James McNerney was a Harvard MBA who spent time at McKinsey before going to the Jack Welch clown show at GE, where he ran the aircraft engine business for a long time. When he lost out to Immelt to be CEO there, he went to 3M for a few years then bounced to Boeing.
Now, Muilenburg has to bear the mistakes he made: pushing an unsafe plane through certification, not listening to the right people, not investigating the Lion Air crash sufficiently, etc. But the evidence I think strongly shows that someone who was not an engineer was making the final decisions on the "bet the company for the next 10 years" choice to go forward with the 737Max rather than a clean-sheet design, back in 2011.
The managers and executives turned consultants went out of their way to tell you about how they met Jack Welch or got screamed at by Jack Welch, etc. It was weird, and moreover, they almost without exception idiots.
"-with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark — that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back" -HST
for his contributions to society, he made between 12-29m/year every year for the 10 years he was CEO.
ugh
I personally place more blame on Muilenberg's predecessor, James McNerney, a former Proctor & Gamble, and 3M executive.
He started at Boeing in 1985 as an engineering intern, earned a masters in Aeronautics, and worked his way through management and engineering positions until he became CEO. I have no idea how much of the 737 Max issues could be placed on him directly, but he was CEO during its launch and the crashes.