Man, as someone who’s worked in quality over the years, that story was quite infuriating. If their QMS or the people running is letting shit like that through, it’s time to clean house.
From everything that I've heard, the rot seems to have infested executive management and the board won't care because the company keeps authorizing stock buybacks to improve share price. John Oliver did a piece on Boeing this week too and as usual there were tons of crazy stories.
-Staff openly joking about how they wouldn't ride a 737Max
-Tons of part subcontracting while inadequately (not at all?) auditing quality, resulting in product incongruities and late/overbudget completion
-FAA inspectors also being Boeing employees (such an insane conflict of interest I don't know how it's allowed)
-Boeing rushing the 737Max out the door to compete with AirBus's popular, new model commercial liner and advertising it as similar enough to the old 737 that pilots won't need any simulator time (and also leaving the MCAS system entirely out of the manual except a brief listing in the glossary)
-Promising a fix to the MCAS system flaws that they didn't deliver timely
The narrative in the story seemed to be that allot of Boeing's contemporary problems stem from the McDonnell Douglas merger in the late 90s. Boeing was led by engineers at the time and was known for quality products; McDonnell Douglas was led by finance bros and had had a plane grounded by the FAA before the merger.
We'll see how things shake out at Boeing. Their stock rose sharply in 2017-2018 and hasn't recovered from the covid slump but is still over its pre-2017 value. I don't know how big company culture shifts come about but I speculate poor performance might be a trigger.