I just got my eyes on an article from Bloomberg about the recent Boeing crisis. It seems that in their effort to cut down costs and boost sales, Boeing laid off their own engineers and outsourced software development to companies that ended up using low-pay temporary workers to write the code.
It seems the problems are present not only in the currently-grounded 737 Max planes but also in older models.
I just hope Airbus doesn't do similar things. And I can't but wonder what other critical software is done in a similar manner?
Boeing's 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers
Top comments (5)
Gotta maximize that return to shareholders, am I right?
I think the current scandal and the loss of both face and share value might be more than the savings done with that outsourcing move. It's a shortsighted approach where decision makers are only interested in making the numbers at the end of the quarter or the end of the year, instead of planning long term.
Oh for sure! I was just making a sarcastic comment about how shareholder value theory leads to practices like this which ultimately undermine its stated purpose
It's actually an issue with the entire business model. The CEO and other decision-makers in companies get their big fat checks based on the margins they managed to achieve at the end of the year. Is anyone paying for these issues? I don't remember reading about Boeing giving compensation for the families of the people who died because they cheaped up on making the planes.
Oooh my goodness, and I'm flying with Boeing this night.