Comment by reissbaker
2 years ago
FWIW, "Prince Jim" McNerney, who most of the article's ire is understandably directed towards, is no longer the CEO. He directed the 737 MAX's development, but retired before the scandals; his successor, Dennis Muilenburg (a 30+ year Boeing employee who started out in engineering), was fired for the poor quality of the 737 MAX despite it being developed under Prince Jim.
That being said, the current CEO — Dave Calhoun — is an old exec from from GE, where McNerney started out; I hope he's different from Jim, but I wouldn't bank on it. Unlike Muilenberg and pre-merger Boeing CEOs, he doesn't have a direct background in aviation. He's retiring at the end of the year, and I hope his replacement is more like the pre-merger CEOs than the accounting-focused recent ones.
> the current CEO — Dave Calhoun — is an old exec from from GE, where McNerney started out
From the article.
> None of the names floated thus far for the spot have been aerospace engineers, and the shoo-in for the position, GE’s Larry Culp, is not an engineer at all.
Maybe they should start bundling life insurance with flights on Boeing planes.
It's a strange anomaly when most of the current top Fortune 500 (US) companies have engineers as their CEO [1]. You would have expected that Boeing to be led by engineers due to the scale of engineering involved in the plane constructions but apparently it's not always the case.
[1] Top CEOs have this degree:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39680613
Boeing stopped considering engineering and manufacturing to be their core competency after the MDD merger, that is expressly why they moved the HQ away from Seattle and closer to financial markets.
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> I hope his replacement is more like the pre-merger CEOs than the accounting-focused recent ones.
... womp womp