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What's happened at Boeing is so remarkably systemic it really needs a book length detailed treatment. I hope one is coming.

The entire company seems to have been absolutely utterly gutted.



It’s the same for pretty much everything across the board: the “got mine” generation thinks they can take all the wealth and resources with them to the grave, leave us with the PFAS, climate change, gutted social safety net, destroyed companies, and the truth is they’ll be dead before the bill comes due.


It's not a generation, it's a type of person and a cultural attitude. The majority of older people own nothing and had no say in the running of the world.


Reagan carried 49 of 50 states in 1984. The vast majority of the problems we see today are rooted in Reaganism.

On the other side of the pond the same generation of voters gutted the UK under Thatcher, then sacrificed their children and grandchildren at the altar of Brexit.

The generation who destroyed the social safety their parents gave them is on the hook for this, even if the majority of them also get to enjoy the fruits of their decisions.


>The majority of older people own nothing and had no say in the running of the world.

What's sad is many of those that got shafted will still defend what's happened.


"Got mine" generation is definitely part of it, but demanding N% returns from an economy that has GDP growth of (N/2)% (and a lot of that just paper wealth from the finance industry) is the more proximate cause.


This one’s been on my wishlist for a bit:

Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing


> systemic

That's overselling it a bit. The Boeing Defense, Space, & Security company is owned by Boeing, but it's a separate organization with its own CEO. Maybe there are problems, but assuming they are the same problems that Boeing Commercial Airplanes has is a stretch.


How much of this issue (specifically affecting the spaceflight project), if any, do you think was instigated from talent being lured away?


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All of the actual reporting, internal documentation, and employee testimonials indicate this is a management issue, not an employee competency issue, and that it goes back to the shotgun wedding with McDonald Douglass. I know you’d like the scary TLA to be the culprit here, but it’s not - you’re going to have to go look for something to confirm your bias somewhere else.


Additionally, you would be hard pressed to find a corporation of that size which hasn't made some kind of DEI pledge over the years. Here's a page on Nvidia 's website [1] talking about their supposed commitment to DEI. How are we to know that Nvidia's wild success of late isn't due to their inclusivity?

Of course we know Nvidia's rise has nothing to do with DEI, because we understand the context - there's an AI boom and they're selling shovels. By the same token, we know that Boeing's cultural rot has nothing to do with DEI, because people have been talking about this for decades.

Personally I think this is empty rhetoric companies employ to boost their stock price by getting included in ESG indexes. Political commentators on the right take advantage of this to fan the flames of culture war.

Don't fall for either side of this grift. It's just people talking their book.

[1] https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/about-nvidia/careers/diversity-...


> I’m probably gonna get banned for this

Not likely, it seems it takes a LOT to get banned from HN.

But still, the assumption that every non-white person hired is a "diversity" hire before even looking at their qualifications is incredibly racist.


I wonder if non-white people are tired of being pawns in this game which seems largely to be played between white people. How demoralizing it must be to know that a non-trivial number of the people you interact with professionally believe you are only there because of the color of your skin and not your qualifications.


> the assumption that every non-white person hired is a "diversity" hire before even looking at their qualifications is incredibly racist.

That's not an assumption that GP makes.


That's exactly the assumption the GP made.


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they must have been really desperate, from the little you've told us here.

edit: sorry dang.


The whole idea of DEI is that there are competent people that have been overlooked because of extraneous factors. If you have evidence that this led to hiring incompetent people you should probably provide it.


I've seen this claim around but IMHO this is an attempt to spew smoke and blame-shift. Check out the board and C-suite. It ain't that diverse.

What I've heard is that they cleaned house of everyone who "made too much" (meaning the senior people), outsourced a lot, did the usual MBA-style hollowing out maneuver. If DEI played any role it was as a lame excuse to cut down all the tall poppies and avoid age discrimination or union objections. The real motive would have been to dump all the people whose salaries were too high and replace them with fresh out of college or offshore workers.


Wow. That IS a dumb take. Have you even seen the board?




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