The McDonnell Douglas-Boeing merger led to the 737 Max crisis
I have a different view of the situation. I believe that the 737 Max disaster was directly caused by the idea that management is a valuable skill on its own, that <i>management</i> is somehow separable from the domain-specific knowledge required in order to make an honest buck.<p>There are plenty of examples of engineers that make terrible managers, to be sure. But there are also plenty of examples of managers with business backgrounds that have absolutely <i>no</i> idea about the consequences of their decisions. An optimal result requires skill in <i>both</i> domains.<p>By this point, you might be thinking, &quot;Hey wait, isn&#x27;t it true that cost-cutting also had a role in the crisis? Wasn&#x27;t there at least one engineer that sounded the alarm in a memo?&quot; And my answer to that is a resounding <i>yes</i>. But the question remains, where the hell did that idea come from? At no point did anyone think, &quot;I&#x27;d love to spike my profits this quarter here and have huge disaster that will tank us in the next quarter.&quot; Therefore the problem isn&#x27;t one of simple pursuit of the profit motive, because it is quite clear that Boeing <i>hasn&#x27;t</i> profited from this situation long-term. And that&#x27;s why I have focused explicitly on this foolish, self-defeating management fashion at the top of my mini essay here.<p>This brings us to the topic of Boeing&#x27;s future. I could be wrong about him, but the fact that they have selected a person who majored in <i>accounting</i> to be their new CEO does not bode well for them. At the very least he has a major gap in his background to overcome, and at best I can only see them just managing to hang on instead of growing.<p>How does this relate to the merger issue? This management fashion I am speaking would have likely infected <i>both</i> McDonnell-Douglas and Boeing had they remained separate. That&#x27;s because companies hire people out of the same pool of people that learn this stuff in their universities! Maybe there is a case to be made that having separate companies would make it <i>slightly</i> harder for them to both fail, but I believe that this isn&#x27;t a very strong argument.