The space military industrial complex

[CatalinaWOW]

It's a good thread because something has to change before Brazil becomes reality.

Engineering has climaxed decades ago, when engineering-centric companies that put man on the moon and fathered many technologies, were respected and used their values of safety, quality, reliability to make projects... successful.

Now, profit is the number one goal of corporations. Bean counters have taken over, cut spending, layoff engineers, hire low paid noobs, outsourcing it etc.

Engineers are now pushed and rushed, as they are the bottleneck to profit. Safety and regulatory is to be circumvented. R&D is frowned upon because it does not earn money in the financials. Flog fewer engineers into working as hard as many, and starve them of needed support to get the work done.

Or even sabotage the engineering team's work- to keep the contract going, to keep milking the cash cow. That took me a long time to understand - that project failure is actually success - management needs to keep the money flow going and profits up.

When I said that no one is without blame, I meant no one.  While profit seeking is one of the problems, engineering departments have created their own problems in addition to any outside help they may have had.  When process is more important than product.  When checklists replace thought.  The list goes on.  Dilbert is not a comic, it is a documentary.

[coppice]

When checklists replace thought.

Checklists replacing thought is one of the best proven ways to improve results, whether its silly mistakes in design work, or screwups in operating theatres.

[floobydust]

I think we're talking about two things that seem to overlap:

1. "Bullshit jobs" where people are employed doing something useless or destined to fail. Like the endless aerospace contracts. Everybody collects a paycheque and goes along with it, it's a ride on the money train.
2. Business ethics that place profit above all else, such as safety.

Boeing ex-CEO Dennis Muilenburg is sipping Mai Tai's on the beach with his $62M golden handshake, despite running a huge corporation literally into the ground, killing 346 people - all for the sake of profit.
Boeing KC-46 air refueller project is past $43B in 2015 after 4 years. That's a lot of taxpayer's money to refit a 767 (that has MCAS) - a great ride on the money train.

I see the drive to put the blame on engineers. We're bound under a Code of Ethics, to whistleblow and save the world from corruption.
We would kind of like to remain employed and not have a lawsuit against us. Those are too stressful and too expensive for anyone in the trenches to afford.

[CatalinaWOW]

When checklists replace thought.

Checklists replacing thought is one of the best proven ways to improve results, whether its silly mistakes in design work, or screwups in operating theatres.

Checklists are great for long repetitive operations.  But a checklist to design a new system.  When you are designing your common emitter amplifier in 1957, what do you say in the box that asks how you treated filament to cathode isolation?