Posted on 04/14/2024 10:05:35 PM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan
John Barnett had one of those bosses who seemed to spend most of his waking hours scheming to inflict humiliation upon him. He mocked him in weekly meetings whenever he dared contribute a thought, assigned a fellow manager to spy on him and spread rumors that he did not play nicely with others, and disciplined him for things like “using email to communicate” and pushing for flaws he found on planes to be fixed.
“John is very knowledgeable almost to a fault, as it gets in the way at times when issues arise,” the boss wrote in one of his withering performance reviews, downgrading Barnett’s rating from a 40 all the way to a 15 in an assessment that cast the 26-year quality manager, who was known as “Swampy” for his easy Louisiana drawl, as an anal-retentive prick whose pedantry was antagonizing his colleagues. The truth, by contrast, was self-evident to anyone who spent five minutes in his presence: John Barnett, who raced cars in his spare time and seemed “high on life” according to one former colleague, was a “great, fun boss that loved Boeing and was willing to share his knowledge with everyone,” as one of his former quality technicians would later recall. But Swampy was mired in an institution that was in a perpetual state of unlearning all the lessons it had absorbed over a 90-year ascent to the pinnacle of global manufacturing. Like most neoliberal institutions, Boeing had come under the spell of a seductive new theory of “knowledge” that essentially reduced the whole concept to a combination of intellectual property, trade secrets, and data, discarding “thought” and “understanding” and “complex reasoning” possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce as essentially not worth the increased health care costs.
(Excerpt) Read more at prospect.org ...
bttt
Like most neoliberal institutions, Boeing had come under the spell of a seductive new theory of “knowledge” that essentially reduced the whole concept to a combination of:
- intellectual property,
- trade secrets, and
- data,
discarding:
- “thought” and
- “understanding” and
- “complex reasoning”
possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce as essentially not worth the increased health care costs.
Organizations don't know and remember things. People do. I think it is still that way. A google answer is just window dressing without experience or understanding. Maybe just a good starting place but somebody still has to do the work.
Yeah, a metaphor for America where nobody is responsible and nobody ever did anything wrong.
Airbus will be idling hundreds of planes for years to come over an engine flaw.
One stock is up 25%, the other stock is down 25% which is an absurd outcome.
Boeing is on my buy list on the next big market pullback.
Do you believe that Swampy in the story committed suicide ?
If not, what does it say about the people running Boeing. I guess as long as they are not “Progressives” FR corporate cheerleaders say they are ok ?
If Progressives are rightfully calling out wrongdoing, even if they have an ulterior motive, I still think it is worth while.
The guy who is now fish food thought the same thing about actual, real, experienced engineers when it came to building his little submarine coffin. Sounds like we have the same kind of guy building airplanes for public consumption at Boing [sic].
America, proving you can't just live on your past accomplishments.
We got tired of their new “bean counting “ BS and retired or went elsewhere.
I spent over twenty years at Boeing, as did many of my family.
We just got tired of “Bean counters” telling us how to build airplanes. Engineers, technicians, and skilled machinists build airplanes. Politics and “Bean counters” do not.
Indeed.
I guess Airbus should have bought GE engines.
bttt
>>discarding:
>>“thought” and
>>“understanding” and
>>“complex reasoning”
>>possessed by a skilled and experienced workforce
Left unsaid is that a lot of those older engineers were white males. Much of the push to discard experience is so they can replace it with diversity.
Sorry, simple fact: I DO NOT TRUST progressives; progressives are the vermin scum that are ruining America.
I’ll look for other confirmation but prima facie I DO NOT TRUST progressives.
If you have other evidence, please present it and I’ll have a look. But anything from American Prospect is suspect because I know who they are.
“...It made him sick to think that the value of his Boeing shares had tripled over the same period during which he’d watched the company get so comprehensively dismantled. But it was downright surreal to watch the stock price nearly triple once more during the two years after he left the company.”
These managers act like they do because it works in the short, and even medium term.
The corporate executives who had stock options when the stock did 9X made tens and maybe hundreds of millions of dollars.
If they don’t care about running the company into the ground and making unsafe planes, its worth it to them.
Until they get better people in charge or change the financial incentive structure. so that short term decisions get penalized, it will not change.
Boeing won’t fail. It is too systematically important and will be bailed out.
Gov’t can’t fix it. I will just impose more Wokeness to go along with shoddy design, assembly and inspection.
The repeated crashes and groundings are all the evidence you need.
“...progressives are the vermin scum that are ruining America. “
“Progressives” are not America’s or the West’s only problem, and the actions of the executives at many corporations are a big part of what has gone wrong.
all I know is I trust the guys with work boots on and some brain cells ....you know,the guys who can figure out problems....
>> “Progressives” are not America’s or the West’s only problem
No, but in simple label terms, they are by far America (and the West’s) most obvious and serious problem.
https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/the-rise-of-political-correctness/
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