Boeing 737 Max again, it would be nice if the windows [door plugs] stayed in!

[Analog Kid]

Yuck.  I can't understand why it's seen as such a negative to hire the best person for the job ... whether they are black, white, male, female, gay, straight or trans is utterly irrelevant.

Well, playing devil's advocate for a minute here: the basic idea is that, all other things being equal (meaning that candidates are all fully qualified for the job), those who are members of minority groups should get a little extra preference, in an attempt to right historic wrongs (discrimination based on race, gender, etc.).

I actually have no problem with this; it's basically the same thing as  college-admission guidelines that allow some consideration of the applicant's race or economic status, again, all other things being equal, in theory at least. The idea is to try to make the workforce, the government, etc., look more like the population in terms of proportions of groups, some who have been historically marginalized or downright discriminated against. That is a good goal.

The problem is that DEI zealots seem to be throwing out that crucial part of the equation (all other things being equal) and promoting people based solely on their race, gender, sexual preferences, etc. This is just wrong.

It's how we end up with people like, oh, I don't know, Kamala Harris ...

[jpanhalt]

Why not focus on the Boeing's culture and its criminal and civil liabilities?  Affirmative action was 60 years ago,  It's Constitutional basis was very weak to begin with.  It's time to move on.  Biased decisions based on race are not defendable.  We are supposed to be equal.

[coppice]

The problem is that DEI zealots seem to be throwing out that crucial part of the equation (all other things being equal) and promoting people based solely on their race, gender, sexual preferences, etc. This is just wrong.

See David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs. I think there are so many people now in bullshit jobs, where competence is irrelevant, that there is a large pool of people who project and see no point in competence at all.... at least until they need, say, serious medical care.

[Analog Kid]

Biased decisions based on race are not defendable.  We are supposed to be equal.

Except that we're not.
Like it or not, racism is still quite alive and well everywhere in the world, and it's a toxic and destructive influence on any society.
The question is: how to get rid of it? I agree that affirmative action (thanks for supplying that term that my brain couldn't retrieve earlier) and DEI are less-than-ideal solutions, with many ethical problems of their own, and the possibility of making things worse rather than better.

But the alternative, which is doing nothing, is just as bad or worse, because it's been proven that left to itself, a society will not self-mend and eliminate racism; it simply becomes embedded in the system and perpetuated. So it's a dilemma.

[Analog Kid]

The problem is that DEI zealots seem to be throwing out that crucial part of the equation (all other things being equal) and promoting people based solely on their race, gender, sexual preferences, etc. This is just wrong.

See David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs.

Here it is: https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

[coppice]

The question is: how to get rid of it? I agree that affirmative action (thanks for supplying that term that my brain couldn't retrieve earlier) and DEI are less-than-ideal solutions, with many ethical problems of their own, and the possibility of making things worse rather than better.

Less than ideal? DEI has been repeatedly shown to turn smoothly running places into a nightmare of divisions.

But the alternative, which is doing nothing, is just as bad or worse, because it's been proven that left to itself, a society will not self-mend and eliminate racism; it simply becomes embedded in the system and perpetuated. So it's a dilemma.

Where has it been proven? It gets asserted a lot, but where is the proof? Between the civil rights acts of the 1960s, and more recent times when people have found how much they can make by stirring up division, a range of studies showed that people were becoming much more accepting of others quite generally. Not just different races, but gay, disabled and other groups who suffered severe discrimination in the past. Now we seem to have regressed a few decades. I married someone of another race when it seemed like nobody cared. Now I worry my mixed race children may end up in a world like it was a century ago. I don't think I would be comfortable starting a mixed race relationship today. Not good.

[Analog Kid]

I married someone of another race when it seemed like nobody cared. Now I worry my mixed race children may end up in a world like it was a century ago. I don't think I would be comfortable starting a mixed race relationship today. Not good.

Well, that tends to support my point (that things don't automatically improve on their own), doesn't it?

[pdeal]

I don’t care if the people who built the plane i fly in are green with purple poka dots and have sex with rattlesnakes as long as they are the best of the best at building airplanes.

[Analog Kid]

I think most folks agree with you.

Look to Boeing management for the source of the decline in quality and accountability.

[coppice]

I married someone of another race when it seemed like nobody cared. Now I worry my mixed race children may end up in a world like it was a century ago. I don't think I would be comfortable starting a mixed race relationship today. Not good.

Well, that tends to prove my point (that things don't automatically improve on their own), doesn't it?

No, its exactly the opposite. Things got pretty good on their own. Now we have grifters causing trouble and making the world a very unpleasant place. Turning colleague against colleague. Family against family. DEI is exactly the opposite of what it claims to be. It spreads division, excludes people, and isn't even claiming to achieve greater equality.

[magic]

Biased decisions based on race are not defendable.  We are supposed to be equal.

Except that we're not.

This is everything you need to know about DEI.

There are real world phenomena which can only be explained by racism either being valid or being false but nevertheless alive and well.

If you don't accept 1, you accept 2. If you don't accept 2, you accept 1.

Or you are a "summer of love" hippie due for expiration anyway so you don't care.
Or you are an ocean apart and enjoy watching the "melting pot" burn from a distance.

Or you are fucked.

Like it or not, racism is still quite alive and well everywhere in the world

Obsolutely limited to places which have made it their problem in the first place. Slavery anyone?

[vk6zgo]

Yuck.  I can't understand why it's seen as such a negative to hire the best person for the job ... whether they are black, white, male, female, gay, straight or trans is utterly irrelevant.

Well, playing devil's advocate for a minute here: the basic idea is that, all other things being equal (meaning that candidates are all fully qualified for the job), those who are members of minority groups should get a little extra preference, in an attempt to right historic wrongs (discrimination based on race, gender, etc.).

I actually have no problem with this; it's basically the same thing as  college-admission guidelines that allow some consideration of the applicant's race or economic status, again, all other things being equal, in theory at least. The idea is to try to make the workforce, the government, etc., look more like the population in terms of proportions of groups, some who have been historically marginalized or downright discriminated against. That is a good goal.

The problem is that DEI zealots seem to be throwing out that crucial part of the equation (all other things being equal) and promoting people based solely on their race, gender, sexual preferences, etc. This is just wrong.

It's how we end up with people like, oh, I don't know, Kamala Harris ...

On the other hand, you get those who never had to apply for a job in their lives because they were either the Bosses son or daughter, & later,  by heredity, the Boss.
Nepotism rules!

[Analog Kid]

Like it or not, racism is still quite alive and well everywhere in the world

Obsolutely limited to places which have made it their problem in the first place. Slavery anyone?

Not limited to those places, but yeah, obviously still present in places like the US that practiced slavery--shit, not just practiced but depended on economically--for a very long, brutal time. It's the legacy of slavery, which we still refuse to deal with.

[floobydust]

Hopefully, a return to meritocracy instead of wokeness will happen in corporations and the armed forces.
Several corporations are abandoning DEI. Harley-Davidson “we have not operated a DEI function since April 2024, and we do not have a DEI function today. We do not have hiring quotas and we no longer have supplier diversity spend goals.”  Also John Deere, Tractor Supply Co., Ford Motor Co., Walmart, Molson Coors, Brown-Forman, Lowe's.

But I am not optimistic. If you are a good engineer, you get rewarded with... more work, the same wage, and more control over you by people that are inept that have snaked up a few rungs and depend on you to put out something successful. People are realizing that working harder and better isn't worth it.

Boeing's executives experience no loss for being stupid, greedy, corrupt, their rotten leadership. Instead, you'll see the consequences in their stock price and earnings, and labour unrest.
Then it's the MBA genius moves: all cuts. The common workers get laid off and suffer, the business crumbles and shrinks. Exec's don't really suffer their failures enough to learn and adapt. Their merit is wrongly assumed as great.
I've read this is how it goes with Wall Street's priority on profit, that it always destroys the host in the end.

[coppice]

Boeing's executives experience no loss for being stupid, greedy, corrupt, their rotten leadership.

Its easy to criticise the executives, but are they the root problem in this case? I don't know, but I have read analyses of some of the huge falls of companies in the past. Often the board and/or shareholder votes have given the CEO, and the people around them, perverse goals, with huge incentives for meeting them. Often the most effective way to achieve a perverse goal is highly destructive.

[jpanhalt]

"Too big to fail' is an American approach to fixing corrupt failed businesses.  It's a complex story, but the bottom line is Obama's administration found a Federal judge who applied a law meant for farmers with perishable crops to the bankruptcy.*  That screwed bond holders (who should get paid first in American law) and favored institutional investors (stockholders) and unions.  GMC still sells cars, but the "C" stands for company, not corporation.  Technically, they are not the same.  Fortunately, the CEO who replaced the old one has done well.

Boeing is probably in that category, and after its bankruptcy, no one knows what will happen.

*I equated that to admitting GM cars lasted almost as long as ripe tomatoes on a windowsill.  Disclosure: I was a bond holder.

[floobydust]

Corporations are not for the people, not for the nation. They exist entirely for maximum profit.
That directive unfortunately, is very destructive and all too late there is outcry and meager attempts to "right the ship" as some PR campaign.
I guess I see a fundamental problem with corporatism and coupled with corrupt executives it's ruining companies and people's lives.  I'll blame Wall Street and the captain for most of it.

The recent United Healthcare hit on their CEO has stirred up people's anger at how things are being run. Healthcare affects Americans directly, that company makes $25B/month.
Delay, Deny, Defend - which is also Boeing's approach towards the victims of the 737 Max crashes. Protect profits while screwing over people.

Engineers shake their heads and continue to slave away.

I have not yet read "The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America―and How to Undo His Legacy" by David Gelles. Because GE is also a great that got tanked.

[jpanhalt]

The recent United Healthcare hit on their CEO has stirred up people's anger at how things are being run. Healthcare affects Americans directly, that company makes $25B/month.

I suspect that to get the reward being offered for information, you  have to be "in network" or get "prior authorization."  Even then, you would only get about 30% of the promised amount.

If you don't know what that means, check the EOB (estimate of benefits) that insurance companies send you, particularly if your are enrolled in a PPO or HMO.  That may not apply in Canada.

[Analog Kid]

I assume you're talking about the reward for the shooter who killed the CEO of United Healthcare?
Check out the popular reaction to that, which is more sympathetic to the shooter than to the victim:

https://web.archive.org/web/20241208111421/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/nyregion/unitedhealthcare-ceo-shooting-suspect.html

Can't say I'm shedding any crocodile tears over the offing of this scumbag.

[CatalinaWOW]

Corporations are not for the people, not for the nation. They exist entirely for maximum profit.
That directive unfortunately, is very destructive and all too late there is outcry and meager attempts to "right the ship" as some PR campaign.
I guess I see a fundamental problem with corporatism and coupled with corrupt executives it's ruining companies and people's lives.  I'll blame Wall Street and the captain for most of it.

The recent United Healthcare hit on their CEO has stirred up people's anger at how things are being run. Healthcare affects Americans directly, that company makes $25B/month.
Delay, Deny, Defend - which is also Boeing's approach towards the victims of the 737 Max crashes. Protect profits while screwing over people.

Engineers shake their heads and continue to slave away.

I have not yet read "The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America―and How to Undo His Legacy" by David Gelles. Because GE is also a great that got tanked.

Maximum profit is not the only reasons for corporations to exist.  They also serve the purposes that any other cooperative structure provides - coordination of skills, processes and resources, critical size, risk spreading and a whole list of other things.

You are correct that in recent history profit maximization has been emphasized out of all reason, partly through greed, partly because of an inappropriate tax structure in the US and partly because profit is a metric which is at least related to the success of those other things and is perhaps easier to measure than other possibilities.

I hope that in correcting the excesses of corporate greed the baby is not thrown out with the bathwater.

[Analog Kid]

You are correct that in recent history profit maximization has been emphasized out of all reason, partly through greed, partly because of an inappropriate tax structure in the US [...]

I don't think that's correct at all. Or if it is then US corporations are the biggest crybabies the world has ever known. The tax structure for corporations in the US is more generous to them than it's ever been.

Remember during the 1950s when the highest tax brackets were taxed at something like 90%? Them days are gone ...

[CatalinaWOW]

You are correct that in recent history profit maximization has been emphasized out of all reason, partly through greed, partly because of an inappropriate tax structure in the US [...]

I don't think that's correct at all. Or if it is then US corporations are the biggest crybabies the world has ever known. The tax structure for corporations in the US is more generous to them than it's ever been.

Remember during the 1950s when the highest tax brackets were taxed at something like 90%? Them days are gone ...

What I mean about inappropriate tax structure is the taxes on capital gains.  So shareholders attempt to make money through movement of the stock price over just long enough to qualify for long term capital gains, which is not a long time at all.   Which leads to compensation packages heavily loaded with stock.  Which then adds personal focus to the fiduciary requirement of management to benefit shareholders. 

High corporate tax rates wouldn't change this behavior except through mild secondary effects.  I won't argue with you whether corporate tax rates should be higher, though I don't think it is the panacea you think.  Taxes are an expense, and expenses must be covered by sales.  So the taxes are paid by the purchaser of goods.  Whether the purchase pays for all of a tax increase is complicated, but I strongly believe that the purchaser always pays part of it. 

Another way to look at it is to say that owners, workers, and the government are fighting for a piece of the income.  The owners are the primary allocators of that income, although the government effectively can set its share any way it wants.  Leaving owners and workers to fight over what is left.  It isn't clear to me that advocating for the government getting a bigger piece benefits the workers, which is what most of us are.  If history has demonstrated anything over the last century it is that government is fully capable of spending all the money it collects from all sources.  It seems unlikely that taking more from one source will result in taking less from another, just means that more things will be discovered than require spending.  Be it research on the mating habits of obscure species, programs to make sure that food is labeled properly and that cancer warnings are placed on every store, aid for education, law enforcement, more infrastructure, more foreign aide, and a never ending list of other things.

[coppercone2]

I wonder if the new administration is going to give Boeing a get out of jail free card. 

I think while some companies might be roped up in some political partisan BS, Boeing is not one of them, Plenty of evidence. I hope they don't get a bail out.

I am not sure why DEI is being brought into this discussion, because we all know how it works at work, you get ordered to half ass some shit by the powers that be. Its the result of a financial calculation. Boeing was doing half assed construction and QC, particular because of lies relating to implementation time for work projects, and the pressure comes from the top on this kind of stuff. This is not a case of some low level manager getting anxious, its clearly pressure from the very top that has been coming for a long time. The big dogs behind this stuff probobly were hired between 1985 and 2005, it takes some coordinated effort on part of SENIOR leadership to get people to half ass big projects. At least 10 years in the company, or a transfer from a seriously powerful position at another company + the long time (10 or more years) where the quality was getting shot. And when its in motion, there is a mixture of "i don't wanna fight the status quo" and "i just don't give a shit, pay me" that keeps it going.


It seems like a really creative explanation, for what can be explained by a company deciding to get cheap and risky. Getting people to use cheaper parts... is like a method of corporate ladder climbing. Some people only do that.

[krish2487]

I am not sure why DEI is being brought into this discussion, because we all know how it works at work, you get ordered to half ass some shit by the powers that be. Its the result of a financial calculation. Boeing was doing half assed construction and QC, particular because of lies relating to implementation time for work projects, and the pressure comes from the top on this kind of stuff.

I was wondering the same thing myself.. what if it turns out that the root cause of the failures were traceable to non DEI hires ?? :-)
( Management or otherwise... :-D )
Either which way, I wonder if the recent swing of the pendulum against DEI is just a knee jerk reaction in the other direction..
I am not in favour of DEI as a matter of principle... but I m wondering if the powers that be are just using this as a convenient scapegoat..

[jpanhalt]

I was wondering the same thing myself.. what if it turns out that the root cause of the failures were traceable to non DEI hires ?? :-)

That presupposes you or someone knows how to identify DEI from non-DEI hires.  How would you do it?