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.
view the rest of the comments →
[–] 19471566? ago
Wipro anon here, can confirm, the whole industry runs on no one owns nothing, just a bunch of crooks shifting their blame when the shtf, I work on a SIEM tool driven intrusion hunting software, fuckers here don't remain updated on industry standard and the way things work, they are least bothered followed by diversity and female hiring, there is a mandate from the corporate kingpin to keep the numbers minimum 40% female, females don't work neither their brain is capable of thinking out of the box scenario that is required for this domain, its crazy, the whole project runs on the good will and a bunch of male employees who are really dedicated like a few of them, in an ideal NatSoc they would have been provided with max profit of the industry not the crooked managers who flew to Seattle to scheme the shit out of you burgers.
[–] 19471567? ago
GM might as well be chinese now anyway they have nothing to do with america.