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Comment by procarch2019 | Hacker News Reader

procarch2019

I’m not sure that I took this away from the article. Looked like they just didn’t go into detail. They mentioned storing data for keeping track of equipment health. To me that sounds like a super broad stroke that would be equivalent to historized time series data as well as contextualized asset data.

I’m not familiar with the standards you called out (not an aerospace engineer), but I would imagine it’s similar to what we do in the controls engineering and automation space.

I’m actually really curious about what software/methods they use to contextualize assets and what those data points are. How do They digitize the equipment data that comes from visual inspections/manual testing.

I wish it was a little more detailed in general.

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I am quite interested to see how they deal with regulations and standards (I'm in medical device space). I scanned through their job postings and I can't find a single standard listed (this is up to the Sr Engineer/Developer positions), as well as a lack of dedicated software QA/test positions.

Obviously they are doing some amazing, and quite high quality work, so I am quite interested in what their internal setup is like.

Yes, considering how fast they move I’m wondering if it’s closer to self regulated/peer quality control. Some QA/QC can make work come to a screeching halt in biopharma space (makes sense when a “batch” in the cell and gene therapy space is a single person and their wellbeing).

It’s not like regulation and quality have not fallen by the wayside or been too relaxed for other aerospace companies, especially in recent history. Quality should be meaningful and not just a rubber stamp.

It’s a fine line

Even in a self-regulated/peer quality control context, I think it's quite amazing to not have people tasked for dedicated (or more focused towards) testing and QA, even within the software/engineering group.

I wonder how developer/engineers are expected to split their focus between design and development of their own areas of responsibilities, and doing peer review and testing of other people's areas of responsibilities. One of the dangers of this setup is always that people (and their managers) prioritize output of their own areas, resulting in neglecting testing and review of other areas. It's certainly possible to make the setup, but it takes good people (and team cohesion/morale) up and down the chain to make this work.

I definitely agree that it's a fine line.

I’ll preface this with “I think I’m good people.”

Context switching is hard especially when understaffed and most certainly when doing different types of work. I’m still “executing” engineering projects, but I’m also performing inside sales functions, helping advance and maintain our dev systems, and now manage 2 functional groups. Unfortunately stuff does fall by the way side all the time.

Prioritizing things is key, but at the end of the day there is a capacity to what one can do. It takes good management skills to realize the capacity of the employees and when things need to change. Luckily for me I’m working with groups in all three of the areas I was working in to offload those extra responsibilities to other people so I can focus on what I’m supposed to be doing (managing).

It would be interesting to see how they operate.

From seeing this work and not work at different companies, I've decided at root it's a company culture issue.

Specifically, "How does my company deal with failure?"

Which is another way of saying "Are people disincentivized from telling the truth at my company?"

You can never have a process that requires truth-to-power as a regular occurrence that's successful in an environment where there are career penalties to speaking uncomfortable truths.

That's why legacy providers & government have engineered a system that accepts +50% wasted time, in exchange for not requiring truth because almost everything is checked and verified.

Good culture: We failed. I succeeded.

Bad culture: You failed. I succeeded.

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