If you inevitably view one of Boeing's television commercials where supposed "Boeing employees" are shown, and make the mistake of taking them at face value as the truth as to what kind of workers work at Boeing, you would be sadly misled.

First of all, most, if not all, of these "Boeing employees" are not in fact Boeing employees, but are actors. Watching these commercials, you may get the impression (likely intended by the advertising firm that put the commercial together) that Boeing has universally a highly technical, highly competent, and a highly caring and friendly and well adjusted workforce--a virtual eden for any employee wanting to escape their own  employer's company of ordinary, and in some cases, extraordinarily addled and unfortunate employees to work with, for something better. If you did get that impression from those commercials, however, you would be also sadly misled.

I'm not saying the opposite of the "commercial impression" is true in all cases in reality at Boeing, but to get a much more objective view of the Boeing workforce than the advertising firms put out for Boeing, you would have to work for Boeing, as I did. And, I think, you would not be surprised by what I found during my many years at Boeing--Boeing workers are not really different from any other workers at most companies of reasonable size.

The workers are not special at all like the commercials seem to imply, but are just a cross section of the public, "warts" and all. Walking into a Boeing factory, you don't see the same people you see in Boeing commercials. You see just average, every day people, just trying to make a buck and support their families.

With the cross section of the public that works at Boeing, there are inevitably "bad apples" and "good apples." Although not as bad as in earlier days at Boeing when I observed that it seemed to be endemic to have the overly red complexion of a habitual drinker if you were in upper management (perhaps it just was that those managers were just more highly conspicuous than other upper managers that did not imbibe), there are still the few employees who have that complexion and the breath to go with it, "risking" the random drug testing in some areas, just as you would likely find at any company of appreciable size. I know. I worked with some of those people and heard the talk of other employees about their drinking and the speculation on how they were "beating" the drug and alcohol testing system and still at their jobs building airplanes. But, I have found, that if you toe the line of the corrupt "get it out the door damn everything else" system at Boeing that negates even regulatory required inspections and tests that are supposed to be done to ensure the safety, quality, and reliability of Boeing airplanes, then Boeing is very tolerant of any behavior, especially behavior that protects the noted status quo Boeing Production System I witnessed every day at Boeing, even if it is illegal behavior as noted elsewhere in detail on this site. In my experience, you only have to fear termination when you attempt to do the right thing and expose the noted corruption, as I chose to do. I do remember one termination at Boeing for drug use several years ago, but it was of a mechanic with no special pull such as some employees I heard from other coworkers had had due to their close relationships with management.

The upper management seemingly endemic drinking problems mostly of old brings to mind a sad, sad affair. A Boeing supervisor I worked for when I was a mechanic had that red complexion I wrote of, and I think most people he worked with, like me, suspected he had a drinking problem, which, as I stated, at the time was not unusual, especially for managers. He was a pleasant guy to work for. I don't remember him ever in a bad mood. He got promoted into an upper level management job, then I went into my inspector job. I don't remember exactly when, but about a couple years later I met up by accident with one of my coworkers from the crew I worked for under the noted manager before I was an inspector. They had shocking news about our former supervisor that I had not heard. The manager had been intoxicated while driving and had been involved in an accident where he was at fault where he had survived and someone he had involved in the accident had died. He had received a sentence for the negligent homicide, but just before he had to report to serve that sentence he committed suicide. It was the saddest of endings possible due to his drinking. I couldn't help but feel some empathy for him despite him negligently causing the death of another person. I knew him to be a good natured person not deserving of such a fate. But abuse of alcohol is by all evidence a hard habit to break, and some even say it is a disease. I could go on and on about other management and coworker antics I know of that are not so tragic, but instead are of the depraved variety, but I won't because I want to keep this site "G" rated. 

Then there are the few people at Boeing with "issues"--anti-social types that anger at over the slightest perceived slight, and try to make other people as miserable as they almost constantly are. You will find a range of personality types covering almost the whole spectrum of the public. You find people that ineract with other employees in such hostile ways and say things to others that make you wonder why they are still employed. Without naming all the personality types, I'm sure you can imagine the rest as you've probably encountered them at your company if it is of any size. Walking into Boeing, you will find a similar mix of people--average people you would find at most other companies--individuals in every sense of the word. What you won't find is what you see in Boeing ads--always happy, always caring employees whose only wish is to build/inspect the best airplane they can with their universally exceptional skills.

Noteably, probably the most common trait among the Boeing employees I worked with is actually quite sad. I was even afflicted with it. Due to actual and/or perceived management indifference and/or hostility (adverse outsourcing decisions, the habitual offering of lowball and takeaway contracts that make workers have to strike almost every contract year, etc.), most workers I knew were constantly in "countdown" mode--very anxiously waiting for the day when they could "fly the Boeing coop" at the earliest time and retire. Needless to say, these worker's morale could have used much improvement. I suppose the closest analogy is that of a prisoner waiting for the day their sentence is up and they will be freed. Such was the morale where I worked. Add to that the constant worrying of employees who see the almost constant outsourcing of Boeing jobs and other management schemes to similarly get rid of workers on the Boeing payroll, and you also have workers very concerned if they will ever make it to their retirement date at Boeing without having their jobs eliminated first.

So, contrary to what is shown on TV in Boeing commercials, working at Boeing is no paradise of personnel and management appreciation for services rendered--it is actually quite the opposite. Boeing could have such a workforce if they screened people enough before hiring and fired the people who slipped through that screening, but, when you are part of the Boeing team, literally, as I was, you see that such screening, if it exists, does not work well at all.

Boeing is still sadly an overly schedule and cost driven company, to the point of exclusion of doing things that should be done before delivery of the product, such as Boeing procedure and regulatorily required inspections and tests as noted elsewhere on this site. Nothing gets the workers who want to impress the boss in "chicken with head cut off" mode quite like even just the possibility of missing a schedule. This is ingrained in workers at Boeing over their decades of their service from almost their first day at Boeing, so it should not be too surprising that other things at Boeing have to bend to make sure the schedule is met. One of my QA supervisors told me this explicitly--that we only inspected when we had time between the time shop finished work and when the propulsion unit shipped, as noted elsewhere on this site. QA is supposed to be an independent organization per the FAA regulations so that corruption in QA like I experienced at Boeing theoretically cannot take root at aviation companies that follow the regulations, and inspections can actually be done all of the time by QA without interference from other organizations, and done correctly. I saw that this required "independence" did not in effect exist between QA and other organizations, except in the few cases such as mine where individual inspectors independently attempted to maintain the required independence regardless of the intensity of the pressure to do otherwise.

It had gotten so bad where I worked that the most corrupt inspectors seemed to almost fall over each other on "ship days" (the day the Engine Buidup or strut assy or APU was scheduled to be transported to the factory for installation on the airplane) to be the most accommodating to shop by performing record time "inspections" and then rollerstamping the paperwork off so the unit could ship on schedule, no matter how far shop was behind schedule on completing the build on time. These inspectors seemed to take pride in the fact that they helped shop get the product out the door on schedule much more than taking pride in the work they were supposed to do per their job titles and procedures in inspecting the product with the requisite thoroughness regardless of how late shop was finishing the assembly. Of course, how could anyone take pride in something they really diidn't do?

A case in point (among many) is when I was walking by the "end of the (production) line" for one of the engine buildups. An inspector (one of the better ones) was "madly" stamping off the almost three inch thick stack of production paperwork after "inspecting" the EBU. I asked them what was going on that day, trying to make small talk. They said they were, quote "rollerstamping--that's what they want."  

This ethic of some inspectors to think their job was to get the product out the door on time rather than inspect the product as required before it left bothered me, as you might imagine. My corrupt QA supervisor had put me in a room one on one in an effort to get me to join this fraud, yet I refused to go as far as he wanted down that path other inspectors had been on ever since I knew them. I thought that getting a baseball cap and/or T-shirt and having "Shipping Assurance" embroidered on them and wearing them to work would make a significant statement and maybe wake some inspectors up to doing their jobs. However, I never did it, as the more likely outcome was that I would be terminated for thusly pointing out how bad things had really gotten. 

That brings up another "imperative" at Boeing used similarly to schedule--cost.

Since the 1997 production snarls at Boeing, cost has also been driven into worker's heads by upper management to be as important as schedule to attain. And, unfortunately, this pursuit of cost (like schedule) also came at the expense of things perceived to not be "value-added" at Boeing, such as required inspections. 

So, all in all in my experience, Boeing is quite a disfunctional company due to many factors, such as a continuing tolerance for corruption and ethical problems in the company, a "war" waged by management against their own worker's existance and livelihhods that has cut morale to the bone, making workers feel unappreciated to say the least, a focus on cost and schedule and managers increasing their merit bonuses to the point that many of the basics don't get done before the product delivers, such as inspections and tests. It is a focus so acute that the focus has been lost on what Boeing builds--airplanes--and the importance of the processes that ensure their safety, conformance, and reliability. I long ago lost the ability to feel pride in my work in ensuring those basic requirements were met. I still did my job to the best of my ability because I knew how important my job was despite my own management telling me otherwise by their actions, and sometimes their words. I may have ensured that the engine buildup I inspected didn't deliver with defects and out of configuration, but that was just one of the minimum two engines on each airplane, not counting the APU. It was hard to feel pride in doing a job you knew would get you into trouble if you did too well (or at all, in some cases), and even if you did your job well the component would mate up with an airplane that for the most part had not been inspected as required, so it was difficult to take pride in a product that you knew was riddled with undetected defects that were overlooked by other inspectors just "doing their jobs" the way their management wanted them to do them. That is why I never put my 401K money in Boeing stock--I saw "how the sausage was made" at Boeing every day.

Then you also have a company described by one of its Corporate Investigation Department's managers as "the most arrogant company on the face of the planet." Add to that instances of retaliation against whistleblowers like me despite Boeing testifying before Congress that they have internal protections against that happening, and a Law Department that I have witnessed serve to protect Boeing's ability to continue fraudulent activities (as noted elsewhere on this site), and you have the company Boeing is today, unrepentant and still unreformed. But the main message of this section is to try to describe the reality of what it is like to be a worker at Boeing, as opposed to those "workers" shown in Boeing PR advertising. Most Boeing employees I've seen just want to get their eight hours done and get home ASAP after that to live their lives, like alot of workers in other industries. The vast majority of Boeing employees don't care nearly enough about their work to place their own jobs in jeopardy to do the right thing and go outside of Boeing to authorities when Boeing refuses to do the right thing internally. That is understandable, from a self and family preservation standpoint, but not the right thing to do given how many people risk flying on Boeing's products.

The other interesting thing I learned in QA at Boeing was something that you (I didn't) might not expect. I noticed that several of the most ardent rollerstamping inspectors and QA managers that seemed to do mostly the opposite of their job titles were very, very religious people. This was quite disturbing to me, how someone that seemed to make a point of going to church every Sunday and wearing their religiousity proudly "on their sleeve" at work would so readily engage in conduct not only illegal, but, it would seem, also morally wrong. Of course, we've all heard stories of even church leaders doing heinous acts while in their positions of trust, but this observation of mine is somewhat different, perhaps. Did these people believe that God would somehow make the products they rollerstamped the inspections off as done when they weren't done conforming because they were so faithful? Or that He would protect the passengers on those planes when they thusly did not do their jobs? I don't know the reason, but it would be interesting to find out how such people reconcile their actions with their religion. I'm not a theologian, but I would suspect that accepting God as your savior would not be the only criteria to allow your passage into Heaven, but that your actions and their effects also have some bearing. If so, I would guess that many people who think they might have an easy passage in the afterlife to their Heaven may be in for quite a surprise. Is this to say that every deeply religious inspector I met was this way? Of course not, just most of the ones I knew. There were a couple very devout inspectors I knew that acted like I would have expected such a religious person to act--they did the right thing (within the limits they could in the Boeing QA system they were dealt) and did their inspection jobs to the best of their ability because they knew it was the right and moral thing to do. Sorry to get off on a tangent on the touchy subject of religion, but I was quite astonished how how religious a person was seemed to not be an indicator on which side of the "rollerstamping fence" they fell, and indeed some of the most religious were the most egregious rollerstampers, in my experience. Indeed, I've found, going to church or even having faith does not make you a good person--your actions must be taken into account as well.

So hopefully this will give you a greater view into the "worforce culture" at Boeing, and may help you understand how other things described on this site occurred. Don't let the commercials fool you. People at Boeing are just ordinary people. And some (like I was), are under extraordinary pressure to do the wrong thing.