Boeing's 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers

[Suburban Warrior]

It remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors.

The Max software -- plagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after U.S. regulators this week revealed a new flaw -- was developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs.

Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospace -- notably India.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/boeing-s-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers

[dalton99a]

1. Quality is not free.

[Lithos]

2. Stupid

Too many mistakes to quantify.

I would not focus this as being an outsourcing issue. The first mistake was the management hubris that Boeing would be able to articulate the problem space sufficiently well enough that the coding would just fall out. Good developers know how to question bad requirements such that they get refined and defined and corrected appropriately.

[Sherman A1]

4. The first mistake was a design

that required the software in the first place. They need to be scrapped.

[PSPS]

12. That's what's at the root of this

Taking a plane designed in the 1960's and altering its aerodynamics, thinking it could be "fixed" by automating controls, is insane. Boeing originally intended to do a "clean sheet" design of the plane but, to speed up production, they decided to proceed with the self-crashing design. What could possibly go wrong?

[Sherman A1]

13. Precisely

One hopes that the 737 Max will never see the skies again and that Boeing will see plenty of courtrooms.

[USALiberal]

23. Airline safety is the best in history. So something is better! Nt

[PSPS]

24. True. It was this particular decision & model that was their fatal gamble/mistake.

Just moving the engine location of the original 737 to accommodate bigger engines destroyed the aerodynamics of the airframe and Boeing decided to compensate for this blunder with the MCAS software that reads only a single angle-of-attack sensor which was known to be unreliable. The planes have a second angle-of-attack sensor to verify the reading of the first but MCAS was designed to only monitor one.

Only if the customer ordered a special option would the MCAS system monitor both AOA sensors and flash a "disagree" lamp in the cockpit. Neither plane that crashed had this option. Boeing never should have allowed customers to order planes without this feature or, at the very least, had its system check the accuracy of the AOA sensor before takeoff when it should be zero.

Then there's the FAA practice of letting manufacturers certify their designs themselves which let Boeing itself certify this blunder as safe.

[USALiberal]

25. Great info......

It is amazing this was an “option” and not automatic. And once again, the FAA gives their job to the company!

[Maven]

28. Exactly

All the mismanagement exacerbated the core problem, but the core problem is the hardware design. It was insane to manufacture a commercial passenger jet with a dynamically unstable airframe, and then try to fix the problem with software. Secret software. Apparently coded by underpaid temp workers. And relying on, in most cases, only one sensor that is prone to failure.

[malaise]

3. Greed will kill all of us

Fuck them all!

[msongs]

5. time for airlines to cancel their purchases of this flying death trap nt

[Jim__]

6. Gee, I wonder how much they saved by out-sourcing that work.

They'll probably still brag about the savings in their annual report.

[Wellstone ruled]

7. Like Jack Welsch procaimed.

they speak English.

[CentralMass]

8. I have developed a very low opinion of Boeing. Muilenburg should be gone yesterday.

[RHMerriman]

10. After the McDonnell-Douglas/Boeing merger, the new leadership:

a) moved headquarters to Chicago from Seattle, meaning moving senior leadership 2,000 miles from the factory floor where their key product is built;

b) opened a second assembly line in South Carolina, even father away, and by taking over yet a third company that had no leadership or processes in common with either of the "parents" in the merger;

c) spent years chasing defense opportunities, when the company is, was, and always will be a civil/commercial aircraft company;

d) tried to manage a just-in-time manufacturing supply chain that literally brought major structural elements of the product in by air and sea for final assembly in the US;

e) outsourced and downsized everything they could chasing profit margins.

What's actually shocking is that they've only managed to kill about 300 people because of this stupidity.

[CentralMass]

17. Thank you for that summary. That is pretty appaling.

[RHMerriman]

18. Yep ... and Boeing is THE American success story in terms of market dominance

Yep ... and Boeing is THE American success story in terms of market dominance.

Airbus isn't significantly better, of course. Always a race to the bottom.

[defacto7]

26. That's the story in a nut shell.

Time for a complete shakedown and reorganization. It's a huge and important job maker and still could be the great innovator it once was. But not with the present model. Downsize if they must to increase quality but not to skimp on talent. It could come back if they can get rid of the shareholder first/ military cash cow mentality.

[RHMerriman]

32. Yep...

Boeing and Douglas and McDonnell would be appalled.

[Maven]

29. He'll stay there until the stock price plummets, which is exactly the problem.

Ethics, safety, people don't matter anymore. Only shareholder value matters. Extreme Capitalism in 2019.

[Claritie Pixie]

9. You get what you pay for. Boeing put money before human lives.

[applegrove]

11. But, but, but markets never fail!!

[Hotler]

14. That's why the CEO's make the big bucks. To make big ....

rocket surgeon decisions like this.

[Initech]

15. Well, that's what happens when you choose profit over people.

Fuckers.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

16. Garbag in, garbag out!

[dalton99a]

19. +1. GIGO

[TheBlackAdder]

20. And their 2nd shift job is to spam call Americans out of their money with bogus virus fixes.

[moondust]

21. Ya but...

how big was the CEO's bonus last year? That's the real measure of success.

[Recursion]

22. Boeing forgot its purpose. Happens to a lot of companies.

They forgot they are a company that makes planes and thought they were a company that sells planes.

I used to work for a flight simulator manufacturer. We paid our interns more than $9/hour to just watch us write the software that simulates these planes, and occasionally maybe babysit a build. That's because this is really, really complex stuff and you do actually get what you pay for. (Even in India, $9/hour is shit pay for a programmer.)

[at140]

27. I have encountered this issue for almost 4 decades!

During my job as manager of computer aided engineering and manufacturing,
I was bombarded by fellow employees to hire their kids for summer jobs.
Yes many of the kids knew some programming, but we were a high tech manufacturing
outfit. The software we developed was not graphics or retail procedures. We wrote
software based on intimate knowledge of engineering and computer controlled manufacturing.
Those kids obviously knew nothing about either.

In summary, there are computer programmers who do not know anything about engineering
or manufacturing, and there are engineers and manufacturing personnel who do not know how
to develop complicated software.

For Boeing to outsource critical software is nuts. I know from first hand knowledge than older
and seasoned engineers hate to learn computer programming. Which is a bigger problem than
many people realize.

[democratisphere]

30. I wouldn't get on a Boeing aircraft if my life depended on it,

because it would.

[Johnny2X2X]

31. This was not a Software error

It was a design error. The system's software functioned according to the design.

I work in aviation, my company's biggest customers are Boeing and Airbus, we do avionics (hardware and software) for them. We didn't have anything to do with the system.

There are smoke screens being put out and the uninformed media is helping them. The software was not a problem.

HERE IS WHAT THE PROBLEM WAS:
This system should have had duel redundancy as a requirement, not an option. They made a disagree light (where both sensors would be read) an option for $84,000. So instead of having the MCAS system reading both sensors (2 come installed stock), it was only hooked up to one, if that sensor went bad it activated a motor with a screw drive that that put the nose down. If both were hooked up and one went bad, then you get a disagree light in the cock pit, it would flash and the crew would know what to do immediately or preferably (I'm not sure about this part of the design) the MCAS system would disengage automatically.

Most US airlines purchased the $84,000 option.

I am an engineer working in Avionics, we have equipment and software running on the 737 Max. Here's what I think the investigation will show, it will show that the original design required both Angle of Attack Sensors to be hooked up and a disagree light to be installed in the cockpit. It will show that somewhere after the preliminary design phase (maybe even the review) someone who didn't fully understand the system changed that requirement to an option. And there will be meeting minutes, emails, and other records around all of this.

The 737 Max is a great plane, it's the best air frame, with the best Flight Management Computer, and the very best engines. This system was a work around for the next engines being located slightly differently causing problems, there are many work arounds on planes, this one was fine if applied correctly. Someone made a poor decision and people were killed, I want to see this system require both sensors be hooked up, with a disagree light in the cockpit, and an automated disengagement of the system should a disagree occur (This indicates a a bad sensor). A software fix can only work if it's included in hooking up both sensors and addinig that light to the cockpit.

Not sure why there is so much misinformation around this, but $9 an hour SW engineers has nothing to do with why this occurred in my opinion. This could be developed and tested safely regardless of who coded it.