I think this runs deeper than an “MBA vs Engineer” perspective. Having worked in the industry but no direct knowledge of how this project was run (outside of what’s been reported in the news) here my take:

If I were a betting person, my guess is they have created a culture of “schedule first”. Other orgs managed by engineers have been chastised for this in the past (looking at you, NASA). The problem is the risk/reward is asymmetrical managing these projects. Even though the severity can be extremely high, the probabilities of an error of this magnitude tend to be very small. This creates an incentive for ambitious souls to be aggressive and continually role the dice to meet schedule. As a former manager once told me when I was in a safety role, “you don’t want to get a reputation for slowing things down.”

To oversimplify things, say there’s a 1% chance any project can end in disaster. You can literally create an entire career ignoring that risk and still look like a star. Probability is on the individuals side. Meanwhile, the manager pushing to do things the right way to minimize that risk almost certainly will bear a higher cost/schedule burden. But in aggregate, that probability will catch up to the organization.

What makes me think this? There’s ample reporting Boeing didn’t follow their own procedures because they didn’t want to delay. Hazard analysis documentation wasn’t reflective of the design because the paperwork wasn’t getting updated. Their didn’t follow their own procedures regarding redundancy in design of items identified in the HA. I suspect they knew this was wrong which is why they obfuscated details in the investigation.

Culture matters, irrespective of academic degrees.

Surprisingly enough, it doesn't run deeper. Boeing was once an engineering center of excellence. Building bulletproof planes were what they did, and it showed. Then they decided to acquire McDonnell Douglas - who was run by accountants. For reasons I'm not sure anyone can explain, the MD executives somehow not only survived the merger, but took control of the company. The end result was a move to pinch pennies and maximize profit vs. a focus on quality and engineering.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...

>With ethics now front and center, Condit was forced out and replaced with Stonecipher, who promptly affirmed: “When people say I changed the culture of Boeing, that was the intent, so that it’s run like a business rather than a great engineering firm.”

I wonder if the implication is that being run like an “engineering firm” is no longer able to produce a competitive company culture. What the MBA vs Engineer framing doesn’t do is explain why other organizations run by engineers have had the same type of mistakes. I think there’s a more general through line

I spent many years working very close to Boeing, though never for Boeing so I wasn't privy to meetings that may have included the alleged malfeasance you describe. What I did see was communication breakdown between major teams. Some interface features were mutually assumed to be owned by another team and fell through the cracks. MCAS in response to unstable thrust vector is commonly cited as an example of this.

But I think it's worth noting to the (mostly software oriented) HN crowd - aerospace projects have massive manufacturing cycle times. Some things literally take years to manufacture for the proof-of-concept stage, let alone production. You can't NOT be incredibly schedule-oriented in this environment. This can cause some perverse incentives for management (which must be mitigated), but there are always going to be somewhat risky last-minute changes that could seem ill-advised in hindsight if you want to deliver something.

Schedule matters, especially in long lead items. The problem becomes when schedule overrides good judgement regarding safety. My personal opinion is this is largely rooted in human cognitive biases that make us bad at objectively assessing risk. We just aren’t wired to think statistically and then we have multitudes of biases that undermine our ability to make judgement, especially about low probability events.

> human cognitive biases that make us bad at objectively assessing risk

I generally agree strongly (e.g. car vs air safety). Though this group is highly cognizant of KNOWN risks. It's the UNKNOWN risks (usually found at those interfaces I mentioned above) that get overlooked. Unknown risks definitely will be more problematic in a compressed-schedule environment.

they dlc'd the secondary/redundant AoA sensor, a critical safety feature and literally a direct cause of the crashes

True. But the hazard analysis reported in the Seattle Times showed Boeing listed it a hazardous failure item. Ignoring that it should have been classified as “catastrophic” because of its ability to cause a loss of aircraft, even at the “hazardous” level their procedures made a redundant element required.

Required, not optional if the customer pays enough.

Actually I wonder how having two sensors is a good idea, anyways. There is no quorum of two, if one of the sensors is off, what's the actual angle of attack?

I dont understand much of redundancy of sensors, yet '3' would allow to ignore the 'bogus' reading.

It seems such a weird thing to cut corners on.

The main new feature in a plane solving a problem that they knew was potentially dangerous which is why they had to install the auto-nose-down system in the first place.

How expensive could a couple of extra sensors even be compared to a whole plane?

Maybe the extra sensors added significant drag?

> Actually I wonder how having two sensors is a good idea, anyways. There is no quorum of two, if one of the sensors is off, what's the actual angle of attack?

Not knowing the angle of attack is miles better than not knowing that you don't know the angle of attack.

There’s usually guidelines based on the criticality of the equipment and the required reliability.

"dlc"? What does that mean

Downloadable content, a reference to large game studios' reputations for nickel-and-diming players on what should be core gameplay features of a video game.

They made it an optional extra that you had to pay more for.

This would be fine if we're talking about carpeting on the flight deck, but the AOC sensor is a critical feature.

They made it an optional feature you have to pay more for.

Just want to say I think your response is well articulated, and has been sitting with me for days. Reflecting on how "schedule first" is driving things in my org...

The CEO that Boeing fired at the end of 2019 was an aerospace engineer who had been with the company since 1985.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Muilenburg

Sure but I’m not talking about just the CEO. I’m talking engineering managers all the way down. And I guess I’m not really talking about specific college degrees either, but a culture and mindset of engineering.

Here’s an interesting article about how engineers lost influence in Boeing: https://perell.com/essay/boeing-737-max/

>Sure but I’m not talking about just the CEO. I’m talking engineering managers all the way down. And I guess I’m not really talking about specific college degrees either, but a culture and mindset of engineering.

Many here have misunderstood you,conflating the the stereotypical MBA type ( who is a essentially a con man) with an MBA degree. A 'mindset' of engineering BTW has to to be explained to the non-engineering personalities. Besides the obvious inclination for technical things, the next best trait is perhaps that of integrity. You really cannot put together a working great product unless there is there is a commitment at several levels, all of which could be loosely lumped under the personality trait of integrity.

Incidentally, he was "the only engineer in the C-suites". [0] I think the problem ran much deeper than the CEO.

[0] https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-invest...

He only became CEO in 2015. His handling of the Max crashes was shameful, but you can't blame him for Boeing's long-term strategy faults.

It seems like the problem with Boeing is that they acquired a failing company (McDonnell-Douglas), but then kept all the executives and let them run Boeing, even though they'd just ruined the last company.

Maybe they preferred that over letting some pleb engineer into the executive aristocracy.

Oh, I don't blame him at all. A commercial airliner is a decade long project to undertake. However its clear he was not the leader to lead a company through a crisis.

So, is slick over here guilty of manslaughter?

I'm so tired of seeing this ridiculous "mba and accountants are evil" trope. You realize Tim Cook is one of those evil MBA people, right? And the CEO that oversaw Boeing during the launch of the MAX was a career aerospace engineer?

Those of us in the operations sides of buisnesses or doing research at universities really only see all the terrible hurtfull decisions these MBAs are making. Constant cost cutting and understaffing tend to lead to a lot of built up resentment. Maybe it is just a few bad eggs spoiling the broth, but to operations people it looks like the whole organisation is out to make their lives miserable.

I feel this.

Tim Cook is also an industrial engineer, and this is easily available information.

My point is more that you don’t want people focused on business and profits instead of people who have deep knowledge in the area and passion for the product.

Accountants and business majors are better at managing insurance companies, banks, etc, because they understand the space. Engineers are better at managing engineering companies for the same reason.

Tim Cook has a bachelor engineering degree but he hasn't been involved in engineering work since the 90s. He's been the head of operations, making business decisions like closing down factories and outsourcing production, since his days at IBM. He is a supply chain wonk, which is why he got an MBA (supply chain management is a core part of business school teachings). This is also easily available information. Cook has been "focused on business and profits" for decades, and yet you act like he is an example of a great "engineer" in charge.

Believe it or not, managing the supply chain is a specialty of industrial engineering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_engineering#Sub-dis...

>Although it has the same goals as supply chain engineering, supply chain management is focused on a more traditional management and business based approach

gasp, there's that evil "business" word again

I've always been impressed with production engineers, cause they always find a way to explain to us (software/electric/electronic engineers) the issues with the marketing/commercial/supply chain side and explain to the executives/MBAs that, no, adding 10 people to a 5 people team won't make the team go 3 time faster. In big consortiums projects they are pretty much a glue imho.

Having a production engineer as an exec is probably the best way to run a successful team if you project involve multiple field of knowledge (as Apple probably does).

Tim Cooks understand tradeoffs, and this understanding should be expected of any top exec. Is it often the case?

Once upon I time I worked in a process engineering gig. Literally every problem started by trying to explain no, just adding more people to a bad process won’t magically fix things. And yet, that was always the knee-jerk reaction to those owning the process. I think it’s because a bad process has the people constantly reactively fire-fighting they naturally feel short-handed

You need both. I've worked at places that were all subject-matter and no business expertise. Companies like that fail.

> My point is more that you don’t want people focused on business and profits instead of people who have deep knowledge in the area and passion for the product.

But isn't focusing on business and profits also focusing on safety of your products since you want to make sure your planes don't crash and passengers come to their destination alive and unharmed.

(1) what is the timeframe you look at? (I want LOTS of money THIS year, because I NEED a yacht THIS year to have a party with celebrities. How do you convince person like me to invest money in developing safety solutions?)

(2) profit = selling price - production\development cost - expected downsides of accidents(penalties, tarnished image). "Expected downsides of accidents" can be reduced by reducing risk, but also in some other creative ways (blackmailing, lobying, promoting the right candidate, marketing, rebranding, migrating to different markets, insurance, coverups. And lets not forget deals with friends: If I can win 5billion, I can allow my self to split it 100 ways and still end up with a nice big yacht).

> But isn't focusing on business and profits also focusing on safety of your products ...

In practical terms, it doesn't appear to work out that way.

The culture of company is much more than its CEO though. And it's the culture of Boeing that changed from an engineering culture to a profit-driven culture. This shift is pretty well-documented. It occurred with Boeing’s reverse takeover of McDonnell Douglas in the late 1990s. This new direction was in no small part the influence of McDonnell Douglas CEO Harry Stonecipher. The following are good reads on what exactly happened:

https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-invest...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/11/how-boeing...

The Max was developed under James McNerney who is an MBA with no engineering background.

The max was developed and launched by Dennis Muilenberg. Muilenberg was President and then CEO of Boeing for 7 of the 8 years that the MAX was under development and launch. McNerney was only there for 4 of those years.

You can argue all you want about who shoulders more responsibility, but Muilenberg was an executive throughout the entire program, and more importantly, was the CEO who oversaw the decision for the certification of the MAX prior to first flight, which was the critically faulty decision.

Miulenberg became CEO in July 2015. The 737 MAX went into production in 2014 and had its first flight in January 2016.

Muilenberg became president in 2013, and the 737 MAX certifications happened in 2017, when Muilenberg was CEO.

For large aerospace projects, the critical decisions are made years before first flight, and most often even years before experimental production start. Judging from the timeline Mullenberg clearly inherited the messy decisions from his predecessor.

Though of course he would have had the knowledge to understand something didn’t smell quite right after. Whether he had the sole authority to order a delay or redesign in the intervening time is questionable. It may have been that he couldn’t wrangle enough support from the board to do something dramatic.

Exactly. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, YouTube are all led by these MBAs and seem to be doing just fine.

If Boeing's products went down that frequently, I wouldn't fly.

Moral Mazes describes in detail how this happens. The book explains how managers of all kinds "milked" chemical plants, i.e. deferred maintenance to meet schedules and pocket promos, and then jumped the ship right before the plant collapsed. Boeing was likely no different: a clique of quick-thinking managers figured that they could push for aggressive deadlines, pocket nice promos and bonuses, outsource responsibility via committes of all kinds and jump the ship when the wreck was imminent.

The book even had a solution. These quick-thinking managers avoid responsibility (blame ability) like vampires avoid the sunlight. The corporate could implement a system to track responsibility, so it would follow smart assess in other departments and even other companies, but it of course would never do this because such a system would expose shenanigans of senior management. In theory, a regulator could develop such a responsibility tracking system and enforce it in public companies and federal contractors. That system needs to account for the fact that senior managers are experts in diffusing responsibility.

You're probably right but also missing the giant elephant in the room which is regulatory capture. aka politics.

This being a partial byproduct of the mass centralization (aka conglomeration) of most every big industry that started in the 80s, accelerating in the 90s, when globalization became a hot thing. And [insert massive finance company's hackery here].

Tons of these conglomerates have strong legacy gov connections and are often the only shop in town for critical industries and are treated like special semi-national bodies. This puts plenty of natural pressure on regulatory bodies.

Boeing is not the only one. This is a phenomenon wide across the western world. Plenty of this exists in Europe too.

Well, if I remember right, consolidation across the entire economy is at a record high.

In every sector, there's more regulation, much fewer & larger players. If the rot at Boeing is a symptom of this, we're in for a bad time: every firm across the entire economy is now larger and has fewer competitors than previously.

The mainstream and most-politically-accepted economics of the day in western countries is state-capitalism (the levels of state vs capitalism is debatable in various countries and is obviously never stable). I think this is what the standard downside of that economic system looks like in practice... plenty of regulatory capture + moral hazards due to low punishments when 'caught' + little if any competition.

Like most things in economics the best route is looking for the least-bad option. We will find out over time if the state-capitalism balancing act really is the best, assuming there are any realistic alternatives and/or the scales/ratios of state vs capitalism are meaningfully measurable.

This experiment is only decades old in the modern technological era and one could argue it has only really peaked in the last two decades, with ever more industries getting merged to this day (which Corona will accelerate no doubt, just like 9/11 did with the US defense industry).

The state/nationalism part of this means these potentially poorly run companies could stay propped up for decades, despite the industry's potential in other forms.

I recently spent time reading about some chartered airline companies from the 70/80s and their stories is probably the best example of this sort of slow march towards industry conglomeration, with plenty of state involvement and protection. It probably provides a good timeline to base this stuff on and at a minimum plenty of analogies.

One example (see History): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TUI_Airways

> Take a look at Apple’s functional organizational structure for an example of an engineering company done right.

I don't have an actual refutation here (and certainly don't want to start some kind of Apple flame war) but something about this doesn't seem quite right.

Here’s a great article about their organizational structure: https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is-organized-for-innovatio...

Like their products or not, Apple has been extraordinarily successful both in terms of sales and critical reception of their products compared to most companies.

They have flops too (Siri, HomePod, others), but are mostly successful. The recent buzz about the M1 chip is a perfect example of their industry-leading engineering.

Is the M1 that revolutionary? It seems more like the culmination of technology that has been around for years. Rosetta 2 is the most impressive part, and even that is kinda the most obvious method of x86 emulation that doesnt suck

It looks like an implementation of TSMC's process and similar chips will be available to everyone soon enough.

Think about the quality of their hardware products.

Do you mean the 2019 macbook pro that can't use the iGPU for multiple monitors so it overheats every time I plug in an external monitor? Or do you want the older macbooks that the keyboard would break from dust exposure requiring the entire laptop to be replaced?

Or the airpods with non-replaceable batteries so you have to get new airpods for $49+ a piece every couple years?

They aren't perfect and IMO haven't been in a long time. That said, the build quality is good, and I chose to get a macbook as my work computer as a software developer and don't regret it, but I wish people would stop putting apple on a pedestal as the example of perfection.

All products have defects, and the Apple hardware defect rates are some of the lowest in the industry. That doesn't change their commitment to product quality and service, and how it compares to their peers. Take a look at eBay and compare any Apple products resale values to any other (and no, it's not just about brand).

Three in a row for me. I experience the exact same problems OP describes with three MB Pro laptops since 2018. More than 7000 bucks down the drain not calculating the 2100 for repairs.

The company I work for had 1-2 percent of devices in repair every week.

Not sure if this is just a strange coincidence, but I know of at least one other company in our town with the same scope of the described problem.

I know this isn't a popular sentiment with some people, but from experience, I am done with Apple after 28 years of experience. My first was a beautiful Macintosh Classic I still have. Together with a SE 30. Somehow I miss my pre 2018 Macbook Pro.

What's your source for the low defect numbers?

Consumer Reports ~2015 (little dated and wouldn't include latest gen laptops) https://www.computerworld.com/article/3012211/apples-macbook...

This site includes a few different sources, and shows more or less the same reliability: https://www.geckoandfly.com/6311/the-most-reliable-laptop-su...

I wonder if theres a comparison of device by price point, because i bet apples advantage would be eaten up if they did

People still buy over a decade old thinkpads.

Apple has the highest customer satisfaction levels in the business.

Now the butterfly keyboard issues have hurt MBP customer sat levels, but not enough to fall to Lenova/IBM levels.

Are claiming the lack of replaceable batteries stopped the AirPods from becoming the biggest selling headphones in the world?

Because they are.

They prioritize form over function in their Lightning cables. Inadequate strain relief is a far more consequential problem in an airplane wing. I can't see Apple practices being applicable to mission critical fields like transport engineering (with high regulatory burden). They're different worlds. Apple also simply has a huge amount of money from hardware and software (App store etc.). I suspect they're far looser with resources for their teams than Boeing, whose mechanical/aerospace engineers have salaries a fraction of most Apple engineers.

Edit: Overarching point is that Apple has a focus on aesthetics that is far less important in aerospace engineering, and has no experience on ensuring human safety.

Apple isn’t perfect, no one is.

But it’s better than almost everyone else, including Boeing because it does one thing very well. It doesn’t ship products unless they meet a high bar. It never puts schedule first over product quality.

Example: original iPad was canceled by Steve Jobs because he didn’t think it was good enough. Instead he had the team enter the Apple phone competition, where it best out the iPod team with its design for the iPhone. Five years later they got to apply all their improvements to make and release a much better iPad.

Apple canceled their AirPower charging mat rather than release something that didn’t meet their standards, even after pre-announcing it.

When I ran an product development organization, I made it clear that QA wasn’t responsible for our schedules. Sure they needed to test well and quickly to ensure that Product Management had the necessary info to make good release decisions. But their job was journalistic, to fairly and honestly report all issues. It was up to the engineers to find ways to meet quality goals in our schedules.

Boeing had test pilots misleading regulators to hide known issues. That’s the exact opposite of a test Organisation should be run.

Yes, but they make consumer products and not airplanes. Why would you assume they’d build an airplane the same way they’d build a cheap cable?

> Think about the quality of their hardware products.

I thought about their butterfly keyboards and didn't want to think further.

I'm not sure if the years of poor and failing keyboards on the MacBook or the ongoing stage light screen failures due to the poor decision to permanently connect the ribbon to the screen (turning a $5 repair into a $500 repair) bare this out.

AMD has really shown the way in this aspect. They have a lady who was a PhD in a Semiconductor Electronics (I forgot what the exact name was) and she's worked as a techie and as a manager for a long time to get a grip of both. The results speak for themselves.

Modern MBAs (at least the one I'm doing) very much take care to focus on factors beyond solely profit. Examples are the concepts of business sustainability and the different levels of maturity organisations can occupy within that, and the 'triple bottom line' (taking into account impact on society and the environment, as well as economic impact).

Awareness of these factors can go from simply recognising them (lip service), to defining business performance by them (living and embracing them).

>Examples are the concepts of business sustainability and the different levels of maturity organisations can occupy within that, and the 'triple bottom line' (taking into account impact on society and the environment, as well as economic impact).

If someone doesn't pick these things growing up, a course in grad school isn't going to change their motivations.

As if MBA and accountants are specially prone to greed.

Greed can be found in any person regardless of his profession.

MBA programs self select for greed.

>Take a look at Apple’s functional organizational structure for an example of an engineering company done right.

Apple has to be one of the worst examples - both about not being run be MBAs and quality engineering.

There was an article about how, when Boeing bought out Mcdonnal Douglas, executives from the latter company took control and changed the culture to focus on profits over engineering.

“How Boeing Lost its Way”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/josephholt/2020/02/03/how-boein...

> An engineering company should have engineers as managers from the bottom level all the way up to the CEO.

Sun Microsystems had this. Didn't work too well for them.

It's not at all as simple as this.

Disagree with solely the CEO but in general Boeing’s leadership seems to be somewhat disconnected from their actual product. Just take a look at Boeing’s HQ in relation to where they actually make things. Boeing’s c-suite is now in Chicago whereas their engineers/plant workers are on other ends of the country (Washington and South Carolina, mostly).

Considering how hard people on this website try to push remote work it's funny how a broad consensus has emerged that Boeing putting workers and management in different offices is responsible for their cultural failures.

One could argue there are differences between us mere code monkeys playing with fancy gadgets and a company in charge of the lives of thousands of people every single day.

There are code monkeys working on safety-critical systems too.

All things considered, there is a stark difference between a job whose primary focus is to build a physical thing and a job whose primary focus is to build a digital thing.

Boeing isn’t a remote company, so it’s not a contradiction.

If you read into most of the arguments for remote-friendly workplaces, step one is cultural changes.

>An engineering company should have engineers as managers from the bottom level all the way up to the CEO.

So should our government.

As technical people, we tend to have a bias that we're better equipped to understand things than anyone else, but that's often not the case. Many, many of the things out there don't just require the ability to use Google and do math, but also those things engineers are notoriously bad at like understanding human systems, compromising, and communication. We also don't have any particular advantages in knowing things outside our domain of expertise. An all-engineer government is definitely not an ideal.

I dont think that techies are outlier here. Despite the profession, most people think they can do their boss's job better.

One thing to keep in mind is a lot of engineers don't want to work in management and/or don't have management aspirations. Steve Wozniak is a pretty good example.

Personally, I work as a chem/materials engineer if I were to move into a management position I'd have to give up doing technical work and step into a more administrative role and that is something that does not really appeal to me.

I think similar thing for politics, there doesn't tend to be many scientist or engineers running for government because that sort of thing isn't very appealing to people like me.

“I’m smart enough to program a computer and that’s really hard so anything else would be easy for me to do.”

Are you trying to say that engineers are inherently more moral in their decisions?

The implication is that Engineers can manage an engineering product better than a career CEO. There are several examples of turnarounds such as AMD where technical CEO's delivered significant product and ultimately financial wins over organizations run by career managers.

Boeing's choice to pursue the Max vs. a new airframe was entirely motivated by perceived cost benefits and resulted in a flawed and delayed product. Had the decision makers had an aerospace background they may have made different decisions.

I was listening to an interview with AMD's CEO Dr. Lisa Su, and I was surprised at how casually she was using technical terminology while explaining complex industrial process optimization techniques her company was working on.

I was just so used to the top three or four tiers of corporate management having literally no idea what their company's engineering department actually does day to day. Hearing a CEO knowledgeable about their main product line was a bit of a shock.

But it shouldn't be a shock! It should be the norm.

I work for a small IT-only company. If I start using "technical" terms like "IP address" with our CEO, his eyes glaze over...

I've never met a CEO that doesn't understand their main product. Sometimes, the main product isn't what the employees and engineers think it is. Sometimes that product is the company itself.

> "Sometimes that product is the company itself."

I suspect there is a cause and effect relationship here, a CEO with an M&A background will always see the company this way. A CEO with a product background may make the companies customer's/product/team more valuable to an acquirer.

The M&A culture of the 80s was pretty toxic, businesses that financed their own expansion/revamp in lean times were looted for their bank accounts during deep recessions. The "survivors" now run with only a few months in the bank, making the whole economy more dependent on financial liquidity. We'll probably never know whether financially lean enterprises were more capital efficient or just riskier.

The motivation was not perceived cost benefits, but actual costs of their customers. Retraining pilots and qualifying them would have meant new operational costs for airlines operating the 737 Max negating the benefit of the more efficient bigger engines. That pushed Boeing to try to make the Max series fly "like" a regular 737. Problem is that they couldn't hide the fact that crappy software written by $7/hour coders is a poor substitute for an airframe scaled up to match the bigger engine size. Deaths were inevitable when they decided to lie to the pilots about what was actually going on. Done correctly, the software fix could have been workable, but the design of MCAS was piss poor.

The cost of retraining the pilots was something that's been shouldered dozens of times in the past. I'd imagine that an Engineering CEO making a bold bet that software could avoid the retraining need would have been both more ambitious and smarter about the change. Why not build the right airframe and give the plane flight modes to emulate the characteristics of various 7xx aircraft that pilots were familiar with?

Good point. I'm truly curious how far up the chain that decision went. Knowing how software gets written, I'd be willing to bet there were quite a few informal discussions about the various trade offs of the possible approaches taken to meet the design requirements.

I think he is saying engineers care more about engineering, just purely because they enjoy and take pride in their own work. Whereas MBAs don't have much to be proud of, except short term profit goals.

Training certainly influences execution and only one of these groups was trained for financial engineering.

No, but extra prod fires => unhappy engineers after and before the incident, vs unhappy managers only after.

The incentives just align better.

Engineers tend to look at technical, rather than business, considerations first.

The Volkswagen emissions scandal was done by engineers.

Er....?

The implementation sure was. As directed by company management + execs.

The management and executives were all engineers too.

They certainly don't go on counting pennies