On his last weekends show, John Oliver had an excellent analysis on Boeing and how it went from the company that everyone envied and a pride of our nation to a company now producing cheap and sketchy products with half-baked product planning. The problems can be traced directly to the merger with McDonnell Douglas in the 90s and how MDs culture of cr-ppy planes and disproportionate shareholder attention wound up running Boeing today. Basically the culture of shareholders over everything else is slowing destroying the company. Quality took a dive, an experienced stable workforce are now bailing and systems that were once considered infrastructure (part cataloging, process documentation, attention to detail) are now considered a waste of $$$ to their current mgmt. I could not get beyond the parallels to what I see at STX today. Stock buybacks should be outlawed again (as they were before Reagan) and a change of leadership is warranted.
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too often Boards and executives dismiss the impact of culture for the ‘big picture’, but the working employees end up feeling and living with them. Bad cultures can eventually sink companies, with Boeing the most recent example. Tell me this industry - and others - built by merger and acquisition don’t suffer from the effects of legacy cultures. The era of executive enrichment launched in the ‘80s at the expense of employees is with us today. On can argue that the hundreds of billions spent on buybacks came at the expense of the middle class worker.
Look around. Our entire society is collapsing. So of course all companies will do so as well since they don’t operate in a vacuum. Nothing is working on our society. Healthcare, finance, military, government, media, college, law enforcement, judicial system, voting, public education, retail, real estate, middle class. Everything is failing except AI hype and Seagate attaching to the only good thing like a leach and holding on for dear life
Why would you give John Oliver any credit on the Boeing debacle? You can see this laid out in great detail
In a documentary called Downfall.
https://youtu.be/vt-IJkUbAxY?feature=shared
John Oliver is a hack.
Totally disagree. Seagate Longmont is a technology bellwether and a FAANG equivalent company. Memory downturn is going on, so hard for few quarters. Worst case us govt will bail Seagate. Entire Boulder county economy is dependent on Seagate. End of 2024 AI will push Seagate revenue to record high’s
The Boeing/MD merger occurred back in 1996, 28 years ago. I doubt it explains Beings current problems. But then again, you are citing that paragon of wisdom, John Oliver. Right up there with Cronkite...
It's not a reach when industry experts are all stating this as fact. Oliver did not make it up.
I think it's a big reach to blame the MD merger for Boeing's problems today. Also, Seagate's problems stem frm it's reliance on an end of life technology that's being replaced by flash.