For me this argument always made 0 sense. Dennis Muilenburg was a engineer through and through, and he did pretty much all his career at Boeing. But this is during his time as CEO that all the previous issues with the 737 Max arose, which led to him being fired.
You want an engineer CEO, you got one and it didn't help anything.
Because that's not what a CEO does in any case. At this level of management, especially in those huge company, you are so far removed from the craft that it is really irrelevant if you have any experience in it.
I think, it is way more important to look at the actual owner of Boeing and its general environment. Boeing is now mostly owned by big institutional investment firm [0], and they are the one who choose the CEO.
Boeing is also one of the most insanely protected company in the U.S. Whatever Boeing does, the U.S government will always be here to make sure Boeing stays dominant and make life very difficult for any competitor.
The situation with the 737 Max was actually a good example where the FAA and the U.S Govt was again very lenient with Boeing, and just gave them a slap on the wrist.
So if you were the owner of such company, why not abuse this amount of protection ? Why not push for the maximum profitability at the cost of quality ?
If Boeing received more than just a slap in the wrist for the previous 737 Max fuck-up, they would be way more inclined to reevaluate their whole quality process and make sure no incident every happen.
> Because that's not what a CEO does in any case. At this level of management, especially in those huge company, you are so far removed from the craft that it is really irrelevant if you have any experience in it.
An engineer CEO is going to value different things than a non-engineer CEO.
If your anecdote says anything it's more about where is the pressure coming from that caused an engineer CEO to behave like a non-engineer?
this hypothetical engineer-CEO is going to put a lot more stock in what the engineers are saying, so even if it'll cost a lot of money, reducing profits, the engineer-ceo is going to say we're not not launch until the engineers say it is good to go. The MBA CEO is going to say the engineers are stupid, they don't know the whole picture, they're going to bankrupt the company, and we're going to launch anyway.
No, I am just putting into question this seemingly undeniable claim that someone who happen to have been an engineer in their career would somehow end up being a more engineer focused CEO.
This naively would make sense, but does it actually have any factual weight ?
There is so many counter argument to this. Becoming a CEO, from an engineering start, usually involve spending a lot of your career in higher management. At this point, why would you be more sensible to the engineer issues, than the higher management/board/owner ?
Climbing the ladder also require at some point to satisfy the requirement of non-engineer, shifting you own goal if what you aim is to be at the top of the ladder.
Having an engineer past doesn't guarantee at all that you will listen to engineer more once you have climb the ladder.
People just want to continue to create this weird tension between engineer and business people, both trying to act as if they are much better than the other at handling a company, when in actuality, it is the collaboration of both which is successful, and some of the best company manage to harness exactly this.
> People just want to continue to create this weird tension between engineer and business people
because there _is_ tension between business and technical people.
a business person can walk into a room and through charm and sheer force of will get what they want. No amount of charm will ever find and fix that bug.
It's a fundamentally different approach to the world, hence why they clash so often and why an engineer turned CEO is going to act vastly different than business person turned CEO.
and just as clearly, what a CEO values matters or they wouldn't be paid so much because they could be replaced by anyone otherwise.
I think this accountability is a good point… if someone told me absent any other information that a company had the issues Boeing has been having, then I would assume they get shut down or forced into a restructured management with hugely increased regulatory oversight.
The point is that Quality flows from the top down. If the people on top of the organization don't take it seriously, then it's hard for the actual working engineers to get the support they need to do their jobs. Having an engineer as the CEO at least makes it likely that that person understands what is needed and makes it happen.
It's not a guarantee, but I'd trust an engineering organization with an engineer at the helm a lot more than someone with a sales background.
You could say that obviously most engineering types are not good enough to run an engineering company.
But that wouldn't be true, in reality almost nobody is good enough to run an engineering company.
Having an engineer type sure improves your odds compared to general business practitioners, though.
It may be like unobtainium but if you had your choice of engineers at an aircraft company you can't do better than one whose mathematical ability puts general business leaders to shame, and who started out building planes at an early age and hasn't forgotten how for their entire career. In fact only gotten better by focusing so strongly on the finances that directly contribute to the most reliable aircraft that can be produced. Even then some will still crash. As we have seen, it's lots better without the temptation to be distracted by the general business trends that come and go, which encourage little manipulations of large resources in ways that any negative outcomes, unforseen or not, will be pushed far enough into the future for decision-makers to have fully cashed out before that time.
The worst you could do is have somebody who has never participated in aircraft design, assembly, and maintenance allowed into the chain of command anywhere between the entry-level engineers and the top decision makers.
It should go without saying that natural leadership ability has got to be there for it to be sensible for someone to move up the chain of command, but also it needs to be fully rewarding for highly skilled engineers to prosper progressively without having to be very near the ladder that has to be climbed leading to executive duties.
As each decade goes by and people overall settle more and more for having non-leaders in leadership positions, you can't expect things to ever be the same in any way unless this pervasive defect can be reversed.
It didn't get this way overnight and it can't be fixed overnight.
To reframe the point the parent made: Boeing is a special case due to the fact that those above the CEO are uniquely institutional (large investment) and the company enjoys a level of "socialized failure protection" from the US government that few other companies get.
At least other companies that get cushy treatment from the US government often have more competition, like GM.
Because that's not what a CEO does in any case. At this level of management, especially in those huge company, you are so far removed from the craft that it is really irrelevant if you have any experience in it.
I think, it is way more important to look at the actual owner of Boeing and its general environment. Boeing is now mostly owned by big institutional investment firm [0], and they are the one who choose the CEO.
Boeing is also one of the most insanely protected company in the U.S. Whatever Boeing does, the U.S government will always be here to make sure Boeing stays dominant and make life very difficult for any competitor.
The situation with the 737 Max was actually a good example where the FAA and the U.S Govt was again very lenient with Boeing, and just gave them a slap on the wrist. So if you were the owner of such company, why not abuse this amount of protection ? Why not push for the maximum profitability at the cost of quality ?
If Boeing received more than just a slap in the wrist for the previous 737 Max fuck-up, they would be way more inclined to reevaluate their whole quality process and make sure no incident every happen.
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/052116/top-3-...