There is a fine balance between “confidence” and “arrogance”.  The first allows you to run headlong into a situation  with a clear, focused head while being prepared to handle whatever curveballs might be thrown your way.  The latter blinds one to whatever dangers might be lurking in the shadows.

It could be said that the latter is what ultimately brought down Boeing Commercial Airplanes and their “737 Max”.

You see, American aerospace manufacturers used to employ some of the best engineers in the world when it came to developing aircraft.  It is the thoroughness and quality of the engineers that made Boeing the export envy of the world.

But something went wrong.  Arrogance.  You see, Boeing Commercial Airplanes management, the bean counters, somewhere along the line began to blur the idea of what is or is not a “mature program” and what is “engineering excellence”.

It seems that a decision was made that Boeing’s commercial product lines were “mature”, meaning that the systems and knowledge in place were “established” and the company could afford to hire lesser quality staff in the name of “diversity” and voila, the same quality aircraft would come out the other side.

The problem for Boeing, and the company’s shareholders, is that hiring Indian programmers to build software for an American aerospace program failed to factor in cultural differences between what makes an Indian an “Indian” and what makes an “American aerospace engineer”.

The old, hard school American ethos is you gotta get the shit right and if it ain’t right, you don’t let it advance to the next step.

Boeing’s 737 Max didn’t really care about “getting it right”.  Boeing had designed an entire new aircraft, based on the tried and tested 737 platform, but being in essence a largely new aircraft meant that pilots would need to certified specifically to fly that particular aircraft.

Some bean counter thought it would a great idea to outsource  some software development such that the plane could emulate the original 737 platform.  The problem is, the software developers were largely imported from India, were not exactly aeronautical engineers, and so it seems, had no clue how to look forward beyond their programming tasks at hand to even understand the implications of what they had just programmed.

The result: the Boeing 737 Max was essentially designed to fly, under certain condition, straight into the ground.  Worse, rumors have it that the structural integrity of the 737 Max is suspect.

But who cares?  Boeing saved a ton of money by lowering their standards to accommodate “diversity”.

Diversity is a poison.  Boeing is still choking on the pill.

ITEL Radio Full Show – 1.11.20