This fucking meme needs to die the unholy death it needed years ago.
1996 was 28 years ago. In that time Boeing has had the 777, 787, Delta IV Heavy, and whatever else.
The problem is far deeper than MuH mCdOnNeLl-dOuGlAs.
I'm not unconvinced that organizational rot in a slower moving company like Boeing took 3 decades to fully spoil the org.
Whatever the cancer is inside Boeing, it's far more entrenched and destructive than something we can just flippantly handwave away with "MuH mCdOnNeLl-dOuGlAs" every single fucking time.
It's also worth remembering that the F-15 Eagle and F/A-18 Hornet, both still Boeing's most successful military products today, are McDonnell-Douglas products.
"MuH mCdOnNeLl-dOuGlAs" is a fucking waste of internet oxygen. It doesn't help explain anything, it doesn't help solve anything, it's not even that good at grabbing some internet points.
I believe there's also an element of "MBA bad, engineer good" resentment of management at play.
But the real truth is much more nuanced, no matter how satisfying it is to drop pithy one-liners about the MD merger.
It is also crazy to me that people speak as if Boeing is "falling apart", but managed to produce many successful models since the MD merger, including the amazing 787.
It was clear as day on the ground that something had switched, suddenly every conversation was about minimizing cost. Every meeting was about maximizing value. Efficiency above safety.
I cannot overemphasize that it really did fundamentally shift the language, the incentives, etc. I started having to prove I needed vms to two different business panels.
Sometimes you are right, the root cause is too simple, but I was there for this one. It really was that simple this time.
Dropping the McD one liner meme is neither thoughtful nor curious and it certainly doesn't explain anything.
It's like saying a McDonald's Big Mac is made of bread, beef, lettuce, and some mayonnaise like that's some conclusive end-all be-all. That's cool, but are we actually going to speak about something worth the time of day?
This is irrelevant here; the only people buying most of the products that Boeing makes are governments or airlines (many of which have government backing, because countries find it advantageous to have an airline). Without government, there's just no Boeing, or SpaceX, or Lockheed Martin, or Airbus, or...
The problem ultimately goes back to 1996 when Boeing was more-or-less taken over by McDonnell-Douglas management, and quality engineering took a back seat to quarterly results. Everything, from bad QA to "greasing the wheels" with lobbyists, ultimately goes back to someone with an MBA deciding that those behaviors were worth it for the stock price increase.
And to be fair, they were... until they weren't. But by then, the guy with the MBA has either left or divested, and it becomes someone else's problem.
SpaceX's success can be in a large part contributed to the fact that they don't have a bunch of retirement and pension funds demanding a chunk of the profits every quarter regardless of actual market space performance.