What specifically about the engineering culture at Boeing feels so broken right now? Is it different in different parts of the company or are they all affected by similar lack of competent leadership?
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Wow, this thread is harsh (as it should be). Walking into the big B was like taking a step back 10 years in my career. The worst move I have ever made. The Mesa site is on the brink of a complete line stop due to all the ignorant folks running it. I agree that real engineering work will have to be learned elsewhere or even at a supplier. How much actual engineering do you really need on a 40 year old design? How can you still have problems in supply chain on the same stuff you have been buying all along? All rhetorical of course.
"Feels broken?" Has been non-existent for at least the last 20 years.
Im gonna go with EVERYTHING. U clowns couldnt engineer your way out of a paper bag. Havent designed sh-t in years. The company is DOOMED!!!
Now even a PE course...but of course there are no longer any PEs in Boeing...
511-Ethics, Competition, Regulation - The Case of the Boeing 737 Max Failures
https://www.suncam.com/courses/100282-04.html?SPO=0806
YES! Only been here 3 months and it was clear the first week that this place is a dead-end...unless you have relative and can get quickly promoted into upper management. There's no real engineering work here. I took my EIT exam but there's no PEs in my area for needed references. Need 5 PEs and 5 years documented experience to take the PE exam. Working hard to get out of this sinking ship so as to not waste anymore of my time and get trapped here.
It's pretty hard to land a good engineering job at a real engineering company if you have Boeing on your resume. It is a very difficult negative to explain at interviews and overcome.
Many companies also want licensed professional engineers with demonstrated experience and ethics. That's not something you can obtain by working at Boeing. I doubt there is even a single licensed professional engineer at Boeing anymore who can document and sign-off on you experience and capabilities so you can even sit to take the engineering board exam.
The rbogash.com links shared below are fantastic. Written in 2008 but they might as well have been written yesterday!
Great Engineering at Space X
Great Engineering at Lockheed Martin
Great Engineering at Northrop Grumman
Great Engineering at General Dynamics
Great Engineering at Airbus
The One Thing Boeing Has that the other five companies Don’t Have – is
Piѕѕ Poor Management in the form of inapt MBA’s
supervising all manner of engineering.
Adding to the Boeing Debacle is the top tier management in the form of
Boeing’s Board of Mayhem Loving Miѕcreant Mսгders.
https://newengineer.com/top?s=aerospace
Well documented and engineering is long gone at Boeing... Like this 2015 article notes, and which is now also frequently used in MBA case studies of failed company leadership, the short term cash flow metric and stock price replaced engineering and project profit margin.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardaboulafia/2015/06/24/boeing-mcnerney-and-the-high-price-of-treating-aircraft-like-it-was-any-other-industry/?sh=7210f4a0579c
Well if you consider Boeing engineering jobs are be outsourced to Tata aerospace, then yes the culture is broken. It’s now an Indian culture.
MBAs and accountants running the company destroyed the engineering. Treating engineers and mechanics like temporary employees to be hired during bo-m times, and laid off during downturns. The impact is evident as not many young people want to become aircraft mechanics or engineers. Particularly the children of Boeing employees.
There are much better career fields that people are pursuing such as healthcare, software, even blue-collar jobs that are much safer and more reliable than working for Boeing.
It’s a sad testament to the culture now. The only children of Boeing employees who want to work for the company are the children of the executives who are given undeserved positions that not based on merit or ability, but based on nepotism.
Seriously? There hasn't been an engineering culture at Boeing since when Phil Condit let Harry Stoncipher buy Boeing with Boeing money. Just clueless and greedy nepo executives ever since.
Boeing's brokenness and predicted demise was well documented back in 2008...
https://www.rbogash.com/boeing_delay.html
http://www.rbogash.com/boeing_comments.html
Both. Leadership is all about stock value, Board of Directors and CEO are rewarded on stock value
When it comes to hiring, they would hire the same minded engineers
This happened when Boeing moved HQ to Chicago, and 737 Max incidents exposed engineering issues; no new design (cost too much), no innovation (too risky), put new engine on old frame (less costly), no training for pilots (save money), ...
As for now, can't blame them; they are in a deep hole since. Even if they learned a lesson, they need to get up first
I remembered in my state, once upon a time it was very hard to get into Boeing; now it is just too easy guess why
Well documented by many reputable experts for many years and now often used as MBA case study on poor corporate leadership:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing-lost-its-bearings/602188/
Promotions based on gender or race instead of merit.
Outsourcing the majority of engineering and manufacturing to suppliers who are now more knowledgeable than Boeing in part fabrication. Completely dependent on supplier expertise because you no longer have the expertise to build parts.
Lack of actual engineering jobs. Most jobs are integration or supplier management that most people don’t like.
Lack of new design work. You don’t develop expertise in sustaining old platforms.
Perhaps that the expertise needed to design and build a new airplane have long retired. And if such talent did exist Boeing no longer has the money for such investments. The money and engineers were recently there, the company just chose a different path.
I don't work at Boeing, this was a business case study last quarter at school.