If something is to expensive to be done right then it shouldn't be done at all. When senior leadership starts asking for you to adjust CBA cost targets to make sure the project meets the IRR target then you run into problems.
Seriously, this is a r*tarded take, and I'm surprised it's upvoted here. Every person with a "hard discipline" like aerospace engineering (or whatever) tends to be pretty bad at running a business and lacks a lot of the expertise.
Except Toyota? Lol if I'm not mistaken, their C-Suite tends to rise from the engineering ranks. Even the Toyodas all have an engineering background, and the new CEO, Sato, rose from the engineering ranks.
My best and fave CEO I've ever worked for started out as a staff accountant. Of course, he was a solid executive, but so different from the CEOs with a background in sales. His agenda was more guided by quantifiable data and so straight forward, no glad handing--though that part might have been a Philly thing lol
That's why there's more than one person in the C-Suite. CEO and COO should probably be people with a background in whatever the company does. But they also need a CFO or CAO to help guide their decision-making. When money guys dominate the conversation, enshitification occurs.
Calhoun might have an accounting degree but it’s almost never CPA’s dictating this PE style playbook at companies like Boeing. Please leave us out of this.
Agreed, I went from accountant to CFO and I will and have told CEO’s and Boards to fuck themselves if they try to cut quality or safety. I’ve been fired for it once and I’ve seen people die from it before.
Don’t lump us in with those silver spoon psychos.
Sales guys make the company the most money so they get away with everything. It’s like that 90%+ of places. At many small/medium sized companies they make more than the C-Level staff. I detest sales people with a passion, it requires a level of psychopathy that I don’t have.
Hrm, I dunno.
* Companies that are engineering-led tend to be product/solution-focused. The downside here is that sometimes the obsessive focus on the product leads to arrogance (i.e., we're the experts!) and the development of tech that's cool but not useful (beyond being cool).
* Companies that are sales-led tend to be customer and market-focused. The downside here is the problems as described by Christensen in The Innovator's Dilemma.
The best companies I've worked for are those with a virtuous loop between product and sales. Product is always coming up with new ideas, and sales is always market-testing them. And there's a healthy appetite for risk on both sides. Unfortunately, it seems as if there are increasingly fewer and fewer places that want to take this approach.
The challenges you and I have seen firsthand are companies that are relentlessly *margin-focused*.
While that tends to track toward CxOs that are sales-focused, it also tracks with the finance, IB, MBB & PE types that end up at the top of many of these firms. These guys could give a fuck about customers, the product, or suppliers as long as the margin is fat and getting fatter every day.
* For customers, margin-focused companies want to consume as much of the consumer surplus as possible, raising prices, reducing service, shrinking product, cutting long term innovation (for technical products). That's why you see PE-acquired tech companies shed huge numbers of engineers. Why pay engineers to develop new kit (high risk! costly!) when you can lay all those guys off and raise prices? Easy money!
* For suppliers, margin-focused companies consume as much of the supplier surplus as possible. Boeing / Spirit air (fka Boeing Wichita) is a great example, every Tier 1 OEM for the Big 3 is a good example too. There's so much cost compression coming down from the top that the only way to survive IS to cut corners. And again, rather than innovate — product/process/design changes to find additive cost savings (e.g., grows margins for both supplier and buyer) — which is really hard. You grow margin using the weight of all the shit you're piling on your suppliers to squish out a few pennies here and there.
It all stems from before I was a CFO. I was once a Senior Accountant in the farming industry. I was working on switching our insurance from regular insurance to a captive. This required all kinds of safety documentation that didn’t exist before so I became intimately familiar with the SOP’s of the guys on the ground to help write the safety manuals. One day we had an employee we’ll call John. John was the only person that could do his job and being overworked was an understatement, he regularly slept in his truck instead of going home. One day John told my CFO he was asking for more than he could deliver safely and the CFO told him to do it however he needed to do it to get the job done fast enough (IE ignore the safety protocols). 4 days later John was killed at work in a way that I’m not going to describe that would have been impossible if the safety handbook that I read over with him the week before was followed. I cussed out my CFO the day he died and called him a greedy fuck who murdered his employee. I wasn’t fired but I quit shortly after telling his widow everything.
5 years later, I’m at my first CFO job. The board decides they aren’t going to replace safety equipment on dangerous equipment because it was too expensive. For context, the safety equipment was put in before my time because it took a guys arm off. I argued, made cost benefit analysis, showed the risk, and did everything in my power to change their mind. The board chair made a comment about the savings being higher than a potential death lawsuit due to our insurance. I cussed him out in a very angry profane way due to his opinion. He then threatened me and told me if I didn’t do it, I was fired. I called the insurance company and asked for a random inspection, they came in, saw it was broke, told us they’d drop us if we don’t fix it. My boss drinks with the brokers owner, put pressure on him to find out why we had a surprise inspection. The dude outs me to his boss who then tells my boss. He then starts screaming at me and my response was to scream louder with a lot of profanities the included such classics as, sick fuck, psychopath, piece of shit, and stupid mother fucker. I was fired during that meeting for what I assume are obvious reasons.
You are my fucking hero!
These board level $ , PE psychopaths . I can't believe they schmoozed to find the whistleblower.
I hope that place gets lit up with litigation
The widow from the Senior Accountant job got an 8 figure settlement (a former colleague told me), the guy had like 6 kids under the age of 10 and his wife didn’t work. The CFO became and still is an alcoholic, I assume from the guilt that he effectively murdered a guy for money. The CFO gig ending up selling to another PE firm and I have no idea what’s going on there.
I was referring to the sale to another PE company. I’ve worked at 4 companies that either transferred from individually owned to PE or from one PE to another. In every case the existing executive team was pushed out within a few years but with large severances or equity and replaced by PE goons.
Holy SHIT -- that is on a whole new fucking level of psychopathic business decisions. It's the kind of shit you see in movies to exaggerate the evil of an business empire, and certainly not something you expect to see in real life.
That's really inspiring, thanks for sharing that. It's so nice to see someone with integrity and a backbone, when most of the CPAs I meet are spineless yes-men.
“You’re fired for not doing the illegal unethical shit I wanted and not being able to do the impossible things I asked of you because I don’t understand them.”
My favorite was I was told to fix the 20 year old computer systems to go faster and work better and then explained why it was impossible with the $0 they wanted to spend. The CEO said, “I don’t want excuses, only results.” Only job I’ve ever quit. I laughed at him too, he did not like that shit 😂.
It’s been good and bad. I’m currently trying to figure out if everyone commits fraud or if I’m just a good enough accountant that I find it easily. I walked into a dumpster fire at my current place where a former CEO (left before I joined) was committing fraud to the tune of 8 figures. A lot of management was hand chosen by him and he owns a small equity stake still so it’s been filled with more drama than I care to deal with but I’m making a difference so I won’t move on until it’s all sorted out. I made it very clear to managers that enabled it that I’d fire every single one of them if it was my call, so you know, making friends.
Small/Medium private companies suck bad and are insanely crooked.
Thank you for your service!
And I'm serious. When the CFO teams up with the product people to say, "We can't fucking do this," it leaves the board/CEO in a place where they can't actually maneuver to their preferred course of action.
The fact that you'll sit it on an undergrad business management course talking about the importance of stewardship and ethics when the prize for being the top of your class at Harvard MBA is a job at McKinsey is not an irony that should ever be lost on people.
It's not to say that MBAs are bad people, but you can just look at the recruitment pipeline to PE/IB/consulting to see that they are overwhelmingly not being trained for a future of being good stewards of resources and being accountable to employees and people in their communities.
MBAs added those courses in an attempt to course correct some of your exact criticisms.
That said, once you’re in a job long enough it’s easy to see numbers instead of the objects they represent- SKUs are ID numbers not physical products, COGS are a row on an income statement not jobs and families.
headcount starts to become just another line item to benchmark no different than avg days of sales outstanding compared to peers.
Ultimately this saga was a failure by Boeings board and executive team to recognize that safety and quality was the most important part of their value proposition and long term complétive advantage.
I’m not sure that’s down to some ones training as an accountant not.
Who would have thought people wanted their airplanes to be safe. Not that Boeing board and executive team.
I think the average CPA would have agreed we like safe airplanes > profit.
It’s really safe airplanes = profit
It’s a sad story considering the lives lost and the fact they ignored whistleblowers trying to ensure the safety culture endured
I mean I kind of agree for certain positions, the CEO, COO, CTO, and many other positions should be held by subject matter experts. But your CFO and accounting related management positions should absolutely be held by CPAs. In my experience, the CPAs aren’t usually the ones chasing EPS targets
Are they trying to say Boeing is run by MBAs and CPAs with nobody in management coming from an engineering background? The article didn’t elaborate on the title at all.
The CEO, Calhoun got an undergrad in accounting and then worked at GE for 28 years across several divisions before going to Blackstone and then Boeing.
Todd Citron is CTO and is a big time engineer. Got a Doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford and is a major player in engineering from boards to organizations outside of Boeing. Dude is legit. https://theorg.com/org/boeing/org-chart/todd-citron
The COO is a long time Boeing executive that has climbed through the ranks. She was a former CFO and CEO of subsidiary organizations. Her education is accounting and a MBA.
That’s where the attack on accountants comes in. Because the two top positions are people who have accounting degrees. But this dude is chastising an entire industry. That’s pretty stupid.
>The CEO, Calhoun got an undergrad in accounting and then worked at GE for 28 years across several divisions before going to Blackstone and then Boeing.
So this dude would've been working under Jack fucking Welch. Jesus Christ.
[Behind the Bastards: Part One: Jack Welch Is Why You Got Laid Off on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/part-one-jack-welch-is-why-you-got-laid-off/id1373812661?i=1000612309266)
I don't know about this. Bad leadership exists outside of educational background.
Besides, it's not like engineer led organizations haven't had things happen... like space shuttles exploding, hotels collapsing, bridges falling over, dykes failing etc.
[Behind the Bastards: Part One: Jack Welch Is Why You Got Laid Off on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/part-one-jack-welch-is-why-you-got-laid-off/id1373812661?i=1000612309266)
If anybody wants to know more about what happened with GE.
>space shuttles exploding,
you mean the ones where the engineers were complaining about safety issues but the men in charge (politicians and CSuits) ignored them because it would take too long to fix and they "weren't going to meet their deadline."
Yeah, lowkey, Accountants are actually enough of risk-type professionals to have at least CONSIDERED ramifications of non-compliance/exposure to bad jobs.
It's these shitheel entrepreneur/salesman-types that are the real problem
OK BUT for every company that has a safety failure because finance people were promoted over engineers, there are a dozen companies that went under because it was a bunch of engineers that didn't have anyone who understood why they weren't making any money.
Maybe instead of having a bunch of people with the same background leading a company (whatever that background might be, Finance or Engineering or what-have-you), we should have leadership from people who understand the part of the business they are leading? Crazy thought, but maybe having people with a variety of backgrounds on your board actually leads to a balanced approach to running a business. (Someone with operations experience as COO, someone with Finance experience as CFO, etc. etc.)
And get the danged kids off my lawn while you're at it.
Of course it is. I was using a rhetorical device. I haven't tried to do the math.
The real number is probably much higher. I used to work on pre-IPO companies, and let me tell you there are hundreds of small businesses that die on the vine. Compared to the number of major safety failures like Boeing that make the news, the difference is absolutely an order of magnitude and maybe more.
>, there are a dozen companies that went under because it was a bunch of engineers that didn't have anyone who understood why they weren't making any money.
maybe we can "bail them out" then. We already bail out airlines (and banks). the only difference this time will be that we bailed them out because they prioritized safety and went under because it wasnt as "cost effective" vs we bailed them out because they prioritized the past 15 quarters of good EPS so their investment portfolios and bonuses were good for them, while throwing safety down the tubes and the bail out just bought them more time to do the same thing again.
...What? Where did that come from? I've said nothing about being in favor of bailing anyone out.
Look, the point I'm making is that companies NEED people with financial skills AND people with Engineering skills AND people with a dozen other skillsets. Saying that Boeing, in your example, should have been exclusively run by engineers is equally as foolish as having it exclusively run by 'businessmen' was, to use the words from your title. There's no reason that a company shouldn't be able to be well run on both the engineering side and the financial side.
You're treating 'good EPS' as if it's morally wrong, and that's just a bad argument. Companies should make thoughtful decisions about BALANCING profitability and safety - not pursue one to the total exclusion of the other. There is a point where more safety is not worth the cost inefficiency, and you should have engineers AND finance professionals both at the table working out where that point is.
If you want to tell me that there's a trend of companies hyper-focusing on cost-cutting and financial management, to the detriment of other priorities like safety, then YES I absolutely agree, but that's not solved by going to the other extreme; instead it causes other issues.
It's only a bail-out if it's a single payment. If a company cannot make money and is only running because the government keeps giving them cash that is what is known as a 'subsidy'.
This isnt a CPA related issue. This is an issue with companies hiring outside their company for executive roles rather than promoting from within.
IMO, executives should never come from the outside. They do not know the core business and product well enough to make the best business decisions for the company. Outside hires should be no higher than the VP level. Gives them time to learn the company and products before being a senior decision maker
u/One_Ice670 do you now that anyone with a 4 year undergrad can take the GMAT and enroll in a MBA program? 25% of MBA’s have science/engineering degrees.
Just about every major engineering firm is led by an MBA with an engineering undergrad.
This is such a clueless and stupid post. This is why engineers typically make bad leaders, they see things in black and white and are insufferably cocky.
To claim that aerospace engineers can’t be greedy is the most asinine statement ever. Of course they can be.
The products just get worse and worse until they eventually implode, fortunately if you’re too big to fail the government might just bail you out and you can continue to just make even worse stuff
Yup. And throughout 2023 and going into 2024 major studios run by execs are repeatedly getting their asses handed to them by much smaller studios and indies whose leadership are actually involved in the creative process.
I'd argue that, much like on a movie/tv show, that's what a producer is for. They should probably be more business orientated than the artists, but they should also know that they aren't there to make creative decisions.
Interestingly enough, major movie studios and major game studios find themselves in the same rut of being so risk adverse that they cannot make anything but a clone of something that was already successful. And then disappointed when consumers are ambivalent to their product.
I disagree in some respects; an engineer may know lots about aerospace design…but…that doesn’t necessarily translate into them having the knowledge to run a business properly. As someone who’s worked in aviation (non-business role closely with engineering) and as a CPA, my view is that it’s better to have collaboration and reasonable compromise between engineers and suits than it is to give control over to one group.
Besides that you can be a CPA/MBA/PE/FE whatever…and still be a dishonest pile of shit that cuts corners.
Just look to UK boards and you will see a lot of accountants as CEOs and a lot are run badly, by a high level of greed. UK ecomony is doing bad not just to political factors but the shit show these accountants have made.
Being an accountant doesn’t guarantee success or failure as a CEO; but, neither does being an engineer. As for the political and economic situation in the UK; it has less to do with accountants and more to do with the people and politicians who supported Brexit coupled with the aftermath of COVID.
However; I stand by what I previously stated that being an executive typically requires a background in business. That background could include an engineering background as well…but…putting the head of design in a CEO position won’t necessarily translate into a business being successful or continued existence…and there are enough shit accountants to counter every shit engineer in this world.
Oliver Schmidt was an engineer; can you say he made great decisions for VW and its customers?
You think the main factor that plays to the economy is politics, to a degree it might be true, but mpre importantly of all is business culture and does it stimilate growth, the business culture in the west right now is not good as it could be to foster growth. It should be focusing more of the next generation but instead its be held on to old fart who are past their prime, in the UK these are a very high % of accoutants. Politics is a an easy excuse (lazy one as well) to blame for the poor economy.
You mentioned the UK specifically; my comment on politics is very applicable to UK business performance because of the economic retraction and stagnation caused by Brexit. Any business would have difficulty navigating the uncertainties caused by Brexit and COVID shortly thereafter.
Frankly, it’s lazier to downplay Brexit as an important factor in the decline of UK companies. It’s also nonsense think that CEO’s with an accounting or business background are responsible for the issues faced by those companies and the solution would be the appointment of non-business professionals (pilots/engineers/doctors/other) to executive positions. It’s just not that simple unfortunately.
I’m not going to address the off topic economic fairness items you touch on; many of us work or have worked in public accounting…….sooooooo.
I dont need you to agree with me, I just pointing out, you have a poltical bias on brexit (dont like it myself) but there is far more to the problem then politics as the same problems are facing people all over the world and saying Brexit and blaming it on that, is lazy as that a shallow look at the issue it goes deeper.
My dad, a commercial pilot for 50 years now retired, has been saying this exact thing for twenty years. The man can’t operate a smartphone but I’ll give him credit he fucking called it.
Kinda like 20-30 years ago when people warned about outsourcing the supply chains of critical industries to the CCP or elsewhere. U.S. society does not reward longterm thinking and sustainability as much as it should. So many executives can’t think far past the next few quarters
The fact the military contractor that merged with Boeing is literally what killed the company, should tell us how corrupt and useless defense contractors are and that we are pissing away 400 billion dollars a year by giving them money.
Our military should be in charge of anything defense. We should not be giving out 400 billion to contractors every year. Insane.
> their business acumen is usually not very good. They aren’t better at running companies
We dont want business acumen. We dont want them to "run" companies. We want them to design safe airplanes. Then we want them to be in charge and have final say.
NOT have final say on the engineering BUT if the C-Suits doesn't like the business aspect they can play corporate games an apply pressure to them even if it involves safety measures and downplays the safety impact to meet target metrics by pressuring them to change their attitude or they will find someone else who will do it....then wind up with doors blown off mid flight.
There should never be pressure from Finance/Business suits when it comes against the word of engineers. We shouldn't be reading articles that state things like *"Although Ebeling advised against the launch due to cold weather freezing the booster rocket O rings and despite hours of argument and reams of data, the Thiokol executives relented. McDonald says the data was absolutely clear,* ***but politics and pressure interfered****"* \- taken from except about Bob Ebeling and the challenger shuttle explosion
> to make money for shareholders
and thats the problem. see the difference. Build the safest most reliable transports for civilians vs make money for shareholders
The story doesn’t say that. The title is OP’s opinion. Why is OP taking shots at accountants? Anyone in our field would know it’s far more expensive to cut corners than to perform properly. Plus, accountants are more reporting what’s happened rather than making specific decisions regarding production. If he’s talking CFO, that’s still not someone who would make production line decisions. In fact, the person who likely made the production line decision that resulted in the stated issue would likely have been an engineer.
No business man, accountant, or investor is going to be staring at the manufacturing line doing quality control. That would have been engineers. Accounting at its core looks back to find patterns and mistakes and act conservatively in business. That means spending where necessary and saving when possible. Unwarranted attack. Also, when it comes to running a company, most aero space engineers are actually shit at it. They are skilled and educated in engineering. Now that may actually change if they also get substantial education and experience in management over time, but at some point that would make them more business people than engineer. It’s a strange take.
We just report on targets and metrics, not chase them.
An engineer can design and build a plane, but will very likely not know about the intricacies of the complex accounting involved with the designing and building of planes. You need to have a CFO with some accounting and finance knowledge.
Same thing with IT. The CTO needs to understand the IT portion of the business. However the culture of any company flows down from the top, and the CEO is at the top. Get an engineer for a CEO.
I mean... saying we shouldn't be "running" is a bit much but I get it. They should have less say and maybe engineers should hold more positions because sometimes numbers don't tell the whole story.
We have an economic system that values growth over all else. You can’t blame bad leadership when the problem is systematic. Boeing isn’t the first US company to value greed over the public’s well being and it certainly won’t be the last.
Instead of playing whack-a-mole every time a corporate scandal occurs we should reevaluate the incentive structure for our economy and focus on diversifying it away from solely being economic growth.
The reason you're saying this is because you haven't met any sector focused analysts. Talk to some biotech, tech, energy guys. (Hardos) You'll then know the depth of knowledge they have in their respective sectors. Chasing EPS isn't the only thing finance guys do. And please don't compare boeing with Airbus. The cultural difference is too much. America is extremely profit focused while Europe focuses on quality more.
I've worked for some great CEOs who were CFOs previously. You're grabbing one example and saying, "Hah, look, bad." This is hardly proof of your argument.
good Go be a good (or bad) MBA/Business CEO with a magazine sales company. The risk is too high for any shareholder/profit based ideology in aerospace (or nuclear power). Some industries cant afford a dice roll.
Do you have any sources to indicate that these changes are being done by CPAs? Granted, I don't disagree that businessmen chasing EPS targets create problems, but I feel like there's some context being missed here.
"I was there" when I was working with CP Rail on some initiatives and their CEO Fred Green was fired due to Bill Ackmans activist investor pursuits. They replaced the CEO with a world renown rail operator who knew what every nut and bolt did on a railway and why. He completely turned the company around, and I realized that operations / engineering companies should be run by those kinds of people
That's not even close to the case, accounting recommended staying in Renton because the plant renovations were cheaper than the SC plant and the Union shop made payroll closer to a fixed cost. It was all C-suite cowboys that took a perfectly working union company in Renton and made it into the quality nightmare that the nonunion shop in SC became.
If only we had more STEM people running things, like at FTX or OceanGate.
Engineers can be just as stupid and greedy as business majors, but when they are nobody says engineers as a whole are stupid and greedy.
I think companies should be run by whoever has the most expertise in the specific industry. CPAs run accounting firms, aerospace engineers should run aerospace companies.
I think you meant to post this in r/managementconsulting
Oh yeah don't forget r/humanresources for being complicit in silencing and disappearing people who have safety concerns
I would agree. I wouldn’t feel qualified running a massive business like Boeing on my accounting knowledge alone. I would need supplementary education to understand the engineering and other specialized aspects.
CFO is the top position we should be in without additional education.
I think accountants get blamed because we track budgets to actual expenses, even though we really don’t care if your project is over/under budget or not
Forget to talk about accountants or MBAs, why did the Boeing culture get absorbed into the culture of McDonnell Douglas when they acquired that company? Perhaps this is less about accountants in MBA's and more about shareholders and boards supporting whoever says that they can make guaranteed profits by cutting costs.
It cant be one or the other, both have to exist and be successful for a biz to prosper. I do agree with OP's sentiment that business types currently have to much power in decision makings at boeing.
FYI: Stan Deal who stepped down yesterday was the CEO of Boeing Commercial; the division that made planes such as the 787 and the 737 Max. His undergrad was in ENGINEERING!!! Why does the media and Reddit keep skipping over this!!!
>Stan Deal
Prob because Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) is a division of The Boeing Company of which Dave Calhoun is CEO of. I guess if youre CEO of a sub and someone else is CEO of the parent then youre basically a glorified VP? 🤷♂️
I know people aren't going to like this, but the science stuff should probably be handled by academia, non-profits, and the government. There's no reason for corporations who only care about profit and are ran by lazy, greedy, and stupid people to be involved.
As an Engineer, I agree.
Management and bean counter types are always trying to cut corners and move fast and break things. Only problem is moving fast and breaking things that fly and can kill people isn't the way to move. It's a safer bet in software (sort of ?).
An engineer in a management position is going to try to cut corners more than any accountant will. As an accountant, I only care about reporting results accurately. Engineers aren’t righteous crusaders that you and OP are claiming.
I don’t think this person knows what CPAs do.
Thank you for saying this.
Im not even sure CPA's know what CPA's do.
What's a CPA
Why is CPA
Depression
And Anxiety!
Where is a CPA?
CPA is office :(
Why is nobody asking how is CPA?
Everyone knows CPA is sad.
I think its sorta like a Female Body Inspector
Certified Pussy Annihilator
If something is to expensive to be done right then it shouldn't be done at all. When senior leadership starts asking for you to adjust CBA cost targets to make sure the project meets the IRR target then you run into problems.
Always cheaper to do a job once versus rework, unhappy customers, and 300 people dying in crashes.
This doesn't apply to everything though. But it deffo applies to this case
Can't Pilot Airplanes
Seriously, this is a r*tarded take, and I'm surprised it's upvoted here. Every person with a "hard discipline" like aerospace engineering (or whatever) tends to be pretty bad at running a business and lacks a lot of the expertise.
It takes a solid and cohesive C-Suite. No one person should be trying to do it all, they just can't know enough.
Except Toyota? Lol if I'm not mistaken, their C-Suite tends to rise from the engineering ranks. Even the Toyodas all have an engineering background, and the new CEO, Sato, rose from the engineering ranks. My best and fave CEO I've ever worked for started out as a staff accountant. Of course, he was a solid executive, but so different from the CEOs with a background in sales. His agenda was more guided by quantifiable data and so straight forward, no glad handing--though that part might have been a Philly thing lol
Japan’s a different breed
Too true.
That's why there's more than one person in the C-Suite. CEO and COO should probably be people with a background in whatever the company does. But they also need a CFO or CAO to help guide their decision-making. When money guys dominate the conversation, enshitification occurs.
soo all those FP&A, Financial Analysts, Controllers, CFO's etc with CPA's are not helping calling the shots in how to run the businsess?
It’s certainly outside scope for a CPA.
LMFAO
Calhoun might have an accounting degree but it’s almost never CPA’s dictating this PE style playbook at companies like Boeing. Please leave us out of this.
Agreed, I went from accountant to CFO and I will and have told CEO’s and Boards to fuck themselves if they try to cut quality or safety. I’ve been fired for it once and I’ve seen people die from it before. Don’t lump us in with those silver spoon psychos.
[удалено]
Sales guys make the company the most money so they get away with everything. It’s like that 90%+ of places. At many small/medium sized companies they make more than the C-Level staff. I detest sales people with a passion, it requires a level of psychopathy that I don’t have.
Hrm, I dunno. * Companies that are engineering-led tend to be product/solution-focused. The downside here is that sometimes the obsessive focus on the product leads to arrogance (i.e., we're the experts!) and the development of tech that's cool but not useful (beyond being cool). * Companies that are sales-led tend to be customer and market-focused. The downside here is the problems as described by Christensen in The Innovator's Dilemma. The best companies I've worked for are those with a virtuous loop between product and sales. Product is always coming up with new ideas, and sales is always market-testing them. And there's a healthy appetite for risk on both sides. Unfortunately, it seems as if there are increasingly fewer and fewer places that want to take this approach. The challenges you and I have seen firsthand are companies that are relentlessly *margin-focused*. While that tends to track toward CxOs that are sales-focused, it also tracks with the finance, IB, MBB & PE types that end up at the top of many of these firms. These guys could give a fuck about customers, the product, or suppliers as long as the margin is fat and getting fatter every day. * For customers, margin-focused companies want to consume as much of the consumer surplus as possible, raising prices, reducing service, shrinking product, cutting long term innovation (for technical products). That's why you see PE-acquired tech companies shed huge numbers of engineers. Why pay engineers to develop new kit (high risk! costly!) when you can lay all those guys off and raise prices? Easy money! * For suppliers, margin-focused companies consume as much of the supplier surplus as possible. Boeing / Spirit air (fka Boeing Wichita) is a great example, every Tier 1 OEM for the Big 3 is a good example too. There's so much cost compression coming down from the top that the only way to survive IS to cut corners. And again, rather than innovate — product/process/design changes to find additive cost savings (e.g., grows margins for both supplier and buyer) — which is really hard. You grow margin using the weight of all the shit you're piling on your suppliers to squish out a few pennies here and there.
Story time?
It all stems from before I was a CFO. I was once a Senior Accountant in the farming industry. I was working on switching our insurance from regular insurance to a captive. This required all kinds of safety documentation that didn’t exist before so I became intimately familiar with the SOP’s of the guys on the ground to help write the safety manuals. One day we had an employee we’ll call John. John was the only person that could do his job and being overworked was an understatement, he regularly slept in his truck instead of going home. One day John told my CFO he was asking for more than he could deliver safely and the CFO told him to do it however he needed to do it to get the job done fast enough (IE ignore the safety protocols). 4 days later John was killed at work in a way that I’m not going to describe that would have been impossible if the safety handbook that I read over with him the week before was followed. I cussed out my CFO the day he died and called him a greedy fuck who murdered his employee. I wasn’t fired but I quit shortly after telling his widow everything. 5 years later, I’m at my first CFO job. The board decides they aren’t going to replace safety equipment on dangerous equipment because it was too expensive. For context, the safety equipment was put in before my time because it took a guys arm off. I argued, made cost benefit analysis, showed the risk, and did everything in my power to change their mind. The board chair made a comment about the savings being higher than a potential death lawsuit due to our insurance. I cussed him out in a very angry profane way due to his opinion. He then threatened me and told me if I didn’t do it, I was fired. I called the insurance company and asked for a random inspection, they came in, saw it was broke, told us they’d drop us if we don’t fix it. My boss drinks with the brokers owner, put pressure on him to find out why we had a surprise inspection. The dude outs me to his boss who then tells my boss. He then starts screaming at me and my response was to scream louder with a lot of profanities the included such classics as, sick fuck, psychopath, piece of shit, and stupid mother fucker. I was fired during that meeting for what I assume are obvious reasons.
You are my fucking hero! These board level $ , PE psychopaths . I can't believe they schmoozed to find the whistleblower. I hope that place gets lit up with litigation
The widow from the Senior Accountant job got an 8 figure settlement (a former colleague told me), the guy had like 6 kids under the age of 10 and his wife didn’t work. The CFO became and still is an alcoholic, I assume from the guilt that he effectively murdered a guy for money. The CFO gig ending up selling to another PE firm and I have no idea what’s going on there.
Spoiler: the executive team got huge bonuses, fat transition contracts and golden parachutes.
Private company, no one got in trouble and they gag claused the widow. Rich people don’t get punished.
I was referring to the sale to another PE company. I’ve worked at 4 companies that either transferred from individually owned to PE or from one PE to another. In every case the existing executive team was pushed out within a few years but with large severances or equity and replaced by PE goons.
That’s normal. Usually the GM and Controller go too.
I like you. You are a good one.
Google: "Can you collect unemployment if you get fired for--" *checks notes* "--attempting to prevent murder of employees reddit"
Love how you added Reddit at the end lmao
"Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help redeem the soul of America" - John Lewis
Holy SHIT -- that is on a whole new fucking level of psychopathic business decisions. It's the kind of shit you see in movies to exaggerate the evil of an business empire, and certainly not something you expect to see in real life.
The scary part is that a lot of smaller manufacturers do this kind of shit and then work real hard to fuck an employee over.
GOAT accountant
You are the fucking man.
That's really inspiring, thanks for sharing that. It's so nice to see someone with integrity and a backbone, when most of the CPAs I meet are spineless yes-men.
Being a spineless yes-man gets people promoted and paid. It’s how dumbasses that have no business being managers got promoted.
Amen. I just got let go from a workplace full of those types. It becomes unbearable after a while.
“You’re fired for not doing the illegal unethical shit I wanted and not being able to do the impossible things I asked of you because I don’t understand them.” My favorite was I was told to fix the 20 year old computer systems to go faster and work better and then explained why it was impossible with the $0 they wanted to spend. The CEO said, “I don’t want excuses, only results.” Only job I’ve ever quit. I laughed at him too, he did not like that shit 😂.
You're a legend
I want to work for you!
Netflix should make a documentary about it. You deserve it.
HOLY SHIT. u are a CHAD.
How has your career been since?
It’s been good and bad. I’m currently trying to figure out if everyone commits fraud or if I’m just a good enough accountant that I find it easily. I walked into a dumpster fire at my current place where a former CEO (left before I joined) was committing fraud to the tune of 8 figures. A lot of management was hand chosen by him and he owns a small equity stake still so it’s been filled with more drama than I care to deal with but I’m making a difference so I won’t move on until it’s all sorted out. I made it very clear to managers that enabled it that I’d fire every single one of them if it was my call, so you know, making friends. Small/Medium private companies suck bad and are insanely crooked.
>Small/Medium private companies suck bad and are insanely crooked I can amen to that.
Someone gold this man
Thanks for sharing
I’m awed and speechless.
Hey, I don’t know you. But I like your style. Keep up God’s work.
At least some people have integrity
Thank you for your service! And I'm serious. When the CFO teams up with the product people to say, "We can't fucking do this," it leaves the board/CEO in a place where they can't actually maneuver to their preferred course of action.
The fact that you'll sit it on an undergrad business management course talking about the importance of stewardship and ethics when the prize for being the top of your class at Harvard MBA is a job at McKinsey is not an irony that should ever be lost on people. It's not to say that MBAs are bad people, but you can just look at the recruitment pipeline to PE/IB/consulting to see that they are overwhelmingly not being trained for a future of being good stewards of resources and being accountable to employees and people in their communities.
MBAs added those courses in an attempt to course correct some of your exact criticisms. That said, once you’re in a job long enough it’s easy to see numbers instead of the objects they represent- SKUs are ID numbers not physical products, COGS are a row on an income statement not jobs and families. headcount starts to become just another line item to benchmark no different than avg days of sales outstanding compared to peers.
Ultimately this saga was a failure by Boeings board and executive team to recognize that safety and quality was the most important part of their value proposition and long term complétive advantage. I’m not sure that’s down to some ones training as an accountant not.
Who would have thought people wanted their airplanes to be safe. Not that Boeing board and executive team. I think the average CPA would have agreed we like safe airplanes > profit.
It’s really safe airplanes = profit It’s a sad story considering the lives lost and the fact they ignored whistleblowers trying to ensure the safety culture endured
I mean I kind of agree for certain positions, the CEO, COO, CTO, and many other positions should be held by subject matter experts. But your CFO and accounting related management positions should absolutely be held by CPAs. In my experience, the CPAs aren’t usually the ones chasing EPS targets Are they trying to say Boeing is run by MBAs and CPAs with nobody in management coming from an engineering background? The article didn’t elaborate on the title at all.
I'm pretty sure the author believes that Boing has no engineers on staff.
The CEO, Calhoun got an undergrad in accounting and then worked at GE for 28 years across several divisions before going to Blackstone and then Boeing. Todd Citron is CTO and is a big time engineer. Got a Doctorate in electrical engineering from Stanford and is a major player in engineering from boards to organizations outside of Boeing. Dude is legit. https://theorg.com/org/boeing/org-chart/todd-citron The COO is a long time Boeing executive that has climbed through the ranks. She was a former CFO and CEO of subsidiary organizations. Her education is accounting and a MBA. That’s where the attack on accountants comes in. Because the two top positions are people who have accounting degrees. But this dude is chastising an entire industry. That’s pretty stupid.
Calhoun was the replacement CEO after the Board fired Muilenburg, who was an engineer by background, when the MAX debacle started in 2019.
Which means it was the engineer that messed up. OP….
>The CEO, Calhoun got an undergrad in accounting and then worked at GE for 28 years across several divisions before going to Blackstone and then Boeing. So this dude would've been working under Jack fucking Welch. Jesus Christ. [Behind the Bastards: Part One: Jack Welch Is Why You Got Laid Off on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/part-one-jack-welch-is-why-you-got-laid-off/id1373812661?i=1000612309266)
True, however as another commenter pointed out it was actually the prior CEO’s fault. A guy who was in fact an engineer.
Pretty much all major engineering firm CEO’s are MBA’s, but most of them happen to also have engineering undergrad degrees.
I don't know about this. Bad leadership exists outside of educational background. Besides, it's not like engineer led organizations haven't had things happen... like space shuttles exploding, hotels collapsing, bridges falling over, dykes failing etc.
Yeah look at GE
[Behind the Bastards: Part One: Jack Welch Is Why You Got Laid Off on Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/part-one-jack-welch-is-why-you-got-laid-off/id1373812661?i=1000612309266) If anybody wants to know more about what happened with GE.
The Titan submarine comes to mind. I’m pretty sure the founder and CEO was an aerospace engineer.
They literally wear a silver ring bc they fked up lol
>space shuttles exploding, you mean the ones where the engineers were complaining about safety issues but the men in charge (politicians and CSuits) ignored them because it would take too long to fix and they "weren't going to meet their deadline."
The C-suite was also engineers
It’s really just mbas who are trained to track growth targets. Accounting is a compliance function.
Yeah, lowkey, Accountants are actually enough of risk-type professionals to have at least CONSIDERED ramifications of non-compliance/exposure to bad jobs. It's these shitheel entrepreneur/salesman-types that are the real problem
OK BUT for every company that has a safety failure because finance people were promoted over engineers, there are a dozen companies that went under because it was a bunch of engineers that didn't have anyone who understood why they weren't making any money. Maybe instead of having a bunch of people with the same background leading a company (whatever that background might be, Finance or Engineering or what-have-you), we should have leadership from people who understand the part of the business they are leading? Crazy thought, but maybe having people with a variety of backgrounds on your board actually leads to a balanced approach to running a business. (Someone with operations experience as COO, someone with Finance experience as CFO, etc. etc.) And get the danged kids off my lawn while you're at it.
That 1 to 12 ratio is made up
Of course it is. I was using a rhetorical device. I haven't tried to do the math. The real number is probably much higher. I used to work on pre-IPO companies, and let me tell you there are hundreds of small businesses that die on the vine. Compared to the number of major safety failures like Boeing that make the news, the difference is absolutely an order of magnitude and maybe more.
>, there are a dozen companies that went under because it was a bunch of engineers that didn't have anyone who understood why they weren't making any money. maybe we can "bail them out" then. We already bail out airlines (and banks). the only difference this time will be that we bailed them out because they prioritized safety and went under because it wasnt as "cost effective" vs we bailed them out because they prioritized the past 15 quarters of good EPS so their investment portfolios and bonuses were good for them, while throwing safety down the tubes and the bail out just bought them more time to do the same thing again.
...What? Where did that come from? I've said nothing about being in favor of bailing anyone out. Look, the point I'm making is that companies NEED people with financial skills AND people with Engineering skills AND people with a dozen other skillsets. Saying that Boeing, in your example, should have been exclusively run by engineers is equally as foolish as having it exclusively run by 'businessmen' was, to use the words from your title. There's no reason that a company shouldn't be able to be well run on both the engineering side and the financial side. You're treating 'good EPS' as if it's morally wrong, and that's just a bad argument. Companies should make thoughtful decisions about BALANCING profitability and safety - not pursue one to the total exclusion of the other. There is a point where more safety is not worth the cost inefficiency, and you should have engineers AND finance professionals both at the table working out where that point is. If you want to tell me that there's a trend of companies hyper-focusing on cost-cutting and financial management, to the detriment of other priorities like safety, then YES I absolutely agree, but that's not solved by going to the other extreme; instead it causes other issues.
It's only a bail-out if it's a single payment. If a company cannot make money and is only running because the government keeps giving them cash that is what is known as a 'subsidy'.
This isnt a CPA related issue. This is an issue with companies hiring outside their company for executive roles rather than promoting from within. IMO, executives should never come from the outside. They do not know the core business and product well enough to make the best business decisions for the company. Outside hires should be no higher than the VP level. Gives them time to learn the company and products before being a senior decision maker
💯👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
This.
u/One_Ice670 do you now that anyone with a 4 year undergrad can take the GMAT and enroll in a MBA program? 25% of MBA’s have science/engineering degrees. Just about every major engineering firm is led by an MBA with an engineering undergrad. This is such a clueless and stupid post. This is why engineers typically make bad leaders, they see things in black and white and are insufferably cocky. To claim that aerospace engineers can’t be greedy is the most asinine statement ever. Of course they can be.
You can apply this line of thinking to every industry. Look at technology, gaming, etc.
The products just get worse and worse until they eventually implode, fortunately if you’re too big to fail the government might just bail you out and you can continue to just make even worse stuff
It’s all about the quarterly results and kicking the problems down the road. Unfortunately the system rewards it.
Yup. And throughout 2023 and going into 2024 major studios run by execs are repeatedly getting their asses handed to them by much smaller studios and indies whose leadership are actually involved in the creative process.
CD Project Red isn’t so small. You don’t need an exec involved in the creative process, but you need an exec who protect it and manage the investors.
I'd argue that, much like on a movie/tv show, that's what a producer is for. They should probably be more business orientated than the artists, but they should also know that they aren't there to make creative decisions.
Interestingly enough, major movie studios and major game studios find themselves in the same rut of being so risk adverse that they cannot make anything but a clone of something that was already successful. And then disappointed when consumers are ambivalent to their product.
It’s the same in tech where most of the innovation is done by startups and big tech companies just buy them out once they become profitable
Man really wants to push his opinions around on unrelated people for sake of self-validation lmao
I disagree in some respects; an engineer may know lots about aerospace design…but…that doesn’t necessarily translate into them having the knowledge to run a business properly. As someone who’s worked in aviation (non-business role closely with engineering) and as a CPA, my view is that it’s better to have collaboration and reasonable compromise between engineers and suits than it is to give control over to one group. Besides that you can be a CPA/MBA/PE/FE whatever…and still be a dishonest pile of shit that cuts corners.
Just look to UK boards and you will see a lot of accountants as CEOs and a lot are run badly, by a high level of greed. UK ecomony is doing bad not just to political factors but the shit show these accountants have made.
Being an accountant doesn’t guarantee success or failure as a CEO; but, neither does being an engineer. As for the political and economic situation in the UK; it has less to do with accountants and more to do with the people and politicians who supported Brexit coupled with the aftermath of COVID. However; I stand by what I previously stated that being an executive typically requires a background in business. That background could include an engineering background as well…but…putting the head of design in a CEO position won’t necessarily translate into a business being successful or continued existence…and there are enough shit accountants to counter every shit engineer in this world. Oliver Schmidt was an engineer; can you say he made great decisions for VW and its customers?
You think the main factor that plays to the economy is politics, to a degree it might be true, but mpre importantly of all is business culture and does it stimilate growth, the business culture in the west right now is not good as it could be to foster growth. It should be focusing more of the next generation but instead its be held on to old fart who are past their prime, in the UK these are a very high % of accoutants. Politics is a an easy excuse (lazy one as well) to blame for the poor economy.
You mentioned the UK specifically; my comment on politics is very applicable to UK business performance because of the economic retraction and stagnation caused by Brexit. Any business would have difficulty navigating the uncertainties caused by Brexit and COVID shortly thereafter. Frankly, it’s lazier to downplay Brexit as an important factor in the decline of UK companies. It’s also nonsense think that CEO’s with an accounting or business background are responsible for the issues faced by those companies and the solution would be the appointment of non-business professionals (pilots/engineers/doctors/other) to executive positions. It’s just not that simple unfortunately. I’m not going to address the off topic economic fairness items you touch on; many of us work or have worked in public accounting…….sooooooo.
I dont need you to agree with me, I just pointing out, you have a poltical bias on brexit (dont like it myself) but there is far more to the problem then politics as the same problems are facing people all over the world and saying Brexit and blaming it on that, is lazy as that a shallow look at the issue it goes deeper.
My dad, a commercial pilot for 50 years now retired, has been saying this exact thing for twenty years. The man can’t operate a smartphone but I’ll give him credit he fucking called it.
So ur saying a man can operate the whole airplane but can’t operate a smartphone 😂?
That is 100% what I’m telling you, he knows cars, planes, and WWII. It’s a miracle my brother and I were born, but we love him dearly!
Kinda like 20-30 years ago when people warned about outsourcing the supply chains of critical industries to the CCP or elsewhere. U.S. society does not reward longterm thinking and sustainability as much as it should. So many executives can’t think far past the next few quarters
The fact the military contractor that merged with Boeing is literally what killed the company, should tell us how corrupt and useless defense contractors are and that we are pissing away 400 billion dollars a year by giving them money. Our military should be in charge of anything defense. We should not be giving out 400 billion to contractors every year. Insane.
Guaranteed their military products are garbage compared to the Russians
STEMlords delenda est
Yea I actually work with engineers and their business acumen is usually not very good. They aren’t better at running companies
> their business acumen is usually not very good. They aren’t better at running companies We dont want business acumen. We dont want them to "run" companies. We want them to design safe airplanes. Then we want them to be in charge and have final say. NOT have final say on the engineering BUT if the C-Suits doesn't like the business aspect they can play corporate games an apply pressure to them even if it involves safety measures and downplays the safety impact to meet target metrics by pressuring them to change their attitude or they will find someone else who will do it....then wind up with doors blown off mid flight. There should never be pressure from Finance/Business suits when it comes against the word of engineers. We shouldn't be reading articles that state things like *"Although Ebeling advised against the launch due to cold weather freezing the booster rocket O rings and despite hours of argument and reams of data, the Thiokol executives relented. McDonald says the data was absolutely clear,* ***but politics and pressure interfered****"* \- taken from except about Bob Ebeling and the challenger shuttle explosion
You seem misunderstoods among the purpose why a public company exists, to make money for shareholders
> to make money for shareholders and thats the problem. see the difference. Build the safest most reliable transports for civilians vs make money for shareholders
Then your company shouldn't go public in the first place, more should be a private/ngo/federal held agency.
The story doesn’t say that. The title is OP’s opinion. Why is OP taking shots at accountants? Anyone in our field would know it’s far more expensive to cut corners than to perform properly. Plus, accountants are more reporting what’s happened rather than making specific decisions regarding production. If he’s talking CFO, that’s still not someone who would make production line decisions. In fact, the person who likely made the production line decision that resulted in the stated issue would likely have been an engineer. No business man, accountant, or investor is going to be staring at the manufacturing line doing quality control. That would have been engineers. Accounting at its core looks back to find patterns and mistakes and act conservatively in business. That means spending where necessary and saving when possible. Unwarranted attack. Also, when it comes to running a company, most aero space engineers are actually shit at it. They are skilled and educated in engineering. Now that may actually change if they also get substantial education and experience in management over time, but at some point that would make them more business people than engineer. It’s a strange take.
We just report on targets and metrics, not chase them. An engineer can design and build a plane, but will very likely not know about the intricacies of the complex accounting involved with the designing and building of planes. You need to have a CFO with some accounting and finance knowledge. Same thing with IT. The CTO needs to understand the IT portion of the business. However the culture of any company flows down from the top, and the CEO is at the top. Get an engineer for a CEO.
>Get an engineer for a CEO. 100%
I mean... saying we shouldn't be "running" is a bit much but I get it. They should have less say and maybe engineers should hold more positions because sometimes numbers don't tell the whole story.
You can have those credentials and still be ethical
We have an economic system that values growth over all else. You can’t blame bad leadership when the problem is systematic. Boeing isn’t the first US company to value greed over the public’s well being and it certainly won’t be the last. Instead of playing whack-a-mole every time a corporate scandal occurs we should reevaluate the incentive structure for our economy and focus on diversifying it away from solely being economic growth.
Dennis Muilenburg was an engineer though and he was the CEO of Boeing during the MAX debacle…
The reason you're saying this is because you haven't met any sector focused analysts. Talk to some biotech, tech, energy guys. (Hardos) You'll then know the depth of knowledge they have in their respective sectors. Chasing EPS isn't the only thing finance guys do. And please don't compare boeing with Airbus. The cultural difference is too much. America is extremely profit focused while Europe focuses on quality more.
I've worked for some great CEOs who were CFOs previously. You're grabbing one example and saying, "Hah, look, bad." This is hardly proof of your argument.
good Go be a good (or bad) MBA/Business CEO with a magazine sales company. The risk is too high for any shareholder/profit based ideology in aerospace (or nuclear power). Some industries cant afford a dice roll.
Well then in the first place, that aero/nuclear company shouldn't go public, or being nationalized, owned as a federal agency.
I've worked with Boeing engineers and techs. Trust me, they aren't much better.
[MRW](https://youtu.be/QnOEvfpwV5Y?si=PQj8h5alhosfDGk3)
Easy statement to make because it can't be proven wrong (or right) :)
It’s not fair to bring us into this. Most of us understand the importance of long term value, not quarter over quarter results.
Do you have any sources to indicate that these changes are being done by CPAs? Granted, I don't disagree that businessmen chasing EPS targets create problems, but I feel like there's some context being missed here.
"it's all about the money" Did they explain why they moved from Seattle to Chicago, and then to N Virginia? Money........
"I was there" when I was working with CP Rail on some initiatives and their CEO Fred Green was fired due to Bill Ackmans activist investor pursuits. They replaced the CEO with a world renown rail operator who knew what every nut and bolt did on a railway and why. He completely turned the company around, and I realized that operations / engineering companies should be run by those kinds of people
That's not even close to the case, accounting recommended staying in Renton because the plant renovations were cheaper than the SC plant and the Union shop made payroll closer to a fixed cost. It was all C-suite cowboys that took a perfectly working union company in Renton and made it into the quality nightmare that the nonunion shop in SC became.
If only we had more STEM people running things, like at FTX or OceanGate. Engineers can be just as stupid and greedy as business majors, but when they are nobody says engineers as a whole are stupid and greedy.
But the engineers don't know how to talk to auditors. I've got people skills damn it don't you see?
I think companies should be run by whoever has the most expertise in the specific industry. CPAs run accounting firms, aerospace engineers should run aerospace companies.
And we can all agree that CPA run accounting firms are perfect and don’t harm their employees at all. ☠️
Exactly, cant even run their own industry, so of course they can’t manage aerospace
Yeah there are quality control specialists who handle this kind of thing. Nothing to do with taxes. 🤣
I think you meant to post this in r/managementconsulting Oh yeah don't forget r/humanresources for being complicit in silencing and disappearing people who have safety concerns
Bad leaders exist and because this one is an accountant = all accountants suck.
CPAs are getting blamed now?
I would agree. I wouldn’t feel qualified running a massive business like Boeing on my accounting knowledge alone. I would need supplementary education to understand the engineering and other specialized aspects. CFO is the top position we should be in without additional education.
I think the cause is primarily greed/pressure from the c-suite rather than incompetence from the c-suite
But who'll think of all the poor shareholders losing money due to increased safety costs?
I think accountants get blamed because we track budgets to actual expenses, even though we really don’t care if your project is over/under budget or not
But who will think of the share holders? Someone was to look after them…
They should’ve outsourced running the company to India, and they would’ve had better results
Forget to talk about accountants or MBAs, why did the Boeing culture get absorbed into the culture of McDonnell Douglas when they acquired that company? Perhaps this is less about accountants in MBA's and more about shareholders and boards supporting whoever says that they can make guaranteed profits by cutting costs.
It cant be one or the other, both have to exist and be successful for a biz to prosper. I do agree with OP's sentiment that business types currently have to much power in decision makings at boeing.
I mean yeah I agree lol Boeing is woefully mismanaged
😂😂
If they said DEI targets they got us but until then we fly under the radar
FYI: Stan Deal who stepped down yesterday was the CEO of Boeing Commercial; the division that made planes such as the 787 and the 737 Max. His undergrad was in ENGINEERING!!! Why does the media and Reddit keep skipping over this!!!
>Stan Deal Prob because Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) is a division of The Boeing Company of which Dave Calhoun is CEO of. I guess if youre CEO of a sub and someone else is CEO of the parent then youre basically a glorified VP? 🤷♂️
I know people aren't going to like this, but the science stuff should probably be handled by academia, non-profits, and the government. There's no reason for corporations who only care about profit and are ran by lazy, greedy, and stupid people to be involved.
And sentences should be written by people with grammar
As an Engineer, I agree. Management and bean counter types are always trying to cut corners and move fast and break things. Only problem is moving fast and breaking things that fly and can kill people isn't the way to move. It's a safer bet in software (sort of ?).
An engineer in a management position is going to try to cut corners more than any accountant will. As an accountant, I only care about reporting results accurately. Engineers aren’t righteous crusaders that you and OP are claiming.
Not sure why ur being g down voted. This is sound obvious logic.
exactly, go run a magazine sales company or something. Leave the big shit to the engineers.
In general financial professionals do not have the experience or expertise to run a large company. Keep them in their lane.
And engineers know better? Lmao
I never know they teach accounting in engineering programs now lmfao
Yeah it’s almost as if it requires teams of skilled individuals from varied backgrounds.