An insider explains what's happened to Boeing--and lots of other U.S. companies.

For decades Boeing was a great company that built the world’s most reliable, efficient airliners.  But after merging with McDonnell Douglas, moving much production overseas and moving its headquarters from Seattle to Chicago and then Arlington, Virginia, the Boeing Company has been having problems.

In October 2018, those problems began killing passengers:  The company had just released the newest version of its venerable 737, called the 737 MAX.  That plane had a design flaw that the company knew about from its test pilots, and which would never have been allowed in earlier years: a system similar to an autopilot, called "MCAS," that was able to command the plane to dive, with a force that couldn't be overcome by the pilots.  

As if that wasn't bad enough, the MCAS system could not readily be disconnected by the pilots.

Just two years after the first flight, that system failed shortly after takeoff, in a plane operated by a foreign airline.  It flew the plane into the ground, killing all 189 on board.

Just five months later, in March of 2019, another 737 MAX--again operated by a foreign airline--crashed just six minutes after takeoff, killing all 157 on board.

Investigators found that Boeing's flight manual for the aircraft didn't mention anything significant about the MCAS system, including that it couldn't be disconnected.  Boeing test pilots had reported this to executives as a major problem, but the execs--in a classic case of "We're way smahtah den yew, peon," ignored the pilots' warnings.

That arrogant, abysmally dumb decision by one or two dumb executives cost Boeing over $85 BILLION in cancelled orders, fines, lawsuits by victims' families and legal fees.

Journalist Chris Rufo found a Boeing insider with direct knowledge of the leadership decisions by company execs.  He tells a story of "woke," DEI-obsessed managers who have alienated the company's workforce.

Of course the MCAS decision was made ten years ago, but many of the execs are still in their jobs, and others have been replaced by people with no experience in the airplane business.  So...

Rufo: What's happening at Boeing?

Insider: At its core we have a marginalization of the people who build who build the planes.  The two 737 MAX crashes were caused by bad design.  Few companies can survive two crashes from the same type of aircraft in five months.  After the two crashes came a sweeping set of changes that caused huge turnover in talent.  

So now we have an executive council running the company who are all outsiders with no aviation experience.  The new CEO is from General Electric.  The HR chief is new at Boeing.  The head of our commercial-airplanes division--one of the last engineers on the executive council--was fired last week.

The headquarters in Arlington is empty.  There's literally no one there--the CEO lives in New Hampshire, the CFO in Connecticut, the head of HR in Orlando.  The company just ordered that everyone has to come into work five days a week—except the executive council, which can use company jets to travel to meetings.

And that's the core of the problem: the company is being run by outsiders instead of by people who love airplanes.  And the people on the production line notice.

Power and status rule every boardroom in the country. The DEI craze is real, and at Boeing--as at most big companies--to get status you have to totally support DEI--have to embrace it if you want to get ahead.  Saying the right buzzwords became a means to power.

DEI promotes by checking the boxes instead of by excellence, and you have to support it or else.  Every HR email includes the line “Inclusion makes us better.” This kind of politicization in hiring is a real problem in all companies in advanced western nations.

HR departments devoted to DEI don’t hurt tech businesses like they hurt manufacturing.  At Google they have a huge profit margin, so they can afford to pay top-dollar when hiring.  Because they can afford to pay 30 or 40 percent more than other companies, they can get the top 5 percent of any racial group.  But companies with lower profit margins can't afford that, so diversity hires are less qualified.

Rufo: What else does the public not understand about what is happening at Boeing?

Insider:  Boeing is just a symptom of a much bigger problem: the "woke" culture made DEI and ESG the most important considerations.  So cunning execs quickly learned to embrace both to win power, which further separated the workforce from the company.  This is happening in virtually every U.S. company, and it's going to have a huge effect.

"Elite" execs think they're clever because they spout the buzz-words so smoothly:  “I'm smart because I repeat what everyone else says about DEI.”  They think that substitutes for real leadership.

There should be some honor in understanding that the great achievements we inherited from those who ran this company 60 years ago are good, and that continuing to be great depends on excellence.  And that's worth defending and loving.
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Adapted from a piece by Chris Rufo in The Federalist

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