Boeing 737 Max, software problems and Indian engineers.

Discussion in 'United States' started by Pipette8, Jul 2, 2019.

  1. Pipette8

    Pipette8 Well-Known Member

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    Boeing has had some bad 'luck' lately with its grounded 737 Max planes; and the grounding may last longer than expected. Boeing can't blame anyone but itself. The company is being sued by shareholders and 700 pilots who were forced to fly these planes after being warned the plane had problems, and after Boeing covered up these complaints. Ethiopian Airlines is also suing Boeing. The death toll from the defunct airplane is 346 passengers and crew.

    Well, well, well. Come to find out Boeing outsourced its software development to Indian engineers who were working for $9/hour. Engineers from HCL, an Indian company was responsible for the development and testing of the Max flight display software, and Indian engineers from another company handled software for test flight equipment.

    If it wasn't for the people who died in these planes, I would say ha, ha, ha Boeing. Your effort to reduce costs even though you are worth $129 billion bit you in the ass.

    It wasn't all bad news for Boeing though. Indian Airlines ordered 2100 Boeing planes. The order is worth $290 billion over the next 20 years. Funny how that happens.
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/tech...utsourced-to-249-an-hour-engineers/ar-AADzCXz
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2019
  2. zer0lis

    zer0lis Well-Known Member

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    So what are you suggesting? Indians sucks?

    No, India has many skilled IT engineers, you need proper HR to find those in that billion and half people country but that's a different topic.

    Outsourcing done right is okay, I am afraid that you will always have a communication issue with Indians, and I think this was the underlying problem: bad management and communication.

    You will have a 10x better time with Philippines outsourcing or with Eastern European ones. IT outsourcing is slowly moving away from SE Asia to E Europe, for good reasons although slightly more cost.

    Airbus has an approach where they open airbus offices in Estonia, Russia, Romania and all their workers are airbus workers with an average of 50k per year per engineer. That's a different style of outsourcing and works great.

    My early career was as an IT engineer at big tech in E Europe. Having spent 1/3 of my life in Paris, the pay was decent for a westerner and a king wage for those countries.
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2019
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  3. Jimmy79

    Jimmy79 Banned

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    None of this changes the fact that Boeing failed to go behind its contractors and independently test their work. Nor does it change the fact that the FAA dropped the ball in not also independently verifying this software is safe and instead just took Boeing's word for it.

    Then after those failures were Boeings failure to send out a notice or get the software fixed when they became aware of issues with it.
     
  4. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    Hasn't been a great month or so for Indian Tech. Wipro.. Now HCL.

    For Boeing, the lesson will be that even after you outsource, you still have to QA their work before you go into production with their products. Simple as that. Not knowing that your Indian outsourcing company might not have been as rigorous as you needed them to be will be a pretty spectacularly expensive lesson for them.
     
  5. zer0lis

    zer0lis Well-Known Member

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    Sadly, fixing software is expensive.
    Sometimes it's better to erase the codebase and start again.
    From my experience, managers are out of touch with software dev and they don't even listen to advices. Sometimes I wonder why they have a better pay than engineers. 99% of engineers are smarter and make for better managers.
     
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  6. Jimmy79

    Jimmy79 Banned

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    My experience with engineers is that they are pinpoint focused and absolute dolts outside their specific area of expertise.

    That said, Boeing hires subcontractors to do a lot of things. Its 100% on Boeing to verify their work.
     
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  7. Pipette8

    Pipette8 Well-Known Member

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    Not so sure about the Philippine outsourcing. I worked with a bunch of Filipinos in a medical lab. Excellent quality control is mandatory; but the Filipinos didn't understand the need for it. Saw them screw with results, refuse to do quality control, claim other's work for themselves.
    I think Eastern Europe is a better bet.
     
  8. Pipette8

    Pipette8 Well-Known Member

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    I'm saying that Indian engineers screwed up big time, and this will cost Boeings billions of dollars.
     
  9. MGB ROADSTER

    MGB ROADSTER Banned

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    10-15 years ... India will take over China.
     
  10. Eleuthera

    Eleuthera Well-Known Member Donor

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    Previous iterations of the 737 did not need MCAS because they met stability standards long established by the FAA.

    The MAX did not meet those stability standards, and so Boeing attempted to remedy by way of MCAS, a stability augmentation system.

    If Boeing had followed the law, it would have brought the MAX as another type, and done a complete certification program including flight tests.

    The MCAS was a band-aid approach to poor stability, and it failed. They cannot make a silk purse from a sow's ear.
     
  11. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And why is being Indian and working for $9/hr the cause of the accidents? Are you saying being Indian is being stupid and cheap?
     
  12. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And because they’re Indian they were bound to screw up?
     
  13. Ddyad

    Ddyad Well-Known Member

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    But think of the money Boeing saved! ;-)
     
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  14. Ddyad

    Ddyad Well-Known Member

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    I think he is saying that Boeing got what it payed for. That happens a lot - everywhere.
     
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  15. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    And you think if they paid more, they would have gotten a better product? And where and who has this better software and those software engineers and programmers?
     
  16. Ddyad

    Ddyad Well-Known Member

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    There are better software engineers everywhere, and they will demand more than $9/hour.
     
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  17. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    I doubt anyone would say that. But, the consequence of hiring someone with an 8 hour coding "degree" seems to be more the problem here. When outsourcing coding, the resources that actually do the coding aren't well, very good at it. And if they made some critical mistakes in the code base, that isn't unusual. And HCL aren't exactly the best unit over there in terms of total quality, even not using their most cyclical labor. So, yes, Boeing made the mistake of using HCL to code something pretty important, and it's going to cost them an enormous amount of money to pay off the litigations from the civil suits from those who died because HCL code wasn't up to the task of making the plane safe in the air.
     
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  18. Blaster3

    Blaster3 Well-Known Member

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    tossin in identity politics won't solve anything, but it does prove your values
     
  19. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The poster is implying by using cheap Indian programmers, Boeing’s 737’s were preordained to crash. However, logically, being Indian and being frugal is not a prescription for failure.

    I’m not the one bringing identity politics into Boeing’s problem, the OP is. I’m only questioning as to why.
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2019
  20. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So, it has been determined that bad code was the cause of the accidents? Who made the determination and where is the report?
     
    Last edited: Jul 2, 2019
  21. Ddyad

    Ddyad Well-Known Member

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    The cheap programmers were apparently Indian, but hiring cheap programmers from any country would represent the same gross management error.
     
  22. Starjet

    Starjet Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I reject both premises—nationality and frugality are not determinants of success or failure.
     
  23. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    FAA has already pointed at the flight control software, Boeing has publicly admitted the faults there, so where have you been?
     
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  24. Blaster3

    Blaster3 Well-Known Member

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    no, it's a statement of fact, they hired $9 hr so-called programmers which happen to be in india... the implication is boeing selected the lowest bidder and didn't doublecheck their work nor their expertise evidently
     
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  25. Ddyad

    Ddyad Well-Known Member

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    The fact that you usually get what you pay for has nothing to do with nationality. Boeing = dangerous cheapskates.
     
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