
“I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period” - thereare5lights
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bdfqm4/the_real_reason_boeings_new_plane_crashed_twice/ekyyd9g/
======
spectramax
Btw, the new "fix" for the MCAS has just been announced and discussed by a
40-year experienced pilot [1]. Turns out that while we shouldn't be doing
armchair analysis and assuming the worst of the engineering, management and
executive team; the software fix released appears to be rather elementary and
MCAS should have been designed with these safety checks in the first place.
Why it wasn't is a huge concern and we wonder what other systems are at risk.

In summary, the software fix does the following:

1\. Use inputs from both AOA sensors, if they disagree by 5.5 degrees, disable
MCAS. Original MCAS system used only 1 AOA sensor and switched back and forth
between the two after every flight.

2\. Triple redundant filters, A) Average value reasonability filter B)
Catastrophic failure low-to-high transition filter C) Left vs. Right AOA
deviation filter

3\. Limiting MCAS stab trim so that the elevator always can provide 1.2g of
nose-up pitch authority for recovery. Furthermore, electric trim with the yoke
switch will override MCAS.

Turns out that armchair analysis was sort of on point and goes along with the
incompetency at Boeing affirmed in this reddit post - sometimes, I wonder how
we, humans, collectively build extraordinary monuments while we individually
rest on stilts.

[1] [https://youtu.be/zGM0V7zEKEQ?t=370](https://youtu.be/zGM0V7zEKEQ?t=370)

~~~
ptidhomme
_> I wonder how we, humans, collectively build extraordinary monuments while
we individually rest on stilts_

My take is that we used to have brilliant engineers in the time where
computational ressources were scarce (60s, 70 , 80s...), and they thought out
their design thoroughly starting with a fucking paper and pencil. Aerospace
indutries still rely on the designs from these times.

But now engineering seems to be : let's ask my computing power what is the
good design, with little further questioning.

~~~
noncoml
Brilliant engineers are still there. We haven’t gotten stupider as a species
in 30 years. It’s the economics that changed.

As people say “They don’t build stuff like they used too anymore”.

First we started going cheap on the materials. Now we are going cheap on the
engineers too.

Why pay a senior “brilliant” engineer $$$$ when a fresh out of college
“average” engineer can write the “same piece of code” for $$

~~~
NeedMoreTea
I think it may be that brilliant engineers still exist _somewhere,_ but I
suspect they're less likely to go into aerospace than in the 50s, 60s or 70s.
Heck or even the 40s.

Immediately after the war aerospace was red hot - there were countless
countries and companies putting out new jet designs - both commercial and
military. The competition and pace was intense and there was quite some cachet
and public interest in aviation.

Since roughly, I guess, the 90s aerospace is rather settled and a very mature
market. There's only a few major players left, and very very few new products;
many of those are variations on the previous. Not nearly as much place or
appeal for the brightest stars.

~~~
cstross
No, there's more to it than that.

Firstly, from 1903-1968 aerospace was in a period of exponentially improving
performance (range, speed, altitude) comparable to Moore's Law. But from the
mid-60s onwards the rapid improvements stopped, as developments hit hard
limits imposed by material science and thermodynamics: it's hard to get a
material much stronger than carbon fibre or titanium alloy, it's ridiculously
hard to go faster in air (drag increases faster than the square of speed: if
you throw more energy at the problem via your engines it comes out in the form
of friction-induced heating).

Secondly, there _have_ been huge incremental improvements since 1968. Consider
the 737 series. The 737-100 had a maximum range of 1540 nautical miles on
17.86 metric tonnes of fuel; today's 737MAX-10 can do 3850nm on 25.94 tonnes
of fuel: it's 72% more fuel-efficient. It's also gone from 118 to 204 seats,
so about the same upgrade is passenger capacity. The cargo capacity has almost
doubled, too.

This being HN, the point of comparison should be an Intel-cpu laptop circa
2009 with an equivalent laptop today. The headline clock speed is probably
similar (stuck around 2.4GHz), as is the number of hardware cores. The modern
laptop probably has more RAM and more storage, but only by a factor of 2x or
4x. But it has double or triple the battery life, 4x or 8x the pixels on
screen, a screamingly fast SSD instead of a rotating-platter drive, and a GPU
that the OS can offload a chunk of work onto other than simply accelerated
graphics. It _looks_ disappointingly similar, but if you could give your
2009-self your 2019 laptop they wouldn't be in a hurry to give it back again.

There have also been huge improvements in overall safety, the 737MAX MCAS
problem aside; compare accident rates today with accident rates in the 1980s,
let alone the 1950s if you want an eye-opener. (Of 1010 Boeing 707s delivered,
there have been _173 hull losses in accidents_.)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Hmm, aren't we agreeing here? :)

As a brilliant star with a newly minted engineering degree I might go into
aerospace pre-1968 to play with blank sheet developments, X planes and XB-70,
Concorde, Harrier, SR-71, 707 etc etc. Much the same with at engine makers -
Merlin to Olympus and Pegasus. An absurdly long list, often with remarkably
small teams. I might not want to take my 2019 vintage degree into a world of
incremental improvements at one of the few global giants. Even if those
improvements are of enormous significance over the years. It doesn't feel
earth shaking any more, Farnborough isn't showing astounding free PR every
year, just steady incremental progress (mostly). No more flying bedsteads.

Same goes with the laptop analogy actually - the fun was probably in the
earlier years than now with new model every year with an extra few percent on
the numbers, or slimmer. Green fields are usually more fun, and when they
succeed, more satisfying; even with the odd Osbourne effect or total failure.

Were I that newly minted genius, I'm not sure where I would park myself today.
Space X for some, perhaps. Probably not Boeing or BAe. I'm sure there's plenty
of good (enough) engineers at all of them still. Working as one of thousands.
That's not so alluring.

> 1010 Boeing 707s delivered, there have been 173 hull losses in accidents

Never knew that. That is frankly amazing.

~~~
cstross
I forgot the point I was trying to make while giving the background!

It's not that the engineers of yesteryear were brilliant while today's
engineers are second-rate: it's that what they were doing back then was in
some respects _easier_. (And we remember the _good_ planes: as often as not
they invented utter turkeys: look at the history of the Supermarine Scimitar
for example —
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Scimitar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Scimitar)
— TLDR: yes, it's military, but to lose 51% of your aircraft in 9 years of
peacetime service takes _some_ doing. And then compare with the F-35, two
crashes out of 308 airframes in service over a 5 year period, even though it's
a vastly more complicated and higher performance aircraft.)

~~~
matwood
Yeah. People tend to forget that as each problem is solved, the next problem
is typically more complex.

~~~
Scoundreller
I like to say we never solve problems, we try to replace bigger ones with
smaller ones.

~~~
FabHK
And more equally distributed ones: there are not many easy solutions anymore
that are pareto improvements, ie do not have downsides elsewhere.

For example, the door to the cockpit is locked now to keep terrorists out -
which allows a suicidal co-pilot to fly the machine into a mountain
undisturbed. (Having said that, a suicidal pilot can take down the machine one
way or the other, so maybe locking the doors was a pareto improvement.)

------
jcadam
I worked at Boeing on a large satellite program back in this same time frame
(2008-2011). I worked on the software simulator for the satellite that was
used to test flight code and the ground system (i.e., give the ground control
software simulated satellites to talk to, and to ring out procedures).

Anyway, as the final configuration for this satellite was still being tweaked,
I needed to get updated mass properties (in order to simulate the physics
properly) from the team working on the real satellite as the configuration
changed (e.g., they added more batteries, solar panels, decreased RCS tank
size, etc.). Ordinarily, these would be emailed to me in an excel spreadsheet
every so often. I would make the updates, life would go on.

Now, internally, the simulator software worked with metric units, and the
spreadsheet I received would also use metric units. Apparently, one day an
engineering manager on the vehicle team found out that one of their engineers
had been "helping" the simulator team by plugging the mass properties into an
excel spreadsheet, translating the units from imperial to metric, and sending
them to me (I did not know any of this, of course... I just knew the vehicle
team would send me updated mass properties from time to time).

This was an outrageous affront to said manager, who ordered his folks to not
expend any time helping "some other team." So, the next time I needed updated
mass properties, what did I get? A faxed copy of something that looked like it
had been generated on an old line printer. I called and asked "Where is the
spreadsheet?" and got "Sorry, that's all I can do anymore."

Some of the numbers were questionably legible, but I tried to use it anyway.
As I was making my updates, I noticed the numbers were way off. Units weren't
labeled on the fuzzy faxed copy, so it took me a few minutes to realize that
the vehicle engineering team apparently worked with imperial units internally.

Angry phone calls back and forth ensued, but I don't recall the (political)
issue ever being fixed. I didn't stay much longer, so I don't know if it was
ever resolved.

~~~
rajbot
I’m surprised there wasn’t a push to standardize units after this incident:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter)

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
I'm all for Freedom Units... But honestly if you're doing aerospace you just
use metric and that's all there is to it! Period.

This is true for almost all engineering. I use metric but it is annoying in
PCB design because mils is the standard there and those are just Tiny Freedom
Units.

I'd be in favor of switching to metric for USA, but I see no indication of
that happening. But a company has a choice esp one the size of Boeing!

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
The aerospace industry is stuck on imperial fasteners. That trickles down to
other design elements.

------
Pigo
I contracted with a branch of Lockheed. While I couldn't/shouldn't talk about
any of the technology involved, I can attest to the culture I witnessed. I
always assumed it was horrible because of the government affiliation. But I
think that mostly affected their focus, in that most of the branch was
dedicated to wasting money so they could ask for more money. However, the
culture itself was stagnate by design. Most of the employees actively fought
anything that would require them to learn or change. EVERYONE was counting the
clock to retirement. Anyone who wasn't in the same boat left as soon as they
got the big picture. It made me extremely pessimistic about taxes.

~~~
dmonagha
I worked at a similar large aerospace contractor just in the past couple
years. I can attest 100% to what you've said.

They estimated they would need to replace 40% of their workforce within the
next 10 years just to stay afloat. Recently at my old site they hired 1000
people. Within a year, 800 had quit. These are software engineers, mechanical
engineers, etc. I watched people just play on their phones, keep their feet
up, basically do nothing at all.

One guy showed up to work on the first day and was told by his manager : "I
don't have an office, so you'll have to sit here for now". The manager then
flew back to another state, and the guy did not see him ever again. For a year
this guy played Candy Crush on an iPad and did nothing because no one else
knew who he was or who he worked for. Eventually he got a new manager and his
job was then unboxing computers...for a year...When I started working with
him, he would go into a large empty lab and just lay down behind some boxes
and nap for 2hrs a day.

He was hired to be some sort of cost accountant.

This was not uncommon, it was rampant. I still cannot believe workplaces like
that exist.

~~~
starpilot
This is kind of why SpaceX is so efficient. That kind of dead wood doesn't
really exist there, plus their actual aerospace/mechanical engineers are cream
of the crop from the best universities.

~~~
decoyworker
I think it's that as well as the fact that they are a private company and
don't do as much "contracting" in a sense. They aren't handed a gigantic set
of legaleze requirements from the customer (the government).

Unless they do- I don't work there but it seems like they build their product,
make sure it can lift X mass to orbit well, and if anyone needs shit lifted
into orbit they just goto SpaceX. Far less bloat.

------
koolba
> To this day, I refuse to fly on a 787. I'm sure that the Dreamliners that
> came off the assembly line after about a year or so were fine but there's
> that first year of production that, as far as I'm concerned, are ticking
> time bombs. I talked to many engineers who had worked on that program to
> know just how badly they rushed that initial production.

Ouch. Anybody know where to get a list of who’s operating the planes from that
first year of deliveries?

Do airlines publish the serial numbers for upcoming flights? ie is it possible
to check the delivery order of the plane you’re potentially flying on?

~~~
dx034
Sometimes, online flight trackers estimate the registration prior to the
flight and they usually have the serial number as well (otherwise you can look
it up on airfleets, plane spotters etc). For some flights it's easy to
estimate the registration yourself (if the only plane available is a current
inbound flight).

But generally, you won't get that info more than a day in advance. Airlines
won't even know it more than a week in advance, they only know that it'll be
one of a pool of planes of the same type.

~~~
dosy
But typically the same types of planes fly the same routes, I would imagine.

~~~
notahacker
Aircraft model is set in advance (has to be, the airline needs to know how
many seats available to sell) but late model substitutions sometimes do
happen.

And if you want delivery year of the aircraft with an airline operating
multiple aircraft of that type, you're probably going to have to know
serial/tail number which might not be possible to determine until very late
on.

------
starpilot
In his other comments, he walks back on his remarks:

> Also, in all fairness to my hated former employer, air travel is still by
> far the safest form of travel. Even with the shitshow at Boeing, Boeing
> planes manage to be incredibly safe. I'm really not sure how, but they are.

> And it might be because I grew up around Boeing, but I'd still fly Boeing
> over Airbus, to be perfectly honest. Airbus makes good planes, but that
> reliance on computers over pilots just makes me nervous.

> Even the 787, despite all the horrible issues with the initial run, is
> probably going to be an exceptionally safe plane due to the carbon fiber
> construction.

So it sounds like much of his commentary is of the "how the sausage is made"
nature that is common to the gestation of many (all?) complex products. You
probably have nothing to worry about with air travel.

~~~
pas
> You probably have nothing to worry about with air travel.

Well, the conclusion is already made in the statistics, and air travel is the
safest, yes, but it's worrying that it's safe despite the enormous fallacies,
despite the insane pressure of market forces.

A very eye-opening thing is to watch what the pilots should have done:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xixM_cwSLcQ&t=16m55s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xixM_cwSLcQ&t=16m55s)

Runaway stabilizer scenario has associated memory items (meaning the pilot
must have the checklist committed to memory). There are big wheels that turn,
with noise and a big visibility marking.

This was Boeing's initial defense too, that the pilots fucked up, because
disabling any electronics works the same way. (There's a cutoff switch.) So if
something is doing something, shut off the power, rotate the wheels manually.

And in this regard Boeing is right. Pilots decisionmaking was suboptimal.
However, it is Boeing's fault that they opted for a no-training-required
strategy.

A similar WTF is that pilots don't keep up with the aviation industry news.
How - the fuck - can you pilot a plane that you know nothing about (except
that your license is valid for it)!?

~~~
starpilot
Commercial pilots these days are glorified bus drivers. Pay is similar too.

------
lordnacho
My view of aircraft engineering has certainly changed since the 737 stuff came
out. You always get told software engineers are a bunch of cowboys compared to
aircraft people, because they have to put everything through a bunch of
rigourous tests.

I asked a friend who trains commercial pilots about it, and to my surprise he
told me the processes to get things certified are political and hand-wavy.

~~~
lawlessone
I know software is bad.

But using the same airframe from the 60's and just strapping bigger engines to
it until you have to move the nacelle and alter flight characteristics seems
like a cowboy move also.

~~~
jefftk
"Cowboy" is one person taking shortcuts to get things done but in a risky way.

This was Boeing optimizing very hard at "how do we get better fuel economy
while keeping the same type rating". In general, I'm totally in favor of them
doing this sort of optimization, since pilot training is legitimately a big
expense.

(In this case it clearly went wrong, both in that MCAS was an unsafe design
and that the FAA should not have allowed it to keep the same type rating.)

~~~
philpem
There's a point where shortcuts are appropriate, and there's a point where the
shortcuts actually cost you time.

You can spend ten weeks messing around with "quick fixes" when it'd take two
weeks to redesign the unstable or broken part.

Too much of engineering is obsessed with "get the thing out there and we'll
fix it in version two".

------
hacknat
I lived in Seattle for 7 years and got to know some Boeing project managers.
The stories they told are very similar to this one. Apparently the life of a
Boeing PM or Engineer is endless meetings, I asked one of my friends why this
was the case. His response? A good chunk of the managers at Boeing won’t use
email.

~~~
philpem
I wouldn't be surprised if this was a liability thing.

You can't subpoena a conversation unless it was recorded...

~~~
dilyevsky
It’s standard practice for big corp to auto-erase emails after N months for
this reason (well officially they dress it as cost saving measure).

------
JustACoward123
Not every big company is bad at this.

I used to work for a large company in the aerospace sector (not an aircraft
maker) where software was a big part of what they did. I was in the safety
assurance part of the company, and on a couple of occasions I had to tell
management that the software wasn't up to scratch. One of them was The Big
Project On Which Everything Depends.

Management didn't even blink. They went straight back to the supplier and
spent the next several weeks in tough negotiations about timescale and how the
additional costs were going to be split. The project was delayed, and I got
zero blowback. They didn't even argue with me. The nearest I got to argument
was some careful review of my report, which was perfectly reasonable given the
amount of money at stake.

I'm posting anonymously here and not naming names because I stand by my duty
of confidentiality. But I am proud to have worked there.

------
chippy
"I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period and I can
absolutely guarantee this happened."

was in response to this comment:

"I would be very surprised if in a few years from today a bunch of engineers
don't testify that ample of warning was given to management about this. "

Reddit doesn't make it easy to find what they replied to.

~~~
navigatesol
> _" I would be very surprised if in a few years from today a bunch of
> engineers don't testify that ample of warning was given to management about
> this. "_

I love this mentality that "managers" are the only people responsible, and
that the people actually putting the thing together are not. It's the same
with the bank scandals, or the VW scandal, or the Facebook scams; it's all the
executive team! We were just peons following orders! We aren't responsible!

If you see a major safety issue or other concern, and report it to your
superior, who does nothing, you're pretty weak if you shrug your shoulders and
say, "I did _my_ job!"

~~~
okmokmz
I mean... that's literally their job. Hence why they get higher pay and more
responsibility. The dictionary definition of manager includes "a person
RESPONSIBLE for controlling or administering all or part of a company or
similar organization". My job description, on the other hand, is simply to aid
in implementing and developing the technologies I'm told to by my manager. If
they tell me to implement something that is a concern, and I bring it to my
manager, and they still tell me to do it then I have done my job and the
responsibility of that issue is now on my manager

~~~
navigatesol
> _My job description, on the other hand, is simply to aid in implementing and
> developing the technologies I 'm told to by my manager._

Boy, good thing that's what your job description says, it completely absolves
you of any accountability in the real world!

"Not my job" is such a great attitude, and is precisely the reason why these
huge scandals are able to persist. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

------
okmokmz
I'm currently working at Boeing, and had a very similar experience to him
getting onboarded as a contractor on a major project. Just as an example, I'm
going to outline the steps it took to get me a proper badge

1\. Filled out badge request form and gave it to my manager who gave it to the
person who would be my manager at boeing

2\. 4 months later have to refill out form because they lost it

3\. 1.5 months later I receive badge, but it doesn't have the chip I require

4\. Get told by manager to go back to badge office and get chip, but
apparently the form was submitted by someone who actually isn't my manager but
is listed as my manager and they selected "no chip" so they can't reissue
until they get a new form

5\. My manager submits new form requesting chip, go back to badge office and
get told I can't get a chipped card because he isn't technically my manager so
they need to change my assigned manager first

6\. Actual manager attempts to contact the person boeing says is my manager
multiple times, after about 3 weeks they hear back from them

7\. Manager finally changed so he sends email to badge office saying that he
is now my manager and I need the badge

8\. Go back to badge office and they can't give me chipped badge because he
submitted the form before he was my manager and the email isn't sufficient.

9\. He submits new form, go to badge office and they finally give me chipped
badge

And mind you, everyone is so lazy that it takes multiple days minimum for
every communication with anyone. So essentially Boeing payed me for an
extended amount of time where I couldn't really do anything because no one
cared to get me what I needed to do my job. Also, that was only the first
piece. I am still working on getting everything else I need, and it doesn't
look like it's going to happen anytime soon.

Another thing I hate is everything costs a ton of money and is garbage. No
free coffee, no free tea, no free snack, no free cups, no free stirring
sticks, and the cafeteria food and options they do have are way over priced
and worse than dog food. The majority of the staff are old, sad white men that
don't seem to want to do anything.

Oh, and on top of everything the project is 100% in the cloud but the out of
touch manager requires everyone to be onsite

By far the worst company I have ever had the displeasure of being contracted
at. Can't wait to be done

edit: thought of another wonderful example, I once heard a member of the
"security" team say that their job is to just say no to everything that comes
their way

~~~
silvermast
Dude we had totally different experiences. When I got my grey badge, I walked
in, gave them my forms I was told via email they would need, was then told to
wait 3 hours and left to go hang out at the lake. Sunbathed for 2 hours. Came
back. Got my badge. No issues.

My team was very underutilized... We got legitimately excited when we came in
and there was real work for us to do instead of sitting around and being
'available'.

~~~
okmokmz
I did get a badge the first time, but it didn't have the chip I needed to
access certain things required for my job so I could get in the building and
lab but not really do much. Apparently it also has to do with the location,
because another person that was getting onboarded for the same project at
another location also didn't get a chip but they immediately issued a new card
when he walked back in without the hassle I went through. Seems to be pretty
hit or miss, but I haven't had any luck

~~~
silvermast
Right, and I neglected to mention that I did get the chip with no issue. My
point was just that the system can work well, sometimes.

------
llcoolv
Well a decades-long oligopoly of two companies is similar to central planning
in many aspects and his story indeed rings a lot of bells.

~~~
matt4077
In the last 50 years, fatalities per miles travelled have been reduced by a
factor of 100.

If that’s an oligopoly at work, I want to try a monopoly and see if it’s even
better.

~~~
awakeasleep
Is there any evidence to attribute that process to the effects of oligopoly?

------
tomohawk
Its interesting how an unknown source making unverifiable claims on a site
which is basically a rumor mill gets so much attention.

~~~
gruez
It's not, if you think about it. People believe what they want to hear.
Unverified post agreeing with the popular narrative gets immediately accepted
as fact, and posts disagreeing with the narrative gets accused of being shills
or damage control.

I'm not saying this guy is a fraud, but if there's no supporting evidence,
there's no evidence to believe him.

~~~
Pigo
There's probably some truth to it, but there is probably some confirmation
bias to his story. I have no love for big companies with horrible corporate
culture. But this is like a Yelp review from an unsatisfied customer, might be
true, but should be taken with a grain of salt.

------
jedberg
Interesting. I was hanging out at a wedding with someone right around that
time frame who was one of the lead engineers on the 787 rollout. He too had
similar comments about safety. He told us that the 787 was failing it's FAA
tests, but since the head of Boeing's relationship with the FAA was a former
FAA tester, he "helped" the FAA rewrite the tests so that the 787 would pass.

I told him he may want to consider being a whistleblower, but his response was
"well the AirBus didn't pass their FAA test either until they rewrote the
tests".

I still look at the overall safety numbers and realize that flying is still
safer than driving, but it sounds like it could be safer still.

------
village-idiot
Everything I learn about Boeing smells of the traditional failings of
“national hero” type industries, where national pride and government
incentives effectively isolate a company from any sense of responsibility;
economic, moral, or otherwise.

Can’t help but wonder if Airbus is any different, and if so, why?

------
MagicPropmaker
This was interesting

> When I showed up at my first day of work, the first words out of my
> supervisor's mouth were, "I don't know why you are here, we have no need for
> programmers." (The Boeing interview process is done so that at no point, do
> you ever have contact or communication with the team you will be working
> with.)

My first job out of college in 1984 was with Grumman Aerospace in Bethpage
Long Island. I was hired by a college recruiter and didn't speak to anyone on
the team I would be on 'til my first day of work.

They had no work for us to do. I left after exactly one year. I wrote some
utility programs to format compiler errors just for fun.

They had these "cost plus" contracts with the Navy and they could make a few
extra dollars by making a small profit charging for some junior workers on a
project. The F-14D project was canceled a few years after I left.

------
Nokinside
Neither safety critical software nor critical aircraft engineering relies on
the personal quality of people involved. The safety is build into the process
and the organizational structure. Usually involving multiple organizations
that check each other's work.

What can happen is collapse of the process and regulatory capture.

Boeing is able to cut corners because FAA is cutting corners. FAA
whistleblowers have demonstrated that FAA has culture that resulted in
"malfeasance, bordering on corruption" [https://www.latimes.com/travel/la-trw-
airlines4apr04-story.h...](https://www.latimes.com/travel/la-trw-
airlines4apr04-story.html)

There is no sign that things are getting better. 737 MAX gained FAA
certification on March 8, 2017. Meanwhile FAA has been running without
administrator for two years. Trump tried to nominate his personal pilot, but
when it failed he didn't nominate anyone. Dan Elwell is the acting
administrator.

------
anonfounder747
It would be presumptuous to think "this is the real Boeing" based on anecdotes
from people who worked there. Even in big companies, where a lot of folks are
twiddling thumbs, there are undoubtedly teams where real quality work gets
done. These teams are somewhat insulated from the bureaucratic environment
around them and attract true performers.

~~~
RealityVoid
Do you think that the teams are insular or the people who know what they are
doing are insular?

Because in my experience the people that do the heavy lifting are just
randomly distributed and are bright spots in a otherwise gray landscape.

~~~
anonfounder747
You do find good talent embedded in poorly performing teams, but that doesn't
last very long (few years at most). People like to be around others with
similar standards. Good talent will gravitate to teams with high quality
talent and conversely good teams tend to pick good quality people. It's a form
of sorting that over time results in people with similar standards working
with one another.

------
tlarkworthy
"To this day, I refuse to fly on a 787. I'm sure that the Dreamliners that
came off the assembly line after about a year or so were fine but there's that
first year of production that, as far as I'm concerned, are ticking time
bombs."

He doesn't like the Dreamliner too! Eeek! That was the best value for crossing
the Atlantic. Damn, this is gonna haunt me now, I liked flying those :(

------
JohnFen
"When I showed up at my first day of work, the first words out of my
supervisor's mouth were, "I don't know why you are here, we have no need for
programmers.""

Wow. If that's not a huge red flag that you shouldn't work there, I don't know
what one is. The only appropriate response to that, I think, is to say "OK,
then, it was nice to meet you. I quit."

~~~
SkyMarshal
Another appropriate response:

“That’s odd, you build major products that sell for hundreds of millions of
dollars, that tens of thousands of peoples’ lives literally depend on, and
that are completely controlled by software, fly-by-wire, etc. And yet you have
no need for programmers?”

------
notoriousjpg
I've had similar experiences with Airbus when we conducted technical
feasibility on one of their maintenance mobility products. Couldn't get any
technical documentation for the life of us, and once the product was
presented, the design assumptions were so clearly flawed it was laughable.
Authentication was implemented using iPad name. Yes, that name anyone can edit
to be anything. No password. The assumption was just that everyone on the
corporate network could be trusted.

------
nswest23
I also worked there in that time frame and do not find most of the things in
this post familiar. Boeing is a large company and things are not as
homogeneous as this person implies.

------
socrates1998
Wow, good to know. I won't be going anywhere near a 787.

~~~
spookthesunset
Good thing the poster of the story is totally verified legit and not at all
making things up for fun or profit.

~~~
zanmat0
All that sweet karma profit!

------
mgoia
>This was inevitable.

Inflammable means flammable? What a country!

~~~
chrisseaton
'Evitable' means 'avoidable'. 'Inevitable' means 'not avoidable'. They mean
the opposite, which is what you'd expect.

It's nothing like 'inflammable' and 'flammable', which mean the same thing.
Those two have different roots which is why there is confusion.

------
curiousDog
Unpopular opinion, but had this happened at a company that hired H1-Bs, people
would’ve jumped on the incompetent immigrants band-wagon immediately.

This here is a fine example of the classic American work ethic devolving into
sheer laziness. FWIW, I saw this happen at another Military contractor
(Northrop Grumman) too!

~~~
nostrademons
Sometimes I wonder what'll happen if the United States ever has to fight a war
against an opponent whose industrial base is _not_ 150 years behind it.

Then again, I've heard Russian military equipment is in just as sorry a state.
No idea what the Chinese military is like, but I'd imagine the real money is
in selling to Americans rather than killing them.

We're in this interesting place where it's entirely possible that the best
military equipment is actually in the hands of private, ostensibly civilian
companies. SpaceX has ballistic missiles with a CEP significantly smaller than
a drone ship, for example, a feat that was unheard of during the Cold War. For
that matter, the very concept of a drone ship would've been awfully helpful
during the Battle of the Atlantic.

~~~
gdy
"SpaceX has ballistic missiles with a CEP significantly smaller than a drone
ship"

It goes quite slowly compared to a real ICBM and relies on GPS that will be
jammed in a real war.

~~~
jacobush
Don't you think they could easily replace the GPS with some other navigation
module?

~~~
vonmoltke
I don't. The most accurate navigation system that doesn't require an off-
platform signal is inertial (INS). INS units drift badly (relatively
speaking), with errors measured in tens or hundreds of meters after only an
hour. I have personally seen data from a unit that was off by kilometers after
a couple days without GPS correction.

------
bufferoverflow
None of that explains why MCAS would point the nose down when the nose is
already down and the plane is flying into the ground at 500 knots.

