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Comment by geodel | Hacker News Reader

I guess it all comes down to thinking outsourcing is magic. Get same thing done at 1/4th the cost with virtually no downside. Hopefully C suites get what they deserve or at least get fired.

But at any point do these consultants like at McKinseys, BCG, AT Kerney etc who advise these money saving tactics get what they deserve?

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First amendment loophole.

You can't legally tell someone to commit negligent homicide, but if you tell them the engineering process efficiency management program has passed mandatory quality and safety checks by an accredited third party auditor, then the law can't touch you.

Much like computer science, every problem (like how to avoid being charged for homicide) can be solved by layers of indirection.

This is why regulation is rarely the answer. Corporate lawyers are ultimately more clever and better-paid than the congressional staffers that are writing the laws.

It's also much easier to find a loophole than it is to predict and avoid all loopholes, especially with all the compromise required to pass a law.

They don't have to be more clever. They just have to be faster to adapt, which is trivial given the glacial pace at which legislation is passed in the US.

Which also means that the regulatory agency most be structured to remain un-captured by the corporate interests it regulates, and empowered to react and adapt rapidly to the 'clever' legal hacks.

They also have to make an example out of cases which they know they can win dead-to-rights. The chilling effect can be a societal good if used correctly.

No lawyers are dumb enough to want less safe commercial planes.

I can easily imagine them to be greedy enough though.

Correction: No lawyer is dumb enough to go on the record, or to leave a signature on something that could reasonably create the impression upon discovery that they knowingly want or facilitated the creation of, less safe commercial planes.

However, buying Boeing stock, with the current management in place, is synonymous with wanting less safe commercial planes.

This was glaringly obvious where I took a course on engineering law. So much boiled down to “don’t put bad stuff in writing” more than “don’t do bad stuff in the first place.” The press or made a point to distinguish the way engineers think can get them in legal trouble (eg, trying to be open and transparent about design flaws). It kinda bummed me out.

I wouldn't do it, but. I think it's not crazy to buy Boeing stock in the belief that they will figure their shit out and start building safer planes.

It is? Boeing stock is half the value it was before the MAX crashes.

That's never the proposal but is often the outcome. Firing your engineers and outsourcing or eliminating large amounts of QA most would agree was likely to make Boeing planes less safe.

Yet no lawyer raised an objection. They lawyers also successfully argued that FAA testing was not needed and Boeing can and should be trusted to signoff internally.

There are lots of ways to justify.

> Corporate lawyers are ultimately more clever and better-paid than the congressional staffers that are writing the laws.

In the US those are often the same people, right?

Its not so much in direction as it is bureaucracy and corruption.

From what I've seen, regulatory agencies and processes are created for a combination of well intended concern for public safety and a power grab. Neither of those are based on indirection so much as ignorance (or hopefulness?) and greed, respectively.

I don't think a judge or jury is going to buy that.

What happens in the case of Boeing where there’s evidence that the quality checks were not complied with? At least with MCAS, there seems to be evidence they didn’t adhere to their own process requirements.

the OP was asking about the consultants and their liability. they are able to keep far away enough from operational details so it wont matter to them. much like a prsident, dictator, or mafia boss can have plausible deniability because the entire system is set up so that they set a general tone and strategy but can claim they dont know any details, even though a child could guess what the details would be.

They were stating that a consultant has vouched that the process has passed quality checks. If it hasn’t (and it seems Boeing had not appropriately set up their quality checks), your statement implies the consultant doesn’t gave any liability? Ie they aren’t responsible for checking the system they are paid to check?

We need "leadership" people in companies to aign off on decisions like how engineers need to sign off on designs. That signature needs to make them accountable for future issues.

Ie an engineering equivalent of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act

Any evidence outsourcing is the issue?

Whole 787 program that relied on subcontractors. Wiki:

> development budget estimated at US$7 billion as Boeing management claimed that they would "require subcontractors to foot the majority of costs"

> The accumulated losses for the 787 totaled almost $27 billion (~$32.8 billion in 2022) by May 2015.

Did outsourcing increase recently?

Everyone including Boeing officially and internally since admitted it was a dumb idea, however it's a lot to recap in a HN comment. Maybe someone else will feel like it.

The short version is that it's hard making things fit together and meet your standards when you're dealing with dozens of different suppliers and suppliers of suppliers who aren't necessarily aligned with your goals. The full story is a cautionary tale about letting business school types displace people who know how to build planes. I recommend seeking out one of the many retellings of Boeings struggles since the McDonnell Douglas merger.

Instead of a retelling, I'll point you to the latest chapter: Boeing trying to re-acquire ownership of Spirit AeroSystems. It's a substantial indictment of past policy to do a full reversal in the name of "strengthening safety".

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/01/business/boeing-spirit-ae...

It’s aimed at entertainment but the latest Last Week Tonight covered this and is on YouTube. Hope this links works from my phone https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc

I wonder: is there a version of the show available without the audience laughter in the background?

Yes. The door that fell off was part of a subcontracted fuselage assembly. Boeing inspectors found, on delivery, that it was not correctly installed. Apparently they very frequently found defects like this in delivered 737 fuselages. Rather than do something sensible such as shut down the fuselage plant until it could make defect-free assemblies, instead Boeing adopted a continuous re-work and re-inspect flow on the delivery side of the contracting relationship, with of course the cost borne by the subcontractor. This meant that Boeing staff essentially did the equivalent of filing bugs in the subcontractor's repo, but accepted the subcontractor's CI being green as proof the bug was fixed. Which in this case it was not.

Obligatory internal Boeing critique on the limits of outsourcing in 2001 : https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/69746-hart-smith-on-...

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