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Boeing To Lay Off Hundreds of Engineers Amid Sales Slowdown (reuters.com)
According to Reuters, Boeing has warned its employees that it "planned another round of involuntary layoffs that would affect hundreds of engineers at its commercial airplanes unit." From the report: The latest job cuts followed a prior involuntary reduction of 245 workers set for May 19 as the company responded to increasing competition and slowing aircraft sales. The additional layoffs are due to start June 23, according to the memo from John Hamilton, vice president of engineering at Boeing Commercial Airplanes. "We are moving forward with a second phase of involuntary layoffs for some select skills in Washington state and other enterprise locations," the memo said. "We anticipate this will impact hundreds of engineering employees. Additional reductions in engineering later this year will be driven by our business environment and the amount of voluntary attrition."
Some exec is looking at the millions he saved by getting rid of all that pesky R&D/QA and going, "Man, can you believe we spent millions on personnel who just made sure stuff worked right? Good thing that's all going to my fat bonus now."
Why are the engineers always being fired first? Guess it's being something thougth by some random MBA course or something?
I wonder how this report squares with the one from late February that "Boeing and Airbus Can't Make Enough Airplanes To Keep Up With Demand". Poor workforce management? One of these two stories must misrepresent the truth.
The Art of the Deal is about "self interest" not what aligns with everyone else. Wny would anyone think he was running for office out of the goodness of his heart? The "Art" is in exploiting people dim wits.
There has never been, and never will be, a shortage of engineers.
There is, however, a surplus of greed and stupidity amongst the 1% that means people with decades of experience and education are forced to run around like dogs on the street looking for work. Meanwhile none of the 'shareholder activists' and C level executives will ever feel even the slightest ounce of pain, regardless of how many failures they create.
There was no purpose in winning the cold war - we have replicated the worst parts of the Soviet Union all by ourselves.
They took a hit when Trump announced "Cancel Order!" to their Air Force one bid. Our entire economy is built around short term stock bumps because most CEO pay is in bonuses and stock options (so that they don't have to pay income tax on it).
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exactly!
Only I can judge you.
Don't blame Trump. Boeing has had some problems with quality recently.
In 2005, FIA (run by Boeing) was partly canceled. The New York Times called it "perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects." From space.com, "But Boeing quickly ran into troubles on the highly ambitious and complex FIA program, which fell years behind schedule and overran its budget by billions of dollars."
In 2011, the SBI Net program was canceled. "It was originally envisioned to stretch the 1,969-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico but initial phases of the $1 billion project took longer than anticipated to complete and covered just a small portion, 53 miles, since the project began."
According to Wikipedia, the Joint Tactical Radio System (JRTS) project has had major problems. "The JTRS program was beset by delays and cost overruns, particularly Ground Mobile Radios (GMR), run by Boeing."
The Dreamliner had major problems, including fires. From Wikipedia, "The FAA issued a directive in January 2013 that grounded all 787s in the US and other civil aviation authorities followed suit. After Boeing completed tests on a revised battery design, the FAA approved the revised design and lifted the grounding in April 2013; the 787 returned to passenger service later that month."
This usatoday article, titled "Some of Boeing's programs have problems", lists other problems with Boeing. For example, "V-22 Osprey. The tilt-rotor aircraft, made in partnership with Bell Helicopter, is under congressional scrutiny because of concerns about its high cost of operation, reliability and safety." and "Joint Tactical Radio System Cluster 1. Boeing's management of the project for the military was so bad it received a stop-work order from the Defense Department. Eventually, the program was restructured rather than canceled but with Boeing in a diminished role."
I wonder if some managers are looking at these problems, and deciding that Boeing isn't the best company from which to order planes and services. That would hurt Boeing's sales.
I was laid off while working for Boeing Defense and it's a comparatively good company. The third time was the charm for me and I saw them lay off both younger and older - the average age in some areas is probably somewhere in the 40's. They gave us two months notice. I was older which meant a hefty severance and early retirement including medical. Plus a 401K. My friends in other aerospace and my brief experience with a smaller firm didn't fare as well. Boeing's a yuge company and if assigning you a BEMS ID makes their life easier so the fuck what. Sure there's political crap going on and they favor keeping useless crony managers over engineers, but you'll see that everywhere.
Did you believe Bernie when he said that he would make healthcare and college education free?
Econ 101 - there is no such thing as a free lunch.
I partially wanted to see Bernie win - just so I could see him squirm when it came time to deliver on all the free stuff he promised.
I wonder if the H-1B body shops will shift from computer services to aeronautical engineering soon.
I would assume the 787 design is essentially finished, which I assume means a big reduction in engineering. Is there anything else in the pipeline, or has commercial aircraft design become too expensive? Hire & fire is nothing new in aerospace.
most of the world is not under austerity at all and if anything as a whole the well of middle class has exploded in size but they aren't doing business with Boeing. Airbus has had record profits and orders by comparison.
In other news... Indian software contract houses today announced new billion dollar contract with Boeing,
Staying with aviation news: The FAA today announced a new initiative to "update" engineering standards covering aircraft manufacture. a spokes person was quoted as saying "certain FAA standards, especially those covering software quality/safety in aircraft have been unnecessarily complex and burdensome to the aircraft industry for years".
That's akin to looking up at 3" of water above your head and deciding the best course of action to take a breath of air is to swim *downward*.
after they get their bump. It'll cost more because they'll pay hiring bonuses but that's about it.
The problem is our entire economy is being run by a well connected good 'ole boys network with very actual smarts. Things would go a lot smoother if we acknowledged our ruling class and took steps to reign them in but as things stand we just pretend they don't exist.
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Nope we are beginning to see the effect of Trump's electronics ban on Gulf airlines. They are moving orders away from Boeing to Airbus
**Life is too short to be serious**
I have studied aeronautics and I was told that U.S. aeronautical engineers were called "gypsies". All the U.S. aircraft were designed by the same team of engineers, who were hired for a design job, fired afterwards and therefore went from factory to factory to be able to make a living. For us European students, it was totally absurd that you would have to spend a large part of your life studying and still end up as a dragged-around gypsy.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
The Dreamliner's batteries continue to pose a problem,
Do you have a source for that claim? They were an issue a few years back but i'm not seeing anything recent.
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MAGA
Right. That was why the stock market hit a record high after he was elected. The market isn't confident.
Modding down a post that was filled with verifiable facts shows the depths of depravity that some have fallen into.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.