> Replace Boeing with Facebook/Google, and it still sounds strange to feel bad for the workers at those companies when the executives make bad decisions like chasing profits over all.

I don't understand this sentiment at all. I know quite a few people who worked on the Google Domains team. It was a good team, a good product, and it sadly was all blown up by some senior executive decision that didn't make any sense.

Why can't I feel bad for the workers I knew whose product got deleted out from under their feet?? Some of them are in the process of getting laid off now!

There is a lot of pride to be had from seeing something you worked on, with your own hands, successfully work - look at mission control videos for examples of how excited people get. Conversely, if it fails, there’s a lot of disappointment.

You can’t compare something like these massive pieces of hardware with people inside failing and taking all your work with it, with some software launch that maybe fails and takes a couple of bugs to be fixed before relaunch.

The Boeing story is tragic because they were a source of pride for America overall, played a huge part in winning WW2, made some great technological advances, but succumbed to MBAs fleecing all their goodwill. There are still world class aerospace engineers working there, and sure they could probably get a job somewhere else, but they might need to uproot their lives to do so.

Interestingly the market for Aerospace engineers is really small. For many of those guys, they could only go work at Airbus or Embraer. Some could potentially get jobs in military with Lockheed or something. Very few may be able to find work with Textron or similar.

Curious if you generally lack empathy?

> Replace Boeing with Facebook/Google, and it still sounds strange to feel bad for the workers at those companies when the executives make bad decisions like chasing profits over all. I mean, why?

Because there are people working at Boeing, people like you or me, who poured their heart into the project and the institution sapped their energy away and made their efforts ultimately worse than futile.

There was someone working at Boeing who spent years of their life qualifying those thrusters. They tried their very best. Perhaps they even batted for more testing. Or more analysis. Or perhaps they didn't because they didn't know better, but they still spent their best effort to do a good job.

And when they heard that the engines are acting up they probably felt like a trap door has opened under them. They felt that sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach. Either angry that they haven't caught this in testing, or angry that they haven't approved their request to test more.

Years and years ago they proudly told their mom/girlfriend/drinking buddies that they are working on a beautiful spaceship. And they were very proud of the project. And now all those people have heard that their spaceship is a liability. All that good feeling turned ash in their mouth.

There are people at Boeing who worked very very hard the last few weeks (months?) trying to uncover what is wrong with those thrusters. There are others who spent endless hours in meetings with NASA discussing risks and explaining tests and arguing persuasively that the space ship is fine enough to ride. And it is not really their individual fault that the spaceship is not fine.

And even worse, there are people who spent years of their life designing and building flawless systems. And they did a great job and built their subsystem really really well. Well made, high quality products. Yet nobody will think of their stuff positively because some other subsystem failed.

It is kind of like you are working on a beautiful great pyramid. (FYI pyramids were not built by slaves.) And you work hard, and quarry stone all day, and shape it, and push it and pull it and you really really do your best job. You are really a champ. And you should deserve to celebrate in the sun with your team mates the beautiful pyramid. But unfortunately you are not one of the lucky ones working on Khufu's pyramid, you are on the team which works the second pyramid built for Sneferu. And something is wrong with the plans. Or the foundations, or the site selection. Or the rocks are not strong enough. Nobody really knows but even though you are doing a great job individually the damn thing is collapsing in front of your eyes. And it will be known forever as the "bent pyramid". And it sucks. And you feel bad. And that is sad and we should feel bad for those people.