Sacrificing quality and lives
Dec 04, 2021
The Daily Beast: How Boeing Was Set on the Path to Disaster by the Cult of Jack Welch.
This excerpt describes the human condition:
[...] McNerney, touting the Welch philosophy of “more for less,” ruled out the new jet and opted, instead, for what became the 737MAX, a hybrid of yet another iteration of the old airframe and the vastly improved engine that would give airlines much higher efficiency. The new program would cost $2.5 billion; the clean-sheet jet would have cost $20 billion. (As it turned out, the MAX catastrophe has cost the company well north of $20 billion.)
They killed hundreds, lost billions of dollars, and burned their immense reputation in one shot. That's some big-brain "savings".
It's also grim that a CEO who pushed the alternative (by making a brand new jet costing $20 billion) wouldn't have received any credit for actually saving lives, money, and their prestige. Most likely, he would have been fired for his "unnecessary" and "wasteful" spending. That's the Wall Street mantra; they only care about the short term: lowering costs and rising stock prices.
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