I was responding to “the bean counters running the company need to be replaced with engineers” by pointing out that the man at the top is, at least by training, an engineer.

Let’s look at the timeline:

• 1985 - Muilenburg joins Boeing
• Aug 2011 - 737 Max announced
• Dec 2013 - Muilenburg becomes president of Boeing
• July 2015 - Muilenburg becomes CEO of Boeing
• Jan 2016 - First 737 Max flight
• Mar 2017 - FAA certifies 737 Max
• May 2017 - First 737 Max commercial flight
• Oct 2018 - Lion Air Flight 610 crashes
• Mar 2019 - Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashes
• Dec 2019 - Muilenburg resigned

An aerospace analyst writes:

Dennis Muilenburg, whose strategy appears to be to maximize the share price for stockholders, and the executive team that holds stock and options. Having returned nearly $50 billion to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks over the last five years, rather than invest in new products to better compete with Airbus, Boeing’s market share is falling and, given the aforementioned failures, is losing its reputation for quality and safety.

Are you seriously arguing that a man who is qualified to see the problems and dangers of the 737 Max and then chose to ignore them in favour of pressuring regulators and collecting profits shouldn’t be held responsible? He was in a senior position while the development happened and was in the top spot when it was certified. If the head of the company shouldn’t be held responsible, who should be?

Ignoring his time as president, four years is definitely enough time to see what kind of leader he was, and all of the internal messages coming out show no attempt to change the culture.