It remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors.
The Max software – plagued by issues that could keep the planes grounded months longer after U.S. regulators this week revealed a new flaw – was developed at a time Boeing was laying off experienced engineers and pressing suppliers to cut costs.
Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospace – notably India.
In offices across from Seattle’s Boeing Field, recent college graduates employed by the Indian software developer HCL Technologies Ltd. occupied several rows of desks, said Mark Rabin, a former Boeing software engineer who worked in a flight-test group that supported the Max.
The coders from HCL were typically designing to specifications set by Boeing. Still, “it was controversial because it was far less efficient than Boeing engineers just writing the code,” Rabin said. Frequently, he recalled, “it took many rounds going back and forth because the code was not done correctly.”
And Apple wants to move phone manufacture there? Good luck.
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[–] 19458120? ago
Some simple facts about highly-skilled workers from the 3rd world. This is not opinion. These are facts.
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The H-1B guest worker visa program was started in 1990 with an annual cap of 65,000 visas.
The L-1 visa program was started in the 1970s and was designed for intracompany transfers only. It has since been abused to bring in foreign nationals for services companies and then place them at their clients - which is illegal.
From 1978 to 1998 - including the 90's boom - the demographic in the IT industry was 98% white American males. The U.S. economy was booming in 1998.
In late 1998, India (and the rest of the world) sat up and took notice of the huge amount of wealth America's tech workers were generating. India decided they wanted to take over what Americans had created and get the $ for themselves. But how? Answer: Public Relations of course! So India's IT lobby, NASSCOM, hired D.C. PR/lobbying firm Hill & Knowlton to plant fake "worker shortage" stories in the U.S. media in 1998. While most Americans were busy enjoying the fruits of their labors, India was plotting how to invade and take over America. This barrage of news alleging a worker shortage story was the vehicle by which India, Inc. convinced America to permit the next step:
In late 1998 and early 2000, the H-1B visa caps were raised from 65,000 a year to 115,000 per year and 195,00 per year, respectively. Then-president Bill Clinton - not George Bush - signed the increases. Tech workers from India didn't begin arriving in the U.S. in large numbers until late 1998. How could they have created the 90's tech boom when they weren't even here? The tech boom was created by Americans. Now that Americans have been driven out by the imported workers, the Silicon Valley and U.S. economies are a disaster.
As a result of the 1998 & 2000 increases, 1.1 million foreign guest workers came into the U.S. from October 1998 to October 2003. According to the U.S. Dept. of Labor, 90% of those H-1B visas went to people from India. These people promptly took over America's tech jobs and drove Americans out of them.
A unknown number more came in during the same time period on the L-1 intracompany transfer visa, which has been heavily abused by Indian outsourcing companies such as Wipro, InfoSys, and Tata. The number of L-1s who came in from 1998-2003 is at least 1 million, maybe 2 million.
There is no yearly cap on L-1 visas.
The H-1B visa cap reverted back to 65,000 per year in Oct. 2003. Despite this, over a million foreign guest workers continue to come into the U.S. every single year - even during periods of record unemployment, such as today.