trigger finger.
They get rid of the idiots and the non-essential people, and the non-essential
people can hop onto the next thing in a couple of years.

There's a graph in this article that illustrates:

[https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/in-
go...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/in-good-times-
and-bad-boeings-force-field-has-shaped-regions-fortunes/)

They hired like mad for the 787, then did a round of R & D layoffs a while
after the first flight. If I'm not mistaken the rampup of staff after that was
to build all of the -8 planes which were basically redesigning their other
planes with 787 tech.

So it seems the new triple-7 flew in January, so yep, time to trim again.
Meanwhile all of those people on the 737-Max are probably furloughed, or
retraining on another assembly line, and there would not be an infinite supply
of those even without Covid.

It might be more noteworthy to look at how many people _haven 't_ been laid
off in a lockdown situation. A long time ago, the powers that be in Washington
state looked at traffic patterns around Puget Sound and realized that Boeing
commuters were a large percentage of this traffic. Boeing has offices all over
King County, but the project you work on might be at an office across town,
and you might pass several offices on your way to work.

So they made a tax deal with Boeing to divert traffic rather than building
more roads. My understanding is that as part of that Boeing allowed people to
work from other branch offices, and while working from home wasn't encouraged,
some bosses would let you get away with 1 day a week telecommuting. And I'm
not sure when 4x10 and 9x9 schedules (four day workweek, 10 hours a day, or 9
day fortnight, 9 hours a day) came in, but those helped too.

Conference call software de rigeur, and whole disk encryption since before it
was cool. There are a lot of quite old building blocks in place for at least
some departments to keep working without being in the same room.

~~~
KptMarchewa
>Boeing benefits accumulate based on time employed and not duration of
employment

What does that mean? What's the difference between "time employed" and
"duration of employment"?

~~~
hinkley
Leaving Boeing stops the benefits clock instead of resetting it.

A lot of old companies had benefit carrots designed to keep you from leaving,
so those benefits come on work anniversaries, rather than cumulative years of
service. If you leave at 4 years to start your own company and then get bought
or come back, tough luck, you start over.

If you worked at Boeing off and on for your whole career you'd still be in the
pension program, even if you kept leaving every 4 years to do something else.

------
MKais
The same day SpaceX launches two astronauts to the ISS. How ironic.

------
m0zg
Yeah, unless that vaccine everyone is working on _really, really_ works I
don't see demand for airplanes (or other forms of public transportation, for
that matter) coming back to anywhere near the level it was before C19. FWIW,
whatever travel I do this year will be by car.

And chances of that vaccine working _reliably_ are pretty slim: we do not have
vaccines for any other coronaviruses, and they mutate. Our vaccines against
the flu (which is not a coronavirus, but which also mutates) leave a lot to be
desired.

------
__abc
I'm too lazy to look this up, and probably a bit too cynical, but how much
stimulus money did they receive?

~~~
CubsFan1060
I believe $0: [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/boeing-raises-
monster-25-bil...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/30/boeing-raises-
monster-25-billion-in-bond-offering-rules-out-federal-aid.html)

~~~
__abc
Ah, thanks. See, too cynical :)

------
hellogoodbye
Meanwhile SpaceX is launching a manned flight today

~~~
danans
How is this relevant at all? Boeing's cuts are being caused by a collapse of
its commercial airplane business brought on by the pandemic. SpaceX doesn't
compete in commercial aviation at all.

If you're referring to SpaceX winning the launch contract over Boeing, that
happened a while ago, and has no connection to the pandemic or this layoff.

Congratulations to SpaceX for their accomplishment today, but it's neither
here nor there for the topic of this article.

~~~
wongarsu
Boeing's Space branch hasn't been doing well in general. Starliner delays lost
them a big PR opportunity, their Delta IV rocket is getting increasingly fewer
launches due to Falcon 9 being a serious competitor, and their moon lander
proposal lost to much less well established competitors.

Their problems in commercial aviation are undoubtedly worse and the bigger
reason for this layoff, but another major division struggling certainly didn't
improve Boeing's situation.

~~~
danans
To me at least, the GP's comment read more like a shallow aggrandizement of
SpaceX, whose successes and failures can stand on their own.

To connect the current layoffs at Boeing to the competition in the commercial
space launch industry really seems to be motivated reasoning that focuses on
irrelevant minutiae while the whale in the room is the impact of the pandemic.

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ccktlmazeltov
and market still going up!

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mcv
I feel sorry for the people who lose their jobs because of this, but I think
less air travel would in many ways be a good thing for the world.

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fermienrico
Agreed. Furthermore, traveling is overrated - yes I said that. Traveling to
other places IMP is not as fun as going to national parks and exploring nature
right here at home. Just my personal take on it - I’ve travelled extensively
and I don’t enjoy it anymore.

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ch4s3
So because you don’t enjoy ANYMORE, other people shouldn’t be able to enjoy in
the first place?

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fermienrico
Yeah, I thought we are expressing our opinions on this site?

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ch4s3
You are of course free to, but I think your opinion has an air of elitism and
condescension, so I'm expression my own opinion to criticize it.

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fermienrico
How so? Please read the comment again. Where is the exact wording that made
you feel that way? I can correct it.

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ch4s3
You were agreeing with the statement "I feel sorry for the people who lose
their jobs because of this, but I think less air travel would in many ways be
a good thing for the world. ".

That necessarily implies that fewer people should be able to travel.

