Bkmk
Reads like they ran the company into the ground while maximizing executive compensation and large shareholders. Failed to invest in equipment and quality.
The merger with McDonnell Douglas in 1997 was part of the problem.
As former Boeing physicist Stan Sorscher said, the GE people who took control of Boeing replaced “a long and proud safety culture with a culture of financial bullshit”.
A well-paid Wall Street financial analyst at the party though disputed those views. After all, Boeing had a bulging order book and the stock was a reliable performer. Looking back, it seems that the power of ordinary observation was superior to expert analysis. In effect, expert opinion ignored airline design and build quality, with safety issues potentially also looming.
We now know that Boeing used their political clout to weaken internal and FAA safety oversight so as to better spur production. Boeing's 737 Max is an ugly design that originally relied on a defective and immature computer system to simulate the flight characteristics of its popular predecessor. Tragically, in service, the combination did not always prove reliable and safe.
I worked at Boeing from 98-99 on the military side, their way of fixing an issue was to add another level management. When I started there was 1 level of management between me and HQ in DC, when I got laid off less than a year later there were 4 levels.
This stems from leadership now allowing their workforce to make decisions about anything. I contracted to Boeing and every request I made had to go through at least four levels of management. And if my request had a dot missing over the “i” it was sent back down to me, ticket closed and I had to start the entire process all over again.
I said screw it after I requested Microsoft Project on my laptop. I was the PM after all and this piece of software was critical to the project I was assigned to. Some EVP denied the request, twice. She said why did I need it? It was in my request form why I needed it.
Boeing would be a much better company if they canned three levels of leadership. Needless to say, but this was their highest cost IT project for the year and the EVP’s denials cost Boeing a year in delays. Could I have used Excel or something else? Sure. But that’s not the point. When the EVP called me and my company to tell me what I did was unacceptable and demanded I be removed from the account, I brought the receipts.
Know what Boeing did? They canned me, delisted the company I worked for and promoted the EVP for several million dollars in cost savings for a “key” IT project that never happened.