this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 192 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Nothing but a scapegoat if they replace him with another accountant instead of an engineer.

[–] [email protected] 103 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

By all credible accounts the systemic issues at Boeing predate this CEO by probably 2 decades. Dave Calhoun seems to specialize in "troubled companies", i.e. he has never been anything more than a professional scape goat.

Edit: I didn't do enough research, he hasn't really been CEO at many places, just upper positions like director and board member. Still, the companies he specializes in seem to be the ones with reputations to cannibalize for money by cutting quality and screwing consumers, like GE.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If it comes with golden parachutes it's all but guaranteed he doesn't care.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago

If I got millions of dollars every time a company went down in flames around me, I’d carry around a can of gas and matches.

He was CEO, he could have implemented policies to alleviate these issues. Instead he kept the status quo.

He belongs in jail, not another board room.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He was responsible for the figurative nosedive my boss' previous company did. Now he's responsible for the literal nosedive of Boeing.

This man is a professional company ruiner, not just a scape goat.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Calhoun's MCAS might have been set incorrectly 👀

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Didn't he hold senior positions in Boeing much longer than he has been CEO?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

You're right, he was there since 2009, so he has probably been helping to design the cannibalization, but it certainly didn't begin with him.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It doesn't matter if the CEO was an engineer or not in a previous life. The job of a CEO doesn't change and he did exactly what he was supposed to do: made shortsighted decisions that maximised profit and took the fall for it when the short-sightedness of those decisions blew up in their faces.

[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Don’t let the door hit you on the—oh shit, the door!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In ~~Soviet Russia~~ America, the door hits you on it’s way out.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

No, not that door- the one from your shitty plane flying overhead.

[–] [email protected] 90 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So what about his seat on the board and what about the Director of the board, Bradway?

At the end of the day, it’s the board that’s signing off on the high level strategy. They need to be held accountable too. The CEO isn’t the top of the pyramid. The board is.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago

Thank you! Folks around here are always baggin' on CEOs like they're the top dogs. Nope. The Board often orders them to do stupid shit, and sometimes they're brought on to do stupid shit. Hence the golden parachute thing. Damn straight I want paid if you fire me for doing what I was told.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Highly recommend the book ‘Flying Blind’ by Peter Robison on Boeing and the decline of its safety culture after the merger with McDonnell Douglas. That’s when the “business” types who ran the former company into the ground took over both and we see the same results here.

Before the merger, the engineers were in charge and safety was taken seriously. Now, it’s more about stock, etc.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Long ago the four nations lived in harmony. But everything changed when the business nation attacked. Only the regulations could stop them, but when the world needed them most, they vanished.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I feel like I hear this story repeated over and over and over and over and over.... everywhere.

At what point will we stop letting the business types degrade our human civilization for their egoistic short-term gains?

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Are we all forgetting that Boeing most likely had a witness testifying them executed in a parking lot a few weeks ago?

[–] MyNamesNotRobert 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

John Barnett didn't kill himself and they're doing a damn good job of sweeping it under the rug. It barely got mentioned in by any mainstream news outlets. Even Epstien got more media coverage than this.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

You a word, there.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

That’s not enough. We want investigations that bring consequences.

Edit: the people who are commenting below about how “we have no control” etc etc, I just want to say, “Shut the fuck up.” Nobody wants you around anymore. Just because YOU have been a weak POS your entire life spouting off weak, sad bullshit trying to divert REAL change doesn’t mean that the rest of the country is like you. Go back to your holes because I promise if you don’t and you keep acting up, we will put you there in finality. The public isn’t stupid, and they aren’t weak. It’s scumbags within the wealth class that are protected by losers like you all naysayers and class traitors who try to make it seem that way. Trump and Biden is a symptom of class traitors turning on the public, not a show of force by the elites. Best recognize.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (3 children)

What we want, and what happens in reality, have absolutely no connection. Money is what makes the world go around. Money is the only thing that matters to our society.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

No, it’s the only thing that matters to our current leadership. That can be changed. Either by changing their minds, or by removing and replacing them.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I wonder what his golden handshake (parachute? What's the difference?) is, for screwing things up so badly?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Golden handshake is coming in, golden handcuffs to keep you there, and golden parachute for your exit.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

One golden anything please

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Best I can do is a golden shower

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

He’s gonna need a parachute if he flies home on one of his planes.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago

Cool. Now arrest him for criminal negligence.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How many millions fat will his golden parachute be for sending hundreds of passengers to death?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

15 million in stocks that vest in 3 years plus his 1.4 million in base salary plus plus his 22 million in stock, which has admittedly taken a beating as of late.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Calhoun

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Nice payout for a complete failure on the job.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The shareholders get their fall guy, cool, but what about the entire leaderships criminal negligence? Because you can’t convince me that the CEO was single-handedly making the call to cut corners.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

When you have financial engineers overriding the decisions of mechanical engineers, you get crashy airplanes and eventually, caught up murdering people that might talk to investigators in order to defend those juicy profits

...sort of like how when administrators and insurance folk and lawyers and judges override the decisions of doctors and nurses, you end up with highly profitable hospitals and people dying for it

...all a bit like when the bean counters run your software company, layoffs designed to boost stock price by showing investors 'fiscal discipline' leaves your engineering teams shorthanded and forces them to de-prioritize bug fixes and dealing with technical debt and rigorous testing and you end up shipping lots of bugs when you release your product

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Don't blame accountants. They don't make any decisions, and they don't have the technical expertise to know what is dangerous.

The CEO is a good start. I bet the COO and head of engineering are also at fault. People signed off on these planes without doing the required installation of the door. If it's a systemic issue, the quality control team is to blame.

Aviation is a regulated industry, right? I expect the FAA to get to the bottom, if not lawsuits.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Just going to state the obvious here: Boards of directors of large public company should have a % of the board elected by company workers and another % appointed by elected politicians. The problem here is corporate boards entirely run by investors.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not good enough, I want more than just a change of leadership. I want federal oversight at every Boeing Facility. I want the FAA to have a new office funded by Washington to scrutinize this company. I want Boeing Employees purged from the FAA.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Culture change takes a while; I feel like even if they replaced everyone at the top with safety minded engineers to run the company, it would be some time before they dig themselves out of the hole they created for themselves.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Probably stepping down to sit on the board instead.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He should required to be up there to answer questions from congress and the Feds.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I’m just flabbergasted it took this long. It’s COMICALLY obvious that this is the result of a decades-long legacy of technical leadership failures and safety-incompatible profit fixation.

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