I am an early career engineer. This company is screwed long term.
I have been at the company for a couple of years and have come to the opinion that Boeing is in huge trouble in the long term for the following reasons:
Pay. The current pay is not enough to retain talent. The cost of living has exploded in the last 4 years. Myself as well as many other young engineers cannot afford to live by themselves in prime Boeing locations and do not see this getting any better in the future. Remote work provided a potential path to this but that has been axed. I as well as many other early-mid level (2-5 YOE) engineers are actively looking to job hop as soon as possible.
Antiquated tools. Boeing is decades behind when it comes to modern tools. Software is 15-30 years old, computer systems are slow and bloated. Hours are wasted everyday just to find basic drawings or information thanks to the refusal of older engineers to learn new systems.
Lack of knowledge transfer. Many of the older engineers that I have worked with have tribal knowledge going back decades and don’t take the time to document or train early careers. Time and time again, the training is left to mid career or other early careers. On top of this, these same senior engineers are the first to scold younger engineerings when they don’t know they answer or mess up.
Incompetent middle/senior management. I have had some really good first line managers and some really bad first line managers. The commonality between both is how bad the level one to two levels above them is. These people are one of the biggest problems in the company as all bad information stops at them. They are too afraid to give their bosses bad news so everything that is filtered up through them is sugar coated to the point where it may as well be fantasy by the time it gets to an executive. Need more resources? By the time it gets to someone with the ability to change it, they have been told that we are doing great with the current resources.
Outsourcing. It’s no secret to anyone working in engineering that we are on a hiring freeze (or extremely limited to hiring)… except for India. This is still in its early stages but I can already tell you from first hand experience, it is not working very well. For those of you who do not work for Boeing and frequent this sub, yes the company with a safety culture and quality crisis is actively (and expanding) outsourcing the same engineering jobs responsible for your safety. This is also the exact feedback given to management but going back to the previous point, the response has been to outsource more.