Comment by tw04
5 years ago
Surprisingly enough, it doesn't run deeper. Boeing was once an engineering center of excellence. Building bulletproof planes were what they did, and it showed. Then they decided to acquire McDonnell Douglas - who was run by accountants. For reasons I'm not sure anyone can explain, the MD executives somehow not only survived the merger, but took control of the company. The end result was a move to pinch pennies and maximize profit vs. a focus on quality and engineering.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...
>With ethics now front and center, Condit was forced out and replaced with Stonecipher, who promptly affirmed: “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.”
I wonder if the implication is that being run like an “engineering firm” is no longer able to produce a competitive company culture. What the MBA vs Engineer framing doesn’t do is explain why other organizations run by engineers have had the same type of mistakes. I think there’s a more general through line