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 ...
It is systemic throughout Boeing.
Perhaps Boeing is the worst of the worst. But this stuff is systemic in so many places now. Very few decision-makers today are really focused on putting out a high-quality product. Just doesn’t seem important. You make more money by cutting corners. Companies want to make money short-term and the top bonuses and the stock price drive everything.
I have been retired for three years now and loving it. My boss was just like this. I was with my company for 35 years when I left and was so happy to do so. The other thing was that the owner of the company was the staunch liberal communist and we made everything in China and that really bothered me. We didn’t always do that. We had a small factory in New York when I started and everything was made there slowly over the next 35 years they bought a plant in China and built everything in China eventually, did you know the Chinese have to own 51% of the company, have a good day
At a company I used to work at, the CEO proclaimed that “our employees are our biggest asset”.
To which I silently thought “An asset is something you own. You don’t own us, you are merely renting our expertise”. Boeing didn’t want to realize that.
I agree. Seattle a shithole par excellence too, but when Conduit moved Boeing to Chicago, I knew they were run by an idiot and his wife. Same for ConAgra from Omaha to Chicago a few years later.
Boeing still operates as a hierarchy. No one can make a decision without going to their superior. I’ve experienced this at Boeing. By the time it reaches someone who can actually make a decision, there are 15 more things that needs decisions. Unfortunately this includes improvements to maintenance standards. Their IT department is the worst at this.
It’s always surprising to me when an engineering company hires a non-engineer as CEO. Just doesn’t seem to be a smart move.
I am using an iPhone 11 and cannot view that website. The ads have the page jumping every few seconds, even if I keep my thumb on it. Is it just me? I really wanted to finish it but it wasn’t possible. Did the whistleblower prevail?
My outsider’s perspective is that Boeing has devoted more resources to buying politicians than to building good aircraft.
In a shooting war with an industrial power America will will lose many good pilots flying defective planes against a foe with better ships (or drones). A sad day for America if WW III starts and it doesn’t go nuke. Bad ships can still be good against 3rd and 4th world rebels, or local insurrectionists. Heck, Biplanes would work fine in a war with some failed state in Central America. But, we are entering a time of wars and civil disruption. Heaven help us!
True indeed. "Progressive" is nothing more than a somewhat more palatable euphemism for "Communist".
posted in a vacuum....
the grass is always greener anti American nonsense...
endless no show political patronage jobs that typically are vast in companies just like Airbus...."
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Boeing had national attention over its safety problems. It said it was fixing them. Then it delivered an airplane with door plug bolts missing.
like Nikki Haley?
Exactly. And Lindsey Graham, too. That guy is basically a paid contractor of Boeing Corp.
“The old guys know things—feell thinkgs—smell things when its wrong...”
A mentor once described it to me as “tribal knowledge”. You strive to document as much as you can, but much of it is just distilled experience.
Manager types hate that. They want everyone EXCEPT THEMSELVES to be replaceable components.
I was a Civilian QAR on numerous military aircraft, and it was common for us to call the factories and speak to the engineers. Once, I had to call different Lockheed sites before I found an engineer who had been part of the team that designed an electro-mechanical flight control system. That system was no longer used on more modern aircraft as everything went digital. The engineer confirmed my suspicions. I downed the plane, and all hell broke loose. If I was wrong, I was threatened with termination and demotion, which is a normal day for a QAR. The mechanics tried to bypass me and list the aircraft as safe for flight. The engineer backed me, so the aircraft was deemed unsafe for flight. Imagine if that engineer was no longer at that company. There was a potential that if the system failed, the jet could crash. Maybe it would, or maybe it wouldn't. My job was not to evaluate risk, but to follow safety protocols.
Remember, engineers are interchangeable parts, so you should just get the “team players with good attitudes,” who obediently do whatever you want and never bring you bad news. The real stars of the organization are sales people and executives with MBAs, preferably those with a sales background, not an engineering background. /s
The korporate boardrooms are intentionally made into hives of such scum and villainy that engineers don't want to go near them.
To be clear, this occurred AFTER the McDonnell Douglas merger, one of the single worst business decisions of the century with ramifications to be felt for years.
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