Boeing has "culture" problems like a mangy stray dog has a flea problem. The dog and Boeing also have in common that both are blissfully unaware of their problems. However unlike Boeing, the dog does not blame imaginary ghosts of the past for its fleas.
There is a notion that Boeing is (was) a company with an insanely great engineering culture. Their engineers lived in an idyllic culture of building amazing products while always putting public safety first. This great culture suffered under the merger with McDonnell Douglas [1], [2], [3]. This narrative further says that McDonnell had a mercenary profits at all cost management culture which infected the management of the combined entity. However Boeing's engineers tried to preserve their engineering ethos while living under this oppressive regime and continued building great and safe products.
This argument is frequently put forth by ex-Boeing engineers. This is a naked apologia for Boeing's behavior which killed 346 people and endangered the lives of 1000s more and destroyed jobs/wealth around the world.
So strong is the apologists conviction in the purity of Boeing's engineering culture that they ignore the fact that thousands of engineers worked on the 737 Max. Not a single engineer raised issues with the engineering of the aircraft. Not a single engineer wrote a blistering memo calling out its failing or quit in protest. They were all held in thrall, paralyzed and forced to go against their ethics, professionalism, decency by the power of this unholy culture forced upon them by McDonnell Douglas!
Eventually, all stellar organizations, public or private, become complacent (e.g. Israeli Intelligence Failure, 1973, NASA by the 1980s). Boeing made an unstable plane which it then stablized with a dangerous MCAS to get it to market fast. They then topped it off by making the MCAS rely on a single sensor. They then made the dual-sensor an upgrade. An undergraduate engineering student with a basic course on probability can see that this is tailor-made for disaster. Boeing made an essential safety feature an upgrade!! But wait there is more. They then proceeded to hide this monstrosity from every regulator and airline on the planet. They insisted that the plane was no different in every aspect of its flight behavior than its predecessor which was over 30 years old and did not require additional safety training.
Boeing had become so criminally blatant that the head of airline training at Lion Air inquired about extra training for the 737 Max and Boeing's test engineers rebuffed him. After the Lion Air crash, Boeing proceeded to cast aspersion on the safety practices of Lion Air. Lion Air had a spotty safety record in the past. In this case it was Boeing that rebuffed their requests for additional training because it would set a precedent for other airlines in SE Asia. When that lack of training became a factor in the crash during the investigation, Boeing proceeded to blame Lion Air. Chutzpah!
Transcripts of messages released during the investigation show how Boeing employees worked in unison to ensure no extra simulator training was required. Folks, this is not a great engineering culture obsessed with safety but rather an organization trying to get away with as much as it can and then indulging in a coverup.
We need to start accepting that whatever stellar engineering culture existed at Boeing is dead. We as a society need to stop scapegoating imaginary forces in the past and giving Boeing engineers a pass.
Strong regulation is necessary to ensure the safety of Boeing Products.
It was two months ago. The tech industry definitely was not hiring like crazy. But I started laying the ground work for leaving Amazon the day I got hired. It was AWS ProServe - the consulting division.
Companies are always hiring. They were hiring in 2000 (I looked for a job then. But I accepted a counter offer). It was hiring in 2008. I found a job in two months and it was hiring two months ago.
Focus on creating an “unfair advantage”.
1. I got on to a high profile open source project and stayed on it until it became a more official “AWS Solution”. In still high on the list of contributors for both code and the documentation. This actually led directly to my current job. The company I was hired for uses the solution.
2. I found out the process to open source my own work and get it published to the AWS Samples GitHub repo. I went through the open source process for every piece of code I wrote after removing the proprietary customer specific parts. I had an open source portfolio that I could say was being used by real customers. I’ve used two of those projects at my current job (legally - MIT licensed by AWS)
I still have one of the two only public solutions to automate deploying one complicated AWS service. I volunteered to design the solution for the service team when they had the APIs it for it in beta and I worked with the guy that created Terraform support for it.
3. I responded to every recruiter over the last three years and kept in touch with former managers and coworkers. This led to an offer of a full time job that I didn’t accept and a side contract I did accept.
4. I constantly kept my resume up to date and I used the leveling guidelines to word it. I also have a career document.
5. I used the extra money I was making to pay off debt, save and “decontent” my life so if necessary, I could go back to enterprise CRUD compensation without having to hold out for BigTech level compensation. I actually turned down a chance at a job that would have paid more than I was making. I didn’t want the stress.
A former coworker is a director of a well known (non tech) company and he was willing to create a position for me overseeing the entire AWS architecture and their transition effort. I really didn’t need to stress.
I’m building out a much smaller “center of excellence” now and it’s rough enough.
6. I kept my LLC active all three years just in case I needed it to ramp up a solo consulting business. I used it for the side contract I mentioned that I started the day I was left (in addition to the full time job I got two weeks later)
There is a notion that Boeing is (was) a company with an insanely great engineering culture. Their engineers lived in an idyllic culture of building amazing products while always putting public safety first. This great culture suffered under the merger with McDonnell Douglas [1], [2], [3]. This narrative further says that McDonnell had a mercenary profits at all cost management culture which infected the management of the combined entity. However Boeing's engineers tried to preserve their engineering ethos while living under this oppressive regime and continued building great and safe products.
This argument is frequently put forth by ex-Boeing engineers. This is a naked apologia for Boeing's behavior which killed 346 people and endangered the lives of 1000s more and destroyed jobs/wealth around the world.
So strong is the apologists conviction in the purity of Boeing's engineering culture that they ignore the fact that thousands of engineers worked on the 737 Max. Not a single engineer raised issues with the engineering of the aircraft. Not a single engineer wrote a blistering memo calling out its failing or quit in protest. They were all held in thrall, paralyzed and forced to go against their ethics, professionalism, decency by the power of this unholy culture forced upon them by McDonnell Douglas!
Eventually, all stellar organizations, public or private, become complacent (e.g. Israeli Intelligence Failure, 1973, NASA by the 1980s). Boeing made an unstable plane which it then stablized with a dangerous MCAS to get it to market fast. They then topped it off by making the MCAS rely on a single sensor. They then made the dual-sensor an upgrade. An undergraduate engineering student with a basic course on probability can see that this is tailor-made for disaster. Boeing made an essential safety feature an upgrade!! But wait there is more. They then proceeded to hide this monstrosity from every regulator and airline on the planet. They insisted that the plane was no different in every aspect of its flight behavior than its predecessor which was over 30 years old and did not require additional safety training.
Boeing had become so criminally blatant that the head of airline training at Lion Air inquired about extra training for the 737 Max and Boeing's test engineers rebuffed him. After the Lion Air crash, Boeing proceeded to cast aspersion on the safety practices of Lion Air. Lion Air had a spotty safety record in the past. In this case it was Boeing that rebuffed their requests for additional training because it would set a precedent for other airlines in SE Asia. When that lack of training became a factor in the crash during the investigation, Boeing proceeded to blame Lion Air. Chutzpah!
Transcripts of messages released during the investigation show how Boeing employees worked in unison to ensure no extra simulator training was required. Folks, this is not a great engineering culture obsessed with safety but rather an organization trying to get away with as much as it can and then indulging in a coverup.
We need to start accepting that whatever stellar engineering culture existed at Boeing is dead. We as a society need to stop scapegoating imaginary forces in the past and giving Boeing engineers a pass.
Strong regulation is necessary to ensure the safety of Boeing Products.
[1] https://qz.com/1776080/how-the-mcdonnell-douglas-boeing-merg...
[2] https://fortune.com/longform/boeing-737-max-crisis-sharehold...
[3] https://www.perell.com/blog/boeing-737-max