From the article: “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm,” [Harry Stonecipher, the new CEO from McDonnell-Douglas] told the Chicago Tribune in 2004. “It is a great engineering firm, but people invest in a company because they want to make money.”
I lay the blame at the feet of each person at the company who acted selfishly.
Selfishness gets an easy pass here on Hacker News --- well, just about everywhere these days, I guess. Take this recent thread, where the submitter confesses that he has been slacking off for 6 years at work. A lot of people egged him on. I remember one comment that advised him to double down and go Full Sociopath (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21964204).
I could not think of a good rebuttal. I mean, I work hard even when no one is watching, because I am religious, but I did not imagine it going well if I just laid out the idea of a transcendental world. But the only solution I see is reformation of the individual, one by one, not revolution of the social structure --- change from the inside out, instead of the outside in.
The enemy is not the rich or the poor, the executive or the engineer. Any of these people can be dangerous, if their philosophy is maximum selfishness. Furthermore, no set of laws is clever enough to keep the peace if the majority of citizens are sociopaths. They will always find the legal loopholes. On the other hand, a country with the dumbest regulatory set-up would still run fine if peopled by saints, people who are the opposite of selfish, who are always asking, am I treating others how I wish to be treated?
I’ve got to agree with you. Selfishness in your job at Boeing, perhaps, means you care less about the safety of the plane and more about doing the minimum you can. Maybe that means you don’t report something you may have if you were more invested. At my job as a software engineer working on tools for making websites, it may just mean that a user can not accomplish X or that a bug goes unfixed for a while. But compounded over time, those little things done by a lot of people can mean a plane crashes — or in my case, that the company looses users and I may be out of a job.
Of course, you should be selfish in that you should take care of yourself and not seriously stress yourself over work. But sometimes not doing an uncomfortable thing (for me, reaching out to an unfamiliar person) can seriously hinder the quality of my work. That quality definitely manifests itself in the product in big and small ways.
I have the same feeling you do, but I really wonder: is it the same as it's ever been and I am growing older, or are we really more selfish than we used to be? It sure seems like everyone is out to make a buck, morality be damned.
I just always imagine the shame that I would feel if I was in charge of making these short-sighted decisions. Sacrificing the quality/safety of the product to make a bonus. I would feel intensely ashamed about doing such a thing, but I guess that disqualifies me from ever being in charge.
I think if you want a glimpse into the future of competitive behavior as the population increases and climate change starts gnawing on the economy, look at the school systems in South Korea and China. Absolutely cutthroat from day one, because there are so many people competing for the same resources.
I lay the blame at the feet of each person at the company who acted selfishly.
Selfishness gets an easy pass here on Hacker News --- well, just about everywhere these days, I guess. Take this recent thread, where the submitter confesses that he has been slacking off for 6 years at work. A lot of people egged him on. I remember one comment that advised him to double down and go Full Sociopath (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21964204).
I could not think of a good rebuttal. I mean, I work hard even when no one is watching, because I am religious, but I did not imagine it going well if I just laid out the idea of a transcendental world. But the only solution I see is reformation of the individual, one by one, not revolution of the social structure --- change from the inside out, instead of the outside in.
The enemy is not the rich or the poor, the executive or the engineer. Any of these people can be dangerous, if their philosophy is maximum selfishness. Furthermore, no set of laws is clever enough to keep the peace if the majority of citizens are sociopaths. They will always find the legal loopholes. On the other hand, a country with the dumbest regulatory set-up would still run fine if peopled by saints, people who are the opposite of selfish, who are always asking, am I treating others how I wish to be treated?