https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/18/the-case-against-boeing#
But the company was in tremendous flux. When Sorscher first went to work there, in 1980, after earning a doctorate in physics, he marvelled at its culture, which emphasized quality improvement and communication. Managers held regular meetings for engineers to address problems; engineers worked directly with suppliers; teams shared resources, knowing that the gesture would be reciprocated. The planes that Boeing was developing—such as the 777, its first jet to use significant computer controls—were a success, with few problems after launch.
In December, 1996, Boeing announced that it was buying a struggling rival, McDonnell Douglas, for thirteen billion dollars. Sorscher is one of many Boeing employees who have identified the merger as the moment when Boeing went from being led by engineers to being led by business executives driven by stock performance.
Sorscher recalled a labor-management breakfast, shortly before the merger, at which a top Boeing executive said that the company would reduce spending on a program that employed engineers to find improvements in the process of making planes. Sorscher, a member of the union’s bargaining unit at the time, pointed out how much money process improvement was saving the company.
The executive tipped his head back, as if thinking how best to explain basic economics to a clueless scientist. Finally, as Sorscher recalled, the executive said, “The decisions I make have more influence over outcomes than all the decisions you make.” Sorscher told me, “It was: ‘I can’t help but make a billion dollars every time I pick up the phone. You people do things that save four hundred thousand dollars, that take one shift out of flow time—who gives a crap?’ ”
Three years later, the engineers’ union went on strike over bonus pay and cuts in health coverage. James Dagnon, another Boeing executive, said that engineers had to accept that they were no longer the center of the universe. “We laughed,” Sorscher recalled. “This is an engineering company—these are complex, heavily engineered products. Of course we’re the center of the universe. But he wasn’t kidding. We didn’t get it. Who is the center of the universe? It’s the executives.”
In 2002, Sorscher, who had started working for the union full time, made his case to a Wall Street analyst in Seattle, arguing that bottom-line business models did not apply to building airplanes. The analyst cut him off. “You think you’re different,” he said, according to Sorscher. “This business model works for everyone. It works for ladies’ garments, for running shoes, for hard drives, for integrated circuits, and it will work for you.”
Taken aback, Sorscher said, “Let’s build an airliner with this business model. If it works, you and everyone who looks like you will be happy. And if I’m right, then we’ll all be very unhappy.”
In the spring of 2004, Boeing started designing the 787 Dreamliner, a three-hundred-and-thirty-passenger jet. The following year, the company named a new C.E.O., Jim McNerney, a Harvard M.B.A. who had worked at Procter & Gamble, McKinsey, General Electric, and 3M. According to Sorscher, under McNerney engineers were discouraged from voicing concerns. “What we heard five thousand times was ‘Follow the plan,’ ” Sorscher said. “ ‘Your job is to follow the plan, and if you can’t follow the plan we’ll fire you and get someone to follow the plan.’ ”
By the time the 787 was ready, in 2011, the program was three years late and tens of billions of dollars over budget. A year later, after the airplanes’ batteries displayed a tendency to catch fire, the fleet was grounded for three months.