from Hacker News

Outsourcing Cost Boeing Billions (2019)

by agomez314 on 8/23/24, 11:09 AM with 106 comments

• by Sytten on 8/23/24, 11:56 AM

  Almost all software outsourcing I have seen end up costing more in reputation damage, drop in quality, bug pilling up, incompetent programmers, etc. World would be a better place if MBA managers were not running it.

  Anyway this is why professional engineering were created, to protect the public against those exact bad practices. If we were serious about fixing the issue, we have the solution.

• by YouWhy on 8/23/24, 12:34 PM

  I think that describing the MCAS disaster using predominantly SW Engineering language is misleading.

  The substantial change that might have averted the catastrophe is having qualified engineering oversight integrated into the MCAS project management structure.

  MCAS is a flight control application; its defining discipline is control theory. Thus the hypothetical engineer who could have averted the catastrophe would have had to be a controls, rather than a SW person.

  I have read much about MCAS, but no detailed narrative ever mentioned a SW bug, which implies that MCAS SW has apparently functioned according to given specifications.

  Thus, while $9/hr SW engineers is a choice correlated with an inadequate safety culture, I fail to see the casual link between that and the tragic outcomes; I cannot condone asserting such causation.

• by random_ind_dude on 8/23/24, 12:56 PM

  I remember reading that development of the MCAS system was not done by offshore companies, which was confirmed by Boeing. So saying that $9/hour employees caused the 737 MAX issues is incorrect.

  https://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/article/22027840/b...

  Excerpts from the the above article:

  >Boeing said the company did not rely on engineers from HCL and Cyient for the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, which has been linked to the Lion Air crash last October and the Ethiopian Airlines disaster in March. The Chicago-based planemaker also said it didn’t rely on either firm for another software issue disclosed after the crashes: a cockpit warning light that wasn’t working for most buyers.

  >In a statement, HCL said it “has a strong and long-standing business relationship with The Boeing Company, and we take pride in the work we do for all our customers. However, HCL does not comment on specific work we do for our customers. HCL is not associated with any ongoing issues with 737 Max.”

  >Based on resumes posted on social media, HCL engineers helped develop and test the Max’s flight-display software, while employees from another Indian company, Cyient Ltd., handled software for flight-test equipment.

• by deathtrader666 on 8/23/24, 11:54 AM

  The original article on Bloomberg with the same title - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/boeing-s-...

• by asmor on 8/23/24, 12:07 PM

  I seriously doubt this is the mistake of $9/hr workers. Those workers are unlikely to be familiar with the whole picture and would probably just have requirements delivered to them. This is not a case of badly written code, the code didn't crash. It just didn't fit the requirements, likely because those requirements weren't known, because someone I'd wager working directly at Boeing getting a industry-typical salary didn't deliver them.

• by TrackerFF on 8/23/24, 12:33 PM

  So let's assume the following:

  You outsource your software development to some country with quite low average monthly salary. Say some country in eastern Europe, where average salary is $500 / month.

  Then you only hire from the top CS programs in the country and pay them, say, 3 times the national average - so $1500 / month. Given 150 work hours in a month, that comes out to $10/hour gross pay.

  You get good engineers, pay less, and they earn more than they'd get from pretty much any domestic employer.

  If the average software dev in the US makes, dunno, $70k / year, then that would be the equivalent of getting hired on a $210k / salary.

  Of course, it's not all smooth sailing - but I think the important part here is to keep in mind that pay is relative. What could be a pitiful salary in rich western countries, could be a very good salary other places.

• by aussieguy1234 on 8/23/24, 2:15 PM

  In some countries, they literally hire people off the street for coding who aren't even programmers, to sell them to suckers in rich countries overseas who will buy their services.

  Any decent engineer worth their salt gets a visa to work in the said rich countries where they can earn 10x more. They don't stay in the local lower paying roles as they can't compete on salary.

  You get what you pay for.

• by hintymad on 8/23/24, 8:02 PM

  I forgot which book mentioned that big government contractors like Boeing had to set up their factories and give business to vendors in many, if not all, the states no matter how inefficient or expensive that is because senators wouldn't approve key contracts unless the contractors brought jobs to the senators' states.

  I'm guessing the cost of the outsourcing is also part of this compromise to the senators' demands.

  A trajectory question: our government also hands out billions to NGOs and contractors to "solve" social problems, yet making such problems worse. For instance, multiple articles reported that how so many organizations charged ridiculous amount of money to SF government to help the homeless, yet the city's situation only got worse over the years. Wouldn't this be a worrisome sign of a society. An empire didn't fall because of external enemies but because the empire had so many entangled interests and the society simply declined and then collapsed.

• by dghughes on 8/23/24, 12:32 PM

  I don't see how $9 is relevant. If they are based in India $9USD/hour is 755 Indian rupees. That $9 is a really good wage.

  A tech worker in India supposedly makes 32,000 rupees per month. So that's 200 rupees per hour or $2.38USD.

  It's relative to the region and its economy. I'd love to have my Canadian wage paid in Kuwaiti Dinars one for one.

• by ChumpGPT on 8/23/24, 12:29 PM

  Without mentioning any names....

  The largest company in it's industry that uses many mission critical applications systems every second of the day, is in the process of offshoring all its software development to you know where.

  When a company brings in an Indian CIO, it's only a matter of time.

• by OutOfHere on 8/23/24, 9:17 PM

  The author himself notes paying at least a $100K global salary as of 2019, which implies he does engage in outsourcing. As such, the article is self-contradicting. Maybe the author should go back to writing about Javascript since javscript-scene is in the URL.

  You can get bad engineers anywhere, including in the US. It's up to management to enforce a sane engineering process, although being the parasites that they are, they never will.

• by greenthrow on 8/23/24, 11:50 AM

  The 2024 version of this is "over reliance on Copilot et al. costs various industries billions."

• by chimp_brain on 8/23/24, 12:50 PM

  Feels like someone completely ignores incompetence of those who wrote the requirements

• by gxd on 8/23/24, 2:03 PM

  As they say, "I'm too poor to afford cheap things".

  In the business world, that corresponds to "we can't afford to hire inexpensive, unqualified labor".

• by beeboobaa3 on 8/23/24, 11:53 AM

  These "software engineers" also killed 189 people. I don't think Boeing losing billions is all that important in the grand scheme of things.

• by serverlessmania on 8/23/24, 2:16 PM

  This article is a click bait.

• by j-krieger on 8/23/24, 11:34 AM

  The more often capitalism strives to cost reduction and profit-maximizing at the cost of quality -- and sometimes lives --, the more often I think that companies should rely on non-voting shares far more often, with a promise to not blindly follow profits over all else.

  I currently have very limited options if I want to invest my money into an (engineering) quality-first company.

• by xiaodai on 8/23/24, 12:20 PM

  more racism and hate basically.

• by rhelz on 8/23/24, 12:02 PM

  $9 an hour is shameful. But what's really scary is that my software has bugs in it too.

• by andrewstuart on 8/23/24, 12:02 PM

  I don’t have much sympathy for companies who go this path and get the results.

• by blitzar on 8/23/24, 2:05 PM

  Staff blame non staff, passing blame to someone else that is not them and remaining employed.

  In other news; dog fights cat, more on that bizarre story after the break.

• by jonplackett on 8/23/24, 11:27 AM

  Should have ‘2019’ in title