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MarthGoomba posted...

need a tl;dr for the important bits

CEO Jim busted unions and started outsourcing to firms that did terrible jobs.
John Barnett was a quality manager at Boeing for a long time and found himself having to manage some of this. John refused to leave and tried his best to keep quality from going to zero and discussing problems. He was eventually fired.
Then he whistle blowed and was found dead.
Most of this you already knew so the article is more on the actual details. It is good read.

Prince Jimas some long-timers used to call himrepeatedly invoked a slur for longtime engineers and skilled machinists in the obligatory vanity leadership book he co-wrote.
Those who cared too much about the integrity of the planes and not enough about the stock price were phenomenally talented a******s, and he encouraged his deputies to ostracize them into leaving the company. He initially refused to let nearly any of these talented a******s work on the 787 Dreamliner, instead outsourcing the vast majority of the development and engineering design of the brand-new, revolutionary wide-body jet to suppliers, many of which lacked engineering departments. The plan would save money while busting unions, a win-win, he promised investors. Instead, McNerneys plan burned some $50 billion in excess of its budget and went three and a half years behind schedule.