[chrisss395]

I know less about the airframe differences across the -400 and -8, but I can say the 747-8 represented a major upgrade in Flight Management Software.

I re-wrote the Central Maintenance System (portion inside the FMS) in C from scratch because no one had the original detailed design documents. The original -400 code was written in Pascal if I'm remembering correctly. I gleamed what I could from the source and relied on unit tests to get the rest of the way there based on what I knew of the protocol itself.

The entire FMS software was completely re-written in C++ and using modern object oriented patterns (at the time). Probably the most fun I've had over my now 20'ish year career. Of course Boeing was pissed with the delays this caused because the airframe wasn't a major change. I'll quote a Boeing (from MD originally) executive as saying "Meeting this project deadline is more important than your child dying."

Sadly this was also the time I remember Boeing's engineering ranks began to thin out. Personal opinion, this was a large part of what led to the MAX situation.

[kelnos]

> I'll quote a Boeing (from MD originally) executive as saying "Meeting this project deadline is more important than your child dying."

> Sadly this was also the time I remember Boeing's engineering ranks began to thin out.

These two things seem very related.

On a more positive note, awesome to hear an account of the software's evolution from someone who was there.

[nehal3m]

I hope you replied something like 'No, meeting this project deadline is more important than YOUR child dying, to me this is a paycheck.'

That's what I would've been thinking in the shower 2 days after the conversation, anyway.

[tetris11]

I feel like people on HN who have comfortable passive incomes from stocks or other sources forget that people need a paycheck to sustain their lifestyles.

[nehal3m]

I very much depend on my pay check to sustain my life in the long run, although worker protections and a small (!) nest egg make it so I wouldn’t have to put up with this kind of abuse. I see employment as an agreement for a set number of hours of my expertise in exchange for a fee. End of transaction.

The real world is slightly less black and white of course, but that’s the gist of it.

[JsonDemWitOster]

But if $DAYJOB actually keeps you from your dying kid's bedside, is it still there to "sustain" it? Or is it just leeching into your life?

[TeMPOraL]

If having a job is still marginally better than not having it, it's a sign of an efficient labor market.

(Market inefficiencies is where everything that is nice, beautiful, good, human, lives.)

[ulfw]

Why do you write '$DAYJOB'?

[nemomarx]

General nerd slang for "fill in the name of it here" based on coding syntax

so like imagine your day jobs employers name in that part

[pjmlp]

Many of us live in countries with work legislation that disallowes this kind of management.

[ToucanLoucan]

I'm told that's communism

[pjmlp]

Yeah,na common message among late stage capitalists.

[lukan]

It seems the poster was aware of that

"That's what I would've been thinking in the shower 2 days after the conversation, anyway."

[jojobas]

You can always find another job, even if it's worse than your current one. A prick who thinks my family is less important than a transportation project, and has the audacity to assert that to me, can do the project himself or in the company of spineless worms.

[dotancohen]

I'd take a mid-2000's Boeing engineer's salary for an asshole boss. Hell, I've been told worse here on HN.

[microgpt]

Plot twist: manager's child flew on a 737 MAX that crashed

[none2585]

We can hope but those types tend to fly in private jets.

[budsniffer952]

I'm shocked people here believe that this was actually said. Or maybe I'm not.

It's laughable, but Hackernews loves a good, "everyone in management is evil" story.

[buildsjets]

I guarantee I am closer to the situation than you are. I have many heard similar, and worse statements, from executives of The Boeing Company many times in my career. Every single Boeing CEO that has left the company in the past 30 years has either been fired, or resigned in disgrace, for their various ethical, moral, and business management failures.

That’s 5 flamed out CEOs since 1996.

Does it shock you that a CEO who is on the record for preferring that his employees “Cower under their desks” in fear of him would also require that their employees prioritize the schedule of a flying barge over their child’s personal life?

https://mynorthwest.com/local/boeing-ceo-apologizes-for-sayi...

Or how about "When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it is run like a business rather than a great engineering firm" - can this statement by former CEO Harry Stonecipher be justified as anything other than evil, in the context of the damage and injury that has been caused by intentionally reducing Boeing’s engineering capability?

[scorpioxy]

That executive has lost any human decency and should be fired.

[GuB-42]

Not just human decency. We all know that some CEOs will sacrifice your child for their goal. In fact, many people are ready to sacrifice other people children as long as they are distant enough, war wouldn't be a thing if we didn't.

But saying it out loud is another thing, it is, to me, a terrible blunder in terms of communication, and executives who talk like that should 100% get fired. They are the face of the company, what they say and how they say it matters. Maybe it matters even more than the technical part of their job. If they get a pass for saying things like that, that's even worse, because it means that it is what the shareholders and customers want to hear.

[laszlojamf]

> I'll quote a Boeing (from MD originally) executive as saying "Meeting this project deadline is more important than your child dying."

Given Boeings later history this is pretty chilling...

[bigfatkitten]

> Boeing (from MD originally)

This class of manager is the cause of most of Boeing’s woes.

[bluefirebrand]

This class of manager is the cause of most of society's woes imo

This sort of person, given any power, makes everyone's life worse

[wkipling]

Awesome. Was this part of the NG FMS program? I find it interesting how the 747 FMS is newer than the 777s yet due to type similarity retains legacy features.

[pyuser583]

"Meeting this project deadline is more important than your child dying."

What was the context? Did someone’s child die?

[jpollock]

I wouldn't think so. Most likely using a crass phrase to instill a feeling of urgency.

Probably didn't work. Remembered though.

[jeronimobomfim]

> "no one had the original detailed design documents"

Is this normal for a comany like Boeing? It's not my area, but I would have guessed they would keep the documentation for everything on a product as important as a 747.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Not avionics, but I've spent most of my career in medical devices. A project's Design History File would indeed have the detailed design documentation of the system. The problem would be that word "detailed." The relevant standards state that the documentation should be sufficient for a normally-skilled engineer to recreate the (software) system, but how stringently that is applied can be very hand-wavy. And then there's the problem of drift where the software changes and the docs are updated, but perhaps not as precisely as they should be, and different people have different levels of documentation rigor. Well, you can see how it ends up 20 years later.

I'm actually dealing with exactly this problem on an old project right now :-(

[MisterTea]

> The original -400 code was written in Pascal if I'm remembering correctly.

Could it have been Ada 83?