Dare Obasanjo

Seattle Times has a new report on how Boeing's current challenges can be traced to prioritizing shareholders over everything for 25 years, slashing costs and outsourcing key work, weakening unions, and pressuring suppliers, leading to loss of its core competency.

This is a great example of how the stock market rewards short term thinking leading to companies sabotaging themselves. Intel is in the same boat.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/boeings-long-fall-and-how-it-might-recover/

When ‘ruthless’ Boeing cut costs, the damage spread

Boeing’s leaders are tepidly admitting the shareholders-first, workers-be-damned strategy was flawed. It’s an admission a generation in coming.

The Seattle Times
Apr 8, 2024 at 3:12pmWeb
Show threadEric BowenApr 8, 2024
@carnage4life SpaceX is the ultimate example of private company R&D risk taking that would never fly (pun intended) at a publicly traded company...
Show threadPhil WolffApr 8, 2024
@carnage4life Any companies ever turn around after a deep hollowing out of core intangible assets? How do you rebuild? Should you even try?
Show threadstephen ryner jr. 🦉Apr 8, 2024
@carnage4life engineers build up value through decades of difficult labor, the finance guys swoop in and destroy it in the blink of an eye.
Show threadBrokenNeuronApr 14, 2024

@nuthatch
Every stockmarket owned company will eventually fuck its customers over for shareholder benefit.

Welcome to capitalism.

@carnage4life

Show threadSteven HiltonApr 8, 2024
@carnage4life #Capitalism #EnshitificationEverywhere
Show threadkira :3Apr 8, 2024
@carnage4life up next, "how did microsoft, google end up here?"
Show threadJonathan D. Cope, Esq.Apr 8, 2024
@carnage4life
One caveat to that. This was caused by traditional capitalism, not capitalism, per se. In Commons Capitalism, which is another form of capitalism, you don't have any shareholders to satisfy.
Show threadBenjohnApr 13, 2024
@Cirdan @carnage4life that sounds very interesting. I just searched and can only find links establishing these as largely opposites! Could you please give a pointer / link?
Show threadJonathan D. Cope, Esq.Apr 13, 2024
@benjohn @carnage4life
Commons Capitalism is an economic system I'm researching and on which writing a paper. I have a series of tweets you can read if you haven't looked at already:
#CommonsCapitalismPrimer or #CommonsCapitalism
Show threadBenjohnApr 13, 2024
@Cirdan @carnage4life thanks.
Show threadJonathan D. Cope, Esq.Apr 13, 2024
@benjohn @carnage4life you're welcome!
Show threadNuncio Bitis 🏳️‍🌈 🇵🇸 🇺🇦Apr 8, 2024
@carnage4life Is this really a shocker?
More like a "yeah, we know big companies screw customers for a buck"
Show threadPassimApr 8, 2024
@carnage4life @Gte One of the trends that disillusioned the great Drucker during the last years of his career.
Show threadMichael BaconApr 8, 2024

@carnage4life

It's insane -- these companies basically have license to print money for decades on end just by doing the same basic job over and over again. But the stock market gets antsy and wants higher returns. And it all comes crashing down. (Literally, in Boeing's case.)

Show threadA RobbartApr 8, 2024
@carnage4life There's a good documentary by Rory Kennedy on this (on Netflix). It ties the problems to the merger of McDonnell Douglas & Boeing -- Boeing had had a culture of safety and trusting engineers. It changed to more of the McD D culture of prioritizing cutting costs and raising stock price.
Show threadOlympia IndivisibleApr 8, 2024
@carnage4life Everyone in the PNW knows that McDonnell Douglas was the one in charge after the 1997 Boeing merger. They stopped letting engineers lead the company and also started to squeeze the employees for profit. It quickly became a bad place to work.
Show threadKartik KrishnanandApr 8, 2024
@carnage4life There is a book titled "When McKinsey comes to town" by Peter Bogdanovich, and Michael Forsythe in which there is a chapter about McKinsey consultants recommended that the Disney rides not be maintained daily to save costs as there had been no accidents in the last few years. The consultants were oblivious to the fact that there were no accidents because the rides were maintained daily.
Show threadBobulous  Apr 14, 2024
@kkrishnanand @carnage4life Great advice from the exact same category of geniuses who said there was no need to have panicked about the Y2K bug because in the end nothing bad happened.
Show threadPaul DenyaApr 8, 2024
@carnage4life last week tonight had a hilarious episode with the same conclusions a couple weeks ago.
Show threadRalfMaximusApr 9, 2024

@pdenya @carnage4life

Link to John Oliver's Boeing segment:
https://youtu.be/Q8oCilY4szc

Boeing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

YouTube
Show threadPaul DenyaApr 9, 2024
@ralfmaximus @carnage4life wow 32mins that’s like the whole episode. Awesome that they put up the content for free now.
Show threadThomas TempelmannApr 8, 2024
@carnage4life There's also "Downfall: The Case Against Boeing" on Netflix, from 2022, on the same topic, which showed nicely how money-greedy management ignored all the signs of a disaster in the making. And those who profited from it don't seem to get any repercussions for it, either. That's the downside of an uncontrolled market, where quick-earned profit always pays off (long-term it's a bad method, but tell that to the ones who want to make a buck right now).
Show threadBrad HApr 8, 2024
@carnage4life Similar to “tonerheads” at Xerox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yraBG1s4gm8
Risk for Apple is “services-heads” 🙁
Steve Jobs on the rotting of companies

YouTube
Show threadÓscar Morales VivóApr 10, 2024
@Bracl @carnage4life Apple’s product driven ethos is being pulled from many directions but I’d argue that the more problematic one, and it’s been already obvious for well over a decade, is that much of it is more keynote-driven before product-driven.
Show threadTibo LoeteApr 8, 2024
@carnage4life I’d argue was in the same boat but course corrected in time by naming Gelsinger as CEO
(Doesn’t mean he can fix it all in time though)
Show threadDana ScottApr 8, 2024
@carnage4life @siracusa IOW, they let the bean counters take over for the engineers.
Show threadKaterina MarchánApr 9, 2024
@carnage4life Intel is so incredibly fucked.
Show threadKailey 🏳️‍⚧️Apr 9, 2024

@carnage4life Yes, of course, what did they think was ultimately going to happen with that strategy? I guess they don’t really care. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

I’m so tired of capitalists. Their completely divorced from reality ideas on just about everything. I read another article this morning of yet another oligarch complaining that younger generations only complain about things while living in their parent’s basement and not working. Completely oblivious to the fact that it requires a 6-figure income to buy even the smallest bit of property these days. When you treat the labor force as expendable, this is what you get.

Shut them down. Shut all of them down. I don’t even care anymore.

Show threadPeter AmstutzApr 9, 2024
@carnage4life It is frustrating that these kinds of things take 10+ years to play out, so the people who made these decisions were able to coast on the company's previous reputation and take their bonuses for cutting costs, but are long gone when the bill comes due.
Show threadStargeezer SmithApr 9, 2024
@carnage4life
Was it Nikita Khrushchev who said capitalists would sell you the rope to hang them with?
Show threadAndrew JenningsApr 11, 2024
@carnage4life @BlippyTheWonderSlug it’s not “the stock market”, it is the management. Charge them
Show threadBill LambApr 11, 2024

@carnage4life

#FlyAirbus.

Show threadC. LambethApr 14, 2024

@carnage4life

#Capitalism is not our friend.