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Comment by 01100011 | Hacker News Reader

Your comment makes it sound like you believe there was a single person with nefarious intentions or criminal negligence who chose to put lives at stake in exchange for profits.

That is almost certainly not what happened. It is more likely a system of procedures and policies which failed. The company should take the hit, but unless an investigation reveals otherwise, I see no reason a single individual should take the blame for all of this.

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> That is almost certainly not what happened. It is more likely a system of procedures and policies which failed. The company should take the hit, but unless an investigation reveals otherwise, I see no reason a single individual should take the blame for all of this.

Aren't the insane compensations of executives justified by their "great responsibility"? So I think it makes them eventually responsible for what their companies do.

I heard someone say this and I can't remember who, but it seems very appropriate. One of the key responsibilities of the CEO (and by extension upper management) is to acknowledge reality. When the company is given permission to act on what it already knows, then employees have the right incentives to do the right things and not just the things that won't get them fired.

In that sense, it absolutely is the fault of Boeing management for not acknowledging reality.

I for one miss the concept of full responsibility and ownership. What happened to “the buck stops here”?

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