Allegations of criminality by Boeing in deceased whistleblower complaint (opens in new tab)

There's a happy way to look at it, and an unhappy way. The unhappy way is that whoever Epsteined him has enough juice/skill/perseverance to wipe the tapes between the moment of recording and a courtroom. The happy way is that the cops aren't releasing it because it looks an awful lot like a goddamn murder scene, with all sorts of weird details, 1) apparently the guy wasn't depressed, 2) packing bags - and leaving them behind - seems a bit peculiar on your way to shoot yourself, 3) that third-party nugget about "if something happens to me . .", and 4) a gazillion dollars and who knows what else worth of motive.

But things being what they are, the most likely scenario is that the poor guy was just too tired to keep cranking for nothing, wife's gone, only to head home to his ma like he's thirteen years old. Nothing to show for fifty something years of honest work and advocacy, so he punches his dance card. That doesn't fit, in my brain, because of how focused he's been on this, but people are fuckin' complicated, and shit sucks. There but for God go etc etc etc.

To the point where someone specifically asking for face to face - during a review of a flight critical system - will get eyebrows raised halfway to the outermost of Saturn's rings. Hell, if eyebrows aren't raised you should get serious gut trembles, aka what in the hell is going on here.

The fact someone put this in an official record . . a record that presumably other people looked at, and approved . . is . . honestly, I'm not sure what's going on here. The generous interpretation is that leadership doesn't have a good grip on what a flight critical system is, how it's classified, for whatever reason, so they feel like engineers are constantly overreacting. "They're always whining 'flight critical'! Wah wah wah flight critical this, flight critical that". The bad interpretation is that they know what it is, and they don't care. That might be where the specific adjective "criminal" comes into play.

[1] And I would assume in any other safety-critical industry

[2] I.e. refusal to enter durable record, i.e., signature, email, a ticketing system, a microphone you hid in your tie, etc. This is all specc'd to the wazoo, by the way . . for the suppliers, anyway. Here's the fun thing about Boeing and ISO: Boeing never certs to AS9100. Boeing (BCA specifically) never needs to pass a formal audit, because as far as the ISO/SAE steering is concerned, Boeing is AS9100. Boeing’s Alan Daniels headed both ISO9001 and AS9100 committees without ever working under a cert AS9100 system his entire life, or ever certifying Boeing in either. But they can fine their suppliers umptillion million dollars for using the wrong font on their AS9100-certified quality documents. Isn't that grand? Bonus: Boeing's prime seats at ISO and AS9100 lets them lean hard on the up and comers too cough SpaceX cough, to boot.

“XYZ still needs to learn the art of async (‘asynchronous’) communication to address and follow up on issues instead of using emphemeral F2F ('face to face') engagement to express process violations.”