Thread regarding Boeing Co. layoffs

None of us are safe as long Boeing management is in place

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-boeing-737-max-nightmare-keeps-getting-worse

Boeing Is A Dangerous Despot
That must be dealt with in accordance with their crimes

Get Sick / Come to Work / Infect Everybody
Let the Great Cleansing Begin
Darwinism 🦠 🧹 🏠
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3eC35LoF4U

Can confirm from first-hand experience: I worked for NASA for about 15 years (1988-2003) so I got to see how the aerospace sausage is made. Everything you say rings very true to me. It's actually kind of amazing to me that there aren't more problems like the 737-max.

Even in my day there were strong dis-incentives for anyone to raise a red flag when they saw corners being cut or decisions being made for political rather than technical reasons (which happened a lot).

That's ultimately why I quit: I was faced with a very stark choice between doing what I thought was the Right Thing and torpedoing my career, or keeping my very cushy and vert well-paid job and becoming part of the problem.

Apply that incentive structure to a few hundred thousand employees and the result is MCAS.

Having worked with Boeing on other aerospace programs (not commercial though) and having been on the Gov side, the basic findings ring true. Boeing's culture really is as flawed as the report reads. The idea that Dennis Muilenburg, however, originated or did more than prior company management to foster this culture, is nonsense. They remain, even today, operating with this culture. The real problem that stands in the way of "fundamental structural reform" is that regardless of specific aerospace market, few alternatives to Boeing exist. And don't think the corporate cultures at other traditional US aerospace primes is consistently better.
The points about Government acquiescence to Boeing pressure in performing regulation also resonate. Beware the tendency to make this a single-axis "more vs. less" regulation issue. The solution isn't "more regulation". The central concern should about regulatory culture. Ultimately, responsibility lines must be drawn, standards established, adjudication performed, and unique or specific situations accommodated. Inevitably, the "less regulation" crowd corrodes the kind of regulatory culture that serves the best interests of the populace in these processes. Good regulation depends on having highly-competent, wise, empowered, and apolitical persons on the Government side. While providing regulatory organizations lots of funding doesn't ensure that they hire, empower, and maintain such a cadre, starving them of resources and implying the Government can never be competent, so it should reflect the role back to Industry, is pathological and will produce outcomes like the 737 Max.

We need to not just empower and provide adequate resources to regulators, but also demand and foster a culture of competence and good judgment^. Making that happen is a lot harder than arguing about "more or less", but necessary for proper outcomes.

^"good judgment" here explicitly excludes decision-making with regard to political implications