[content_sesh]

Boeing was my first job out of college (BS in Aero Eng but I was hired as a software dev). I worked there for a few years in both commercial aviation and defense projects. I've since moved out of the aerospace industry entirely in favor of tech.

Boeing is a huge company and I saw just a small slice of it at my time there. So with that caveat, in my opinion the root cause of Boeing's problems are mismanagement. Mismanagement flows down from the top of the organization and impacts everything they do.

Here's just one example, off the top of my head: There is no "psychological safety" in the workplace. I wasn't aware of this term at the time, but it's crystal-clear with the benefit of hindsight and a decade more working experience. There is no good way to fix irrational or ineffective processes; or at least, I've never seen it happen. What I did see, several times, is course changes and "new approaches" that result in whole departments (dozens of engineers) getting pink slips. So as a result there was inherent mistrust of change, because "we're going to stop doing X and start doing Y" meant "everyone currently doing X needs to scramble to find a new project before the hammer drops". It is impossible to build a culture of continuous improvement and engineering excellence in such an environment.

Again, this is just one example. There's probably hundreds, thousands, more. It's mismanagement all the way down.

[ricardobayes]

What is psychological safety? I don't think I have ever worked at a place that had that.

[salawat]

Psychological safety is that quality of culture that tends to empower people to do what's right, even if it goes against the grain.

Without it, people will not stick their necks out or call out problems. They won't tell you the truth or that they are having a hard time.

As someone new to the management sphere, but coming from an engineering background, it was the absolute first thing I've gone out of my way to establish.

[yourapostasy]

> As someone new to the management sphere, but coming from an engineering background, it was the absolute first thing I've gone out of my way to establish.

The pattern recognition that has kicked in for me watching managers in many clients is the ones that can effectively lead because they've established this psychological safety within their teams and can stand up to pressure from above, are the ones that have also established a narrative upwards the management chain that they're practically nearly FIRE'd, and could essentially leave at any time without much adverse impact.

Empty nesters, on the home stretch towards retirement, working just because the missus wants a few more years at trade/career/profession/etc., whatever form the story takes, it immediately defangs any implicit threats of "do this with your team or else you're fired" that seem ever-present in higher hierarchy levels of many organizations. In fact, these leaders engender such strongly-cohesive teams, sometimes the implied threat goes the other way up the management chain: "if that manager leaves under a cloud, some/many/most/all of the most effective team members will follow them wherever they go at the same time".

[aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety

https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/...

[thatfunkymunki]

Reading this should hit hard for a lot of people in infosec.