
Boeing fired midlevel executive following embarrassing emails - sseveran
https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-fired-midlevel-executive-following-embarrassing-emails-11581521922
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ihumanable
From the article:

Mr. Cooper didn’t send or receive the messages, the latest batch of which
Boeing disclosed to lawmakers and the news media in January, this person said.
Those messages show Boeing employees mocking airline officials, aviation
regulators and even their own colleagues. In one, an employee said the 737 MAX
had been “designed by clowns, who in turn are supervised by monkeys.”

Boeing Chief Executive David Calhoun, who has called the messages “totally
appalling,” has said he aimed to stamp out such behavior and hold managers
accountable. “Awareness in the leadership ranks around whether that’s
happening or not is not an excuse if it’s happening,” Mr. Calhoun said in a
call with reporters in January, shortly after taking over as CEO.
“Disciplinary actions have to be taken.”

\---

To summarize:

They fired a guy for not knowing about emails he did not send or receive where
engineers were voicing their internal concerns that the 737 MAX design was
lacking.

Boeing's take away wasn't, "People knew something was wrong and didn't have a
way to properly voice that concern."

Boeing's take away was, "Middle management should have sufficiently threatened
those under their supervision into self-censoring their concerns."

Seems like a super-healthy corporate culture that would simultaneously be a
fun place to work and produce the best products /s

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Mirioron
This kind of an article sounds incredibly damning to me. It indicates that
Boeing is essentially rotten on the inside and that anybody doing business
with them should be wary.

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HarryHirsch
Perhaps related: [https://orgprepdaily.wordpress.com/2007/04/22/on-keeping-
you...](https://orgprepdaily.wordpress.com/2007/04/22/on-keeping-your-soul)

This is a chemist's view from the trenches. A manager who hasn't been brought
up in the engineering mindset wouldn't even be able to understand any of the
points in that blogpost, which partially explains the trouble that
pharmaceutical companies are finding themselves in. You cannot bribe or cheat
observable reality.

~~~
lutorm
As an engineer, I sort of disagree with this. Doing a shoddy job and trying to
get away with it is inexcusable, but "good enough" is the gold standard in
engineering. No one is helped by spending development time and money by making
things better than they have to be.

Sometimes you have to go with a less capable result because the alternative
will take too long or cost too much to develop, or (since we're talking
aerospace here) weigh too much.

The trick, of course, is to know exactly _how good_ is enough.

~~~
nate_meurer
> _" good enough" is the gold standard in engineering._

This doesn't really make sense given any common meaning of _good enough_. A
well engineered system or product is _optimized_. If you want to say that
_good enough_ means solving the inherent tradeoffs between safety margins and
cost with careful design and precise specs, then you're not talking about the
same thing as that blog post, nor would that accurately describe the way
Boeing appears to design commercial aircraft nowadays.

~~~
lutorm
Isn't the common meaning of "good enough" "sufficiently good to meet my
requirements, even though I can imagine it being even better"?

But you're right, I'm clearly not talking about the same thing as that blog
post. What I'm arguing is that there's this appropriation of language where
people use "good enough" to mean exactly " _not_ good enough", and I don't
think that's helpful.

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madrox
I'm reminded a lot of the Challenger explosion investigation [1].
Specifically, Feynman's discoveries and analysis while investigating NASA. He
discovered a huge disconnect between engineers and management. What's more,
the commission seemed less intent on identifying the systemic issue and more
on giving the appearance of a quick resolution, which Feynman hates. "For a
successful technology," Feynman concluded, "reality must take precedence over
public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

I feel like it's the same problems at Boeing, and the same pattern of
addressing problems. It will be interesting to see if a publicly traded
company will be more effective than a government organization at solving these
problems.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_Commission_Report)

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ChuckMcM
Firing people is always an interesting way to prove you are doing something
about a problem which has already happened and is already being addressed.
Generally it try’s to show that you are “taking responsibility” but generally
the people who are _actually_ responsible are just doing the firing to avoid
the stigma of being the screw up[1].

[1] At one group in Netflix (which has an aggressive fire fast culture) that I
interviewed with, I came to realize the position existed primarily to provide
shielding for the managers above it. I reached out to the former person in the
role and they confirmed my suspicions. Not the behavior that Netflix was
trying to encourage but there you go.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I came to realize the position existed primarily to provide shielding for
> the managers above it_

Basically, employees are used as ablative armor for management?

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riazrizvi
Boeing CEO David Calhoun vows to stamp out 'such behavior' and hold managers
accountable. What behavior? Well he reassigns the Boeing pilot who lied to
regulators, and fires the Boeing manager overseeing external pilots, who
called out the bad design and incompetence within. Got it.

~~~
frozenlettuce
Looks like that for them building defective planes is not as bad as sending
"embarrassing" emails

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basementcat
Note that this person did not write or receive any of these messages; he was a
manager of those who did.

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bookofjoe
[http://archive.is/hk4Cd](http://archive.is/hk4Cd)

~~~
q_eng_anon
thank you - you are my favorite kind of person!

(use https though)

~~~
bookofjoe
You're most welcome. I always do this with WSJ articles I submit to HN.
However, the paywall busting site I use —
[http://archive.is/](http://archive.is/) — doesn't have https

~~~
BuildTheRobots
>However, the paywall busting site I use —
[http://archive.is/](http://archive.is/) — doesn't have https

This seems to have changed as the following works for me:
[https://archive.is/hk4Cd](https://archive.is/hk4Cd)

~~~
bookofjoe
Excellent. It works for me too. From now on, that will be my paywall buster of
first resort.

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allen3
Typical PR move by Boeing, they're going to start beating the drum on
accountability and turning a new corner. Which is all BS, but executive
leadership will be applauded on wall street for their efforts. Sad to see
especially when you consider the role the company has around the world.

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leeoniya
> Boeing leaders have faced questions from federal lawmakers about who has
> been held accountable for the MAX crisis.

so, apparently the leakers?

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mrbonner
He was a VP. I’m not aware VP is a mid level management job. I always thought
director level and below would be the case.

~~~
objclxt
> I’m not aware VP is a mid level management job

A lot of companies ( _especially_ finance) suffer from title inflation, and
also flip Director and VP (i.e, Director is a higher rank than VP).

For example, at Goldman Sachs _30% of all employees_ are Vice Presidents.

~~~
kjs3
Yeah, I work at a bank. The VP track is often on an 'Officer of the Company'
track (Officer, Associate VP, VP, Senior VP, etc). Then there's the 'Job
Title' track (Manager, Senior Manager, Director, Senior Director, Executive
Director, etc). Usually, you have to be a minimum job title for certain
officer title, but less the other way. So you can have a Manager who is a VP
and a Director that's a AVP, but not a Manager that's a Senior VP. In any
case, the job title is what gives you rank, and officer title is honorary.

Other places do weirder things. I have a buddy at an insurance company who's a
"Second VP" and is basically an "Assistant CIO". Never figured that out.

~~~
ferzul
i didn't understand that at all. i thought a director is a person elected by
shareholders onto the board of directors. but i normally work for small
companies!

~~~
kjs3
It is that, too. Welcome to the totally non-standard world of job titles.

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neonate
[https://archive.md/hk4Cd](https://archive.md/hk4Cd)

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coverband
[https://outline.com/8tVAdC](https://outline.com/8tVAdC)

