everyone: 'move fast and break things' mentality doesn't exist in traditional engineering disciplines because people would die
boeing: hey
wow this is going around hire me :3
@chrisisgr8 @cjmoorehead It’s worse than that — the techbro dudes at least *claim* the approach is about iterating improvement. With Boeing, it just seems to be laziness and/or sloppiness.
@michaelgemar @chrisisgr8 @cjmoorehead I strongly suspect Boeing has been infiltrated by techbro brainworms - probably hiring people with experience in that way of doing things into management roles.
@dalias @chrisisgr8 @cjmoorehead The analyses I’ve seen is that Boeing, which used to be an engineering-led company, was taken over by beancounters and lobbyists when it acquired McDonnell Douglas in 1997.
@michaelgemar @chrisisgr8 @cjmoorehead OK, that's not exactly the same as techbro brainworms, but it's related as finance bro brainworms, isn't it?
@dalias @michaelgemar @chrisisgr8 @cjmoorehead Techbro and financebro brainworms are actually different life stages of the same species. They primarily transfer from one host to the next in the medium of silicon valley startups, but readily adapt to any host which experiences regular fiduciary duty exposure.
@michaelgemar @dalias @chrisisgr8 @cjmoorehead once finance and procurement drive engineering decisions the game is lost.
@thatKomputerKat@oldbytes.space@michaelgemar @dalias @chrisisgr8 @cjmoorehead that’s what my dad always says. They acquired McDonnell Douglas but then the execs from McDonnell Douglas wound up in charge and it was downhill from there. My dad said that before that they had actual engineers who knew their shit in charge.
My dad was hired there in 1996 and worked until retirement about 15 years later. He got a pension but those hired not long after him did not.
@thatKomputerKat @michaelgemar @dalias @chrisisgr8 @cjmoorehead The Curse of the MBAs.
@chrisisgr8 tesla: sup
@chrisisgr8 Yep, I certainly got many a reminder that there were lives on the line. That factor of safety wasn't for nothing.
@adron@metalhead.club@chrisisgr8 to also point out, I'd bet a ton that this is more management bullshit just like the way they attached the bigger engines to the 737 MAX and fixed it by effectively *duct taping* a flight management system onto the thing which led to those two crashes.
It's all rooted in Boeing being allowed to gobble up every aerospace manufacturer in the USA and inheriting all of their dog shit management toxicity. Then ignoring the workers... it's such a clusterfuck at this point.
All of this...
@adron@metalhead.club@chrisisgr8 and they're not even really moving fast. They're slower than they've ever been and fumbling like the monopolist entity that they are now. 
@adron oh, they're just moving fast on the things the c level can fit in their heads (ship planes fast! promise the pilots won't need retraining because it would just be cooler that way! cut "costs"!)
@adron@metalhead.club@chrisisgr8 ha, yeah, valid point!
@chrisisgr8 @adron Boeing is a company that generates shareholder value, not build planes.
Sure, they will do some plane building, but only insofar as it doesn't interfere with their primary goal.
@adron@metalhead.club@dascandy42 @chrisisgr8 unfortunately, a valid point. They do, when they focus, as the companies they’ve gobbled up, build exceptionally good planes. However this current batch and that shareholder conflict is starting to show.
@adron @chrisisgr8 they might've gotten away with the strap-on flight mgmt system if they didn't simultaneously make indicators and manual controls for that system optional AND misrepresent how different the aircraft was to tell airlines current 737 pilots didn't need lots of extra training. Dumb on top of greedy with a side order of lazy.
@adron@metalhead.club@dkbgeek @chrisisgr8 yup, that's where those fancy layers of management tiers fucked em' on top of their poor decisions!
Sickening too their CEO ended up with bonuses and shit even with the stock taking a massive hit and tons of deaths on his hands.
Zero fucking accountability.
@adron@metalhead.club@dkbgeek @chrisisgr8 also yeah, as an angry centrist I say that. I can only imagine how pilots and others that have a heart feel. This is their livlihood and we got Boeing fucking up their ONE JOB, making planes.
Oh, believe me, pilots have ass-burn over this. We've always been presented with systems on the airplane that were not fully optimized, but we were also trained on them.
The push to move the piloting profession from technologist to technician was in full force by the 1980's. Ever since then, the push has been to make 'follow the checklist' the highest priority, and negating the need to know WHY a situation evolved to a crisis point. That had caused fatal wrecks before the 37Max, but the Max accidents drove home how little the engineers designed recovery systems around pilot reaction and knowledge.
So, they screw up at the drafting table, and pilots can't figure it out in the seconds they have to save the lives on board. Are we pissed? Well, I SURE AM!
@dkbgeek @adron @chrisisgr8 also would help if they didn't have the whole military compartmentalization as corprate culture thing going on. There were two teams, one that was writing the software and one that was laying out the sensors, and when the second team reduced the number of sensors, the first didn't know because they didn't talk, so they wrote code assuming there was a lot more data.
@adron@metalhead.club@rootfake @dkbgeek @chrisisgr8 good note, exactly that type of thing!
It makes me think of Captain Picard's face in palm pictures.
@adron @chrisisgr8 And now I'm hearing MORE bad news about the 737 MAX... a plug door blowing off in flight? To be fair I don't know that the plug door is unique to the MAX, it may be similar on all contemporary 737s but unless this is a truly one-off issue with a single airframe it'll be an expensive problem.
@adron @chrisisgr8 Read this then imagine McDonnell-Douglas management seeping into Boeing's veins after the merger. I swear it's the same corporate DNA. https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-DC-10-Case
@adron@metalhead.club@arclight @chrisisgr8 oh yeah, the MD I’ve read droves on, it’s maddening to the Nth degree!!! 
I totally agree too, even signs of it in the Seattle area. You know it’s bad when it’s pointed out in general conversation in the area!! 
@chrisisgr8 Don’t forget Tesla!
@chrisisgr8 It's really more
McDonnell-Douglas after buying Boeing with Boeing's own money: hey
@chrisisgr8 Hence the last good airplane Boeing made was the clean sheet 787... and the Y3 "let's clean sheet the 737" suddenly became the MD execs going "Nah, let's embiggen the 737 and slap an AI stability system onto it because that made us SHIT TONS of money when we did it for the MD-10 to MD-11 until the MD-11's suddenly were revealed to have massive stability issues when the computer fucked up... but we're gonna do BETTER this time with Boeing Engineers and not totally just fire/intimidate/mean them whenever they speak up about our antics... also can we just put foldy wingtips on the next 777? foldy wingtips are cool!"
@chrisisgr8 That's not fair at all. Planes already moved fast, Boeing's real innovation is that now they spontaneously break themselves.
@mhoye @chrisisgr8 They have slowed done in the past few decades. The B727 was quick!
@chrisisgr8 As an ex-Boeing employee, I can guarantee you they don’t “move fast”.
Boeing Wants FAA To Exempt Max 7 From Safety Rules To Get It In The Air
https://inshort.geartape.com/boeing-wants-faa-to-exempt-max-7-from-safety-rules-to-get-it-in-the-air/
@chrisisgr8 higher for hire
@tryst@meow.social@chrisisgr8 You in the UK?
@tryst Nope :c
Although this thread suggests a lot of trad engineering *businesses* didn’t go along with that philosophy:
@chrisisgr8 in the race for profit, the path to innovation has compromised the sanctity of safety, particularly where human lives are concerned.
@chrisisgr8 the high-ups at #Boeing have watched too many ‘I DON’T CARE HOW YOU GET DONE, JUST DO IT’ type managers in the movies. They think it really works that way.
@avesbury_rosetta@wetdry.world@chrisisgr8 tbh in defense it's more like "move slowly cause everything is broken anyway."
@chrisisgr8 I often go back to the words of Mr. Darcy, "The power of doing anything with quickness is always much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance."
And I really do believe that the first part of that quote is more profound than the second because the implication is "no one else gives a shit about your ability to do something quickly."
Weeks ago, I read that the aviation machinists and line technicians at Boeing were threatening to go on strike, demanding more inspectors and inspections, while the managers were telling the FAA "no, they can inspect their own work, it's all good".
Everyone at Boeing used to be on the same site, and their managers and executives used to come from an aviation background. Now they've got business-school executives on the other side of the country. No wonder this kind of thing happens.
@chrisisgr8 We should bring this back:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring
(I have mixed feelings about the social construction of professions, but, "We should be conscientious because lives depend upon it" seems like a good position.)
@chrisisgr8
Is there any bigger red flag than "please waive safety requirements" ?
@amin@alpha.polymaths.socialI’d ask what this is about but I’m flying halfway around the world in two days and I have a sinking feeling I’ll feel a lot safer if I don’t know.