"But the average employee assigned to the 737 program has been at Boeing just five years, according to a longtime Boeing executive who is involved in various efforts to save the company; for comparison’s sake, he says the average employee assigned to the 777 program had between 15 and 20 years under their belt."
It don't think it's possible to overstate how bad, and sad, of a state of affairs that is. I've never seen a group at any organization that was composed predominantly of early career engineers that did not have issues (in the aerospace/defense industry). Those mid / late career engineers are irreplaceable and yet they were actively trying to get rid of them... There are no words.
Engineering is not only about know what to do, but also what not to do, and imho, knowing what not to do is way more important. Those C*O without an engineering background probably could not recognize that, but even they do, they probably don't care neither. Early career staffs are not only more energetic but also much cheaper comparing to those veterans in the field. Replacing those know what not to do with younger stuffs will definitely make numbers looking much better, but the consequences are not immediate, and most likely someone-else's problem when it indeed pops, as the one made the decisions would have pocketed a big fat bonus and walked away...
"when it indeed pops, as the one made the decisions would have pocketed a big fat bonus and walked away"
And this is exactly what happened here and criminal investigations are happening, but I kind of doubt, whether they will lead to much.
Much in the article is based on hearsay, so it will depend on whether there are more people willing to testify. But one main witness already suicided, despite telling others he won't do that. Either way, that is already a strong deterrent.
> “We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.” Often attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, sometimes to Donella Meadows, it’s one of those quotes that’s so good, it seems to have multiple claims of ancestry.
> Wherever it came from and however accurately it may have described the blinkered bookkeepers, Akshat Rathi wants you to know it’s not true anymore. “It’s now cheaper to save the world than destroy it,” he declares at the opening of his new book, Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of Our Age.
I'd also blame flat hierarchy and lean management. When I started as a young engineer in aerospace in the late-nineties[1] this trend had already started, but we still had young people that tried to build a career and reputation. This culture is completely gone and replaced by move fast, break things and when you screw up start afresh somewhere else with minimal repercussions.
I don't say the old world was necessarily better and most certainly I don't want the 80s back, but something important has been lost and we yet have to find a replacement.
[1] I left aerospace after six years, got a computer science degree and built a career in IT. Never looked back.
I'm still early in my career in aerospace and am mulling over the same decision. What's stopping me is I'm already older and I do actually enjoy the work, whereas coding with no relation to a physical thing is not appealing. Currently thinking of trying to get into some inbetween role but haven't stumbled on something that struck me as an obvious path yet.
I simply enjoyed coding more. The engineering job had its upsides too, especially the hardware we used, made for some good stories I could never have as a programmer again;-)
Still, I don't regret the switch, CS is just more my thing.
I was already a my mid-thirties and had a child when I finished my computer science degree.
Writing software is nothing like building airplanes.
99% of the time it doesn't matter because most software is worthless or trivial. A sibling thread highlights the decline of Google: What a horror if someone were to receive subpar search results or view an advert that hadn't been auctioned at the most profitable rate.
There is a lot of software used in finance, medicine, transportation, logistics, aerospace, manufacturing, and robotics where a simple whoopsies isn't going to undo the loss of money and the loss of life.
I think I am. I'm disagreeing with you on the volume of software that's critical and relevant. I think you're understating the amount.
I've been in this business for 40 years and I've worked in several verticals. You'd be amazed at how much software is critical to the continued operations of modern civilization. Software has increased the carrying capacity of the planet, and without it, literally billions of people would die.
This isn't as innocuous as you make it. Add up wasted minutes for millions of users and you're looking at thousands of lifetimes.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that access to information is a force multiplier. Google doesn't have a monopoly on that, but it's hardly worthless or trivial.
Google (and most web software firms) are very lucky to operate in an industry where getting it more-or-less right 70% of the time is extraordinarily profitable, and the consequences for getting it wrong in any individual case are trivial.
There are many industries where this is not the case: aerospace, medical device engineering, and live TV production all come to mind.
I don't think his point is to say subpar search results aren't "impactful" but that they aren't going to cause a loss of life. If you work anywhere in the aerospace industry mistakes often can have that result.
Anecdotally, the average member of the team I'm in (in Europe) is probably mid-30s with at least 10 years of experience.
Less than 5 years of experience at Google is, to be fair, common. But the company doubled in size over that time, so it's inevitable. And higher turn over in tech is common (and I don't think that is necessarily reflective of anything other than the fact it's easy to get another job as a software engineer).
I can't state much on the layoffs because my team was not heavily affected.
SpaceX manages to make things work despite rampant burnout induced quitting so its not impossible. Shorts used to make fun of Tesla and how any experience walks out the door with all the turnover but they seem to have a handle on things as well (less so than SpaceX).
If management is checked out I agree that it is less likely to turn out good which is what I think happened here.
Alot of bright, energetic people out of school sign up because they are doing something unique and cool they truly have a passion for it. So even though the reviews of the place are terrible they will always have a line of talent at their door (atleast until they have more competition). If you are attracting the top tier talent every year, that can solve alot of problems, even if they aren't that experienced.
That being said you are still leaving yourself wide open for failures. Engineering failures often involve people being overworked, not having adequate experience, and working in areas with high churn. See Boeing as an example.
I’ve honestly wondered about this since those two 737 Max crashes.
How on the earth did they design in a non-redundant single point of failure, such as the single angle of attack sensor as in the 737 max? (if this type of component is typically redundant)
But if, “the average employee assigned to the 737 program has been at Boeing for just five years”.
It might explain how such a design decision happened.
Would be really interesting to hear from those the industry, how common a single angle of attack sensor is in other Boeing aircraft and Airbus aircraft?
I also don't understand how you can accept to do this job if there's almost nobody there with enough experience. "Well I have to make ends meet and don't want to look for a new job, so YOLO". What's going through these people's mind today? Especially those who worked on that non-redundant system? They just shrug it off and say "well stupid managers made us do it", or do they feel remorse, responsibility? I genuinely wonder.
Remember people are willing to do just about anything if someone in a position of authority tells them to. New engineers have little "intuition" of what is an isn't appropriate, we rely on the experienced engineers to learn this, along with experience we get along the way, as school mostly teaches us how to learn, not the particulars of whatever job we end up in (speaking mostly of aero's/meche's). You hope you end up in a good place that will train you well but often you are just the newest meat to enter the grinder.
And yes, we often do worry and feel responsibility if something goes wrong or could go wrong. I remember working on a job where I was incredibly out of my depth, where no one in my group had any experience to check what I was doing, which would have had serious implications for peoples lives if my work had an error. I was so stressed I got grey hairs. I know many people who've been in similar positions, or positions of trying to meet impossible deadlines, deal with an unreasonable amount of work that makes doing it correctly unfeesable, or be put in a position where they have to accept practices that they would never put up with later in their careers.
I’m going through something like this, though in a _much_ lower stakes industry. On one side, management always seems to say the right thing to counteract my fears of mediocrity. And then months later a major problem needs fixed in production. I guess I’ll keep going like this until a problem is big enough that it can’t be fixed.
But they treat me well. And my last job was in a different industry that’s known for treating employees badly. So I stay. Again my job is very low stakes but it still eats me up, I can’t imagine how these engineers feel.
I would say "incentives". There was an incentive to do it in a way that needs not be certified, that needs no training and that does not have to be disclosed to airlines/crews. Once that incentive is there management will push it through no matter what, if there isn't a senior enough person to say "this will have dire consequences".
I've been in software projects where the most anyone had under their belt on the team (outside of the managers) was maybe 4 years. It was bad. they were charging Senior rates, over promising and under delivering. The web stack was proprietary so very poor documentation, and no StackOverflow, you literally couldn't find anyone with literal experience with the stack in our town.
What's worse is I saw them turn away actual senior developers left and right. I suspect some fishiness with their hiring practices, but its been so long and nobody I ever worked with is there anymore.
I can't imagine actual engineering where people's lives are on the line. At least pull in some folk from elsewhere at Boeing and have them approve / disapprove of new changes / fixes.
I have to wonder if that entire line of planes is just doomed for the scrapyard.
It don't think it's possible to overstate how bad, and sad, of a state of affairs that is. I've never seen a group at any organization that was composed predominantly of early career engineers that did not have issues (in the aerospace/defense industry). Those mid / late career engineers are irreplaceable and yet they were actively trying to get rid of them... There are no words.