Anyway, the story was, when Boeing bid for the KC-46 program, they priced the program using a very low number of senior engineers. Obviously, paying five year's salary to 200 Level 1 engineers is a heck of a lot cheaper than paying it to 200 Level 5s. I don't have the current salary scale, but a 2002 contract on my PC shows the minimum salary for a Level 1 was *half* that of a level 6. The highest-level engineers are actually paid executive-level salaries, with similar perks.
As the story goes, Boeing was going to rely on its first- and second-tier managers to provide the guidance traditionally provided by senior engineering leads. Many managers, of course, came up from the engineering ranks. However, many haven't... they work the minimum time as an engineer, and go into the more-lucrative management track. Also, while engineers are paid a nominal stipend on overtime, many managers aren't paid overtime. More cost savings, at the expense of burned-out managers.
And here's the magical thing: Most government programs don't pay for the level of engineering experience. There's a flat rate, and Boeing gets paid that rate whether it's a 25-year veteran technical fellow or a guy who just graduated from engineering school last month. More profit.
And, I think profit is the key thing, here. Good QA is legendarily expensive. You save a buck, somewhere, by reducing QA and you reap a lot of benefits.
If you work at Boeing, you see a lot of yellowed Quality posters on the wall, and maybe twice a year you have some company-mandated Quality Assurance training. But every, SINGLE day, the company message is "Enhance shareholder value": In other words, cut cost, reduce schedule. And QA is anathema to both those factors.
Ron Wanttaja
