<story><title>Boeing CEO Calhoun to step down at end of 2024</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-ceo-calhoun-step-down-2024-03-25/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dtnewman</author><text>I once spoke to a hedge fund guy who had a large stake in Tesla going back at least 10 years at this point. I was curious... don&amp;#x27;t you get worried about every other company announcing a push into electric cars? GM and Ford are making big pushes, as are many of the European companies. His response: the best engineers want to build sexy new things and they don&amp;#x27;t want to live in Detroit.&lt;p&gt;Construction Physics recently ran a great article on why companies don&amp;#x27;t design new aircraft from scratch (rather, you see 5 or 6 iterations of the 737) [1]. The gist of it is that it&amp;#x27;s extraordinarily expensive to design a new aircraft from the ground up and that changes to regulation or the global economy can have a huge impact on which planes are desirable (e.g., big vs small, fuel efficient vs fast), so any new plane is an enormous gamble. So I understand why the bean counters look at a build-from-scratch approach as a bad idea. At the same time, it is very hard to quantify the long term impact of losing the engineering culture that comes along with building new planes from scratch. There&amp;#x27;s a wealth of knowledge that you lose if you don&amp;#x27;t do it very often. You also get happier and better engineers when you give them tasks that are more interesting. This stuff doesn&amp;#x27;t show up on accounting statements, but it&amp;#x27;s hard to deny that there&amp;#x27;s a long term effect.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it doesn&amp;#x27;t really seem like a return to engineering culture is what they are going to do. The head of their commercial business [2] resigned according to this statement, but his replacement will be Stephanie Pope, a woman with an accounting&amp;#x2F;MBA background who has risen through the ranks at Boeing in primarily financial positions (she may indeed be very talented, but certainly doesn&amp;#x27;t have an engineering background).&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.construction-physics.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;a-cycle-of-misery-the-business-of&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.construction-physics.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;a-cycle-of-misery-the...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] Boeing is divided into four divisions: defense, commercial, boeing capital and global services (I&amp;#x27;m not really sure what this last one does, but the division that we primarily think of when we think Boeing is their commercial one).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pizlonator</author><text>&amp;gt; but his replacement will be Stephanie Pope, a woman with an accounting&amp;#x2F;MBA background who has risen through the ranks at Boeing in primarily financial positions&lt;p&gt;An engineering company run into the ground by accountants is going to be run by another accountant. Yeah Boeing is fucked.</text></comment>
<story><title>Boeing CEO Calhoun to step down at end of 2024</title><url>https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-ceo-calhoun-step-down-2024-03-25/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dtnewman</author><text>I once spoke to a hedge fund guy who had a large stake in Tesla going back at least 10 years at this point. I was curious... don&amp;#x27;t you get worried about every other company announcing a push into electric cars? GM and Ford are making big pushes, as are many of the European companies. His response: the best engineers want to build sexy new things and they don&amp;#x27;t want to live in Detroit.&lt;p&gt;Construction Physics recently ran a great article on why companies don&amp;#x27;t design new aircraft from scratch (rather, you see 5 or 6 iterations of the 737) [1]. The gist of it is that it&amp;#x27;s extraordinarily expensive to design a new aircraft from the ground up and that changes to regulation or the global economy can have a huge impact on which planes are desirable (e.g., big vs small, fuel efficient vs fast), so any new plane is an enormous gamble. So I understand why the bean counters look at a build-from-scratch approach as a bad idea. At the same time, it is very hard to quantify the long term impact of losing the engineering culture that comes along with building new planes from scratch. There&amp;#x27;s a wealth of knowledge that you lose if you don&amp;#x27;t do it very often. You also get happier and better engineers when you give them tasks that are more interesting. This stuff doesn&amp;#x27;t show up on accounting statements, but it&amp;#x27;s hard to deny that there&amp;#x27;s a long term effect.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately, it doesn&amp;#x27;t really seem like a return to engineering culture is what they are going to do. The head of their commercial business [2] resigned according to this statement, but his replacement will be Stephanie Pope, a woman with an accounting&amp;#x2F;MBA background who has risen through the ranks at Boeing in primarily financial positions (she may indeed be very talented, but certainly doesn&amp;#x27;t have an engineering background).&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.construction-physics.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;a-cycle-of-misery-the-business-of&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.construction-physics.com&amp;#x2F;p&amp;#x2F;a-cycle-of-misery-the...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] Boeing is divided into four divisions: defense, commercial, boeing capital and global services (I&amp;#x27;m not really sure what this last one does, but the division that we primarily think of when we think Boeing is their commercial one).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>shuckles</author><text>If bean counters are useless and can’t value engineering, why do you start your comment with a story about a hedge fund guy’s opinion? They are the ultimate bean counters.</text></comment>