I know this is a common sentiment, but I don't quite get it. Engineering is often about optimizing multivariate functions, and cost is just another variable to optimize. If you frame it properly to engineers, they can solve cost problems too.
"Good, cheap, fast: pick two" is a law of the universe that most engineers deeply understand, and good devs will produce the best product they can according to which two are chosen.
You know what’s cooler than an expensive thing? A high quality thing with higher margins. A very well known and highly profitable company has taken that model pretty far (like trillions in valuation far).
Engineers arent really responsible for these types of attitudes though. Management are. By and large engineers will do as they are requested.
I find it far more plausible that costs ballooned due to an empire building dynamic by management than because engineers arm twisted them into building something "cool". Same reason Uber has, like, 150 people working on a mobile app.
Engineering is all about fitting within your constraints. Make budget one of those limits and life will uh find a way.
Well sure, you literally just removed the cost optimization variable. SpaceX vs. NASA is a clear example demonstrating that engineers can do this sort of optimization when it's given to them as a constraint. NASA's rocket designs were all custom, single-use, often down to the bolts because the budget was per-project/launch, where SpaceX rockets were designed for reuse and cost minimization across multiple launches.
It's obviously possible, SpaceX vs. NASA is an existence proof. Maybe you have something specific in mind when you say "technical engineering optimization problem", like a formula you can minimize mathematically to account for every little contribution, but this often isn't necessary. Like when solving physics problems using approximations, you often only need to minimize the first and second order largest contributors to the cost and you'll be in the right ballpark.
This also means you don't need to find the literally absolute minimum and capture literally all of the contributors to the cost during the design process. And of course this is what happens in the real world already, do you think accountants and pointy haired bosses guiding a bunch of engineers are going to find the absolute minimum? Of course not, they find what looks like a minimum from their limited view of a project after the engineers estimate the costs of producing parts and the labour required. Just close the loop without the accountants and bosses and engineers can do this optimization themselves.
I disagree that I was making this point. I said it currently involves accountants and bosses, and I'm saying it doesn't have to because you can make it an engineering problem. The accountants and bosses don't have any unique skills or insight here that aren't in principle also accessible to the engineers.
These are mostly hacks to get around the fact that the engineers haven't been given enough information. If you just say, "we need product X that can be produced at cost Y/unit and we need to start production by date Z", then this is a satisfiability problem that the right set of engineers can evaluate as possible or not possible. It's fine to assign a team lead with the requisite experience and authority to pull in the engineers, equipment and data they need to answer this question, but then you get out of the way.
Answering this question involves laying out a semi-detailed plan for how to achieve the goal. If it turns out to not be possible within the given constraints, then you at least have that plan to inform you where the expected cost or time overruns are (or the unknowns/uncertainty), and whether that means you have to revise the expected selling price, deadline or you can compromise on the scope to achieve the desired selling price.
I will agree that some engineers and programmers really don't care about this stuff, but I'd argue it's because it's typically not part of their job, and sometimes because worrying about costs and schedules is not an "interesting problem". But it is an interesting problem if you frame it as set of optimization and satisfiability problems.
In eng school there was a saying: An engineer is someone who can build something for $4 that any fool can build for $7.
When I visited NITsEVT, a big-big-big organization dedicated to adapting of the stolen IBM 360/370 software to Russian language and Russian computer variants - I was amazed at how low the software culture was there. It looked like the only way to implement something was to look at how some American (but not necessarily bright) person has implemented some similar thing.
The whole “adaptation” project led to overall degradation of software culture as compared to 60s, when a lot of Russian system software was an original one. Or so a lot of people were saying.
The article referencing this and Airbus is rather sensationalized and cuts off half the quote. This was said in reference to Airbus bribing foreign officials to buy from them. The full quote reads:
"When we have caught you at it, we haven’t said a word to the U.S. companies in the competition. Instead we go to the government you’re bribing and tell its officials that we don’t take kindly to such corruption. They often respond by giving the most meritorious bid (sometimes American, sometimes not) all or part of the contract. This upsets you, and sometimes creates recriminations between your bribers and your bribees, and this occasionally becomes a public scandal…"[5]
[5] R. James Woolsey, "Why We Spy on our Allies," Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2000.
The source unfortunately is locked behind a paywall so admittedly I don’t have the full context either.
To judge the credibility of the director of the CIA, start here:
>> James Woolsey, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, recounted in a newspaper article in 2000 how the American government typically reacted to intelligence of this sort. “When we have caught you [Europeans]...we go to the government you're bribing and tell its officials that we don't take kindly to such corruption,” he wrote. Apparently this (and a direct sales pitch from Bill Clinton to King Fahd) swung the aircraft part of the deal Boeing's and McDonnell Douglas's way.
Wow, I knew national industry deals were murky, but damn.
Maybe they're doing defense (discovering bribes swaying the bid to another country, or monitoring their own country's bribes) or offense (stealing competitor bid data and specifications), but they're not idle.
"NSA conducting industrial espionage on Airbus"
https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu-sn&q=...
Maybe you agree with Henry L. Stimson that "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail", but I haven't seen anything indicating that the NSA was spying on behalf of Boeing, or even directly targeting Airbus. Maybe I missed something, would be happy to learn if you have any sources to share :)
I'm just a casual follower but it seems their glory days are from the 60s and 70s and they've been coasting along since then.
1971: Will the Last Person Leaving SEATTLE — Turn Out the Lights
I’d argue the 757, 767 and 737 Classic (i.e. -300 to -500), all of which much more 80s than 70s were much more glorious.
And the 90s brought us the 737NG and 777 which continue to carry more than everything else today and for that matter anything else ever, other than maybe the A320ceo.
1. Domestic airlines protected by regulation had been effective monopolies and Boeing's engineer-led culture thrived in an environment where airlines didn't care about costs. But that environment died with airline deregulation in 1978 and an engineer-led culture made it more difficult to compete in a cost sensitive environment.
2. Airbus' rise put Boeing on the defensive for the first time in many decades. By 1996, Boeing's market share was less than twice Airbus' and falling rapidly enough that people could foresee the day when Airbus would overtake them. Although Airbus had good aircraft, their key advantage was they could sell them for lower prices than Boeing could.
3. Shareholders had become increasingly activist, quick to overthrow management when they weren't getting enough dividends and share price increases, and willing to install new management who would give them what they wanted.
Outsourcing, cost-cutting, and a move to an accountancy-led culture were the obvious responses to these challenges and Boeing's then CEO, Phil Condit, had already started the ball rolling on them before buying McDonnell-Douglas.