“Those who cared too much about the integrity of the planes and not enough about the stock price were "phenomenally talented assholes," and he encouraged his deputies to ostracize them into leaving the company.”
Jim McNerney came to Boeing in 2005 and treated experienced engineers as a cost. He outsourced the 787 to suppliers, some with no engineering departments, and it ran $50 billion over budget and three and a half years late. In Charleston, inspectors were told to hand 90% of their duties to the mechanics they were supposed to check. Quality manager John Barnett got his rating cut from 40 to 15 for pushing to fix flaws. Boeing called it leadership. It was a plan to stop paying the people who knew how to build planes.