I might be biased (I am an engineer) but I call this behaviour " MBA mentality VS Engineer mentality". Is this malady that slowly has infected top engineering firms (Read HP, Boeing, IBM) and converted them into "sales organizations" that rely on marketing and old reputation to survive. MBA's concentrate on the (albeit short term) profits, Engineers concentrate on the the product.
I've seen enough engineering students cheat on tests because "it was the only way to get the grade they deserved" to not really buy this distinction. I think that there is an uncomfortably common belief that cheating is done to prevent randomness from interfering with the "correct" outcome. A bunch of people think "well, our system is great and we just don't want something weird to happen in the test that makes it seem otherwise". It starts with the assumption that your system is already good before the test is done.
Just wanted to reply to this in case it gets lost in the stack of replies to say that this is incredibly insightful, and that virtually no-one has the humility to realise that they are as capable of failing as anyone else.
There is a ubiquitous bias to assume that everyone else is stupid but we’re somehow especially intelligent or infallible ourselves, which as we’re seeing here as some fairly dire consequences at scale.
That might be true of those fresh out of school. I've been proven to be fallible and stupid enough times to believe it.
It's been over a decade since I've last said "that decision that somebody else made was stupid". I've since replaced it with "I would have done it differently, but I don't know what other constraints they were faced with at the time".
Hi. I’m an mba. Profits are pretty important and firms should undertake NPV positive activities. We’ve seen amazing products fail many times due to lack of market fit. However, there’s certainly no shareholder value in bankruptcy or lawsuits.
History is littered with failed products that were very well engineered. For any business to last there needs to be an effective partnership between commercial and product development areas of the company (or, if you prefer, MBAs and engineers, not that the distinction is so clean).
Agreed and point taken.. A good MBA's would realize the short sightedness of the actions they are taking (like they should have done in Boeing's case) and good engineers should have the integrity to say "you want me to do what? hell no!" That said, the malady I speak about is very real. (maybe even endimic?)
Thank you. I certainly did not intend to communicate that “anything goes.” What I meant is that even when you apply the most cold-hearted financial analysis, short sightedness is often suboptimal. It’s tougher when your public investors watch every quarter like hawks.
Not Another Shuttle Accident? Need Another Seven Astronauts?
When just recently I was explaining the Boeing situation to my children, my twelve year old mentioned that it sounds exactly like what happened at NASA. That's a twelve year old's conclusion, and I told her how insightful that was. So many people in the field are so blinded by their patriotism towards a company or organization that they are unable to identify the roots rotting out under their own feet.
