I worked for Airbus a long time ago, and obviously I have some rose-tinted glasses, but what stands out in my memories:
- While the French and Germans love to hate each other, they culturally complement each other very well. I don’t think Airbus could have happened as a purely French or German project (and yes, the UK and Spain are also part of Airbus but are much less visible)
- Despite being a highly political entity, you wouldn’t feel any of that day to day. Even up to the highest management levels, it felt like an engineering company focused on incredibly hard engineering challenges. Every once in a while, there was fighting over which country would get which work share for a new project, but it felt more like internal teams pushing their pet peeves rather than external political influence
- It was a truly international company. My first team had eight colleagues based in four countries. To make it all work, they had some very early video conferencing systems where the equipment would take up entire side rooms.
French engineers were known for their willingness to embrace advanced, high-risk technologies to gain a decisive advantage in the aerospace market.
French influence drove Airbus's early focus on understanding customer needs and adapting to market requirements. Early on, the company adopted English as its working language and U.S. measurements to appeal to a wider range of airline customers.
German engineers brought a reputation for meticulous attention to detail, efficiency, and robust industrial processes, ensuring reliable and high-quality production.
Germany's strong engineering foundation provided the technical discipline needed to standardize components and organize the complex cross-border manufacturing process.
Yes. Also the way how internal collaboration works. A lot of focus on relationship building and pre-alignments vs a content-first approach („people will accept it if it’s just correct enough“). In any real-world situation that matters it will always take a bit of both
There was that problem with CAD software on the A380: German teams used CATIA version 4, while French had upgraded to version 5, resulting in incompatibilities.
"By late autumn, a team of around 200 German mechanics was in Toulouse along with several hundred kilometers of electrical cables to be installed in the first planes. But after weeks of painstakingly threading thousands of veins of copper and aluminum wire around the walls and floor panels of the airframes, the teams had run into a maddening snag: the cables were too short.
"The wiring wasn't following the expected routing through the fuselage, so when we got to the end they weren't long enough to meet up with the connectors on the next section," said one German mechanic, who said he arrived in Toulouse in early 2005. He asked not to be identified out of fear that he might lose his job. "The calculations were wrong," he said. "Everything had to be ripped out and replaced from scratch." --- nytimes https://archive.vn/uLIqa#selection-603.204-617.419
What’s your source for that? It reads like a cliché, especially when you know about the arguably stronger engineering background in France when it comes to aerospace.
In France we're creative but sloppy, in Germany they care about the process too much but they don't deviate from plans. It's nice to have both: what's the point of following the plan if the entire project is pointless ? French people would challenge early and often, while germans would implement correctly and to the letter.
I really feel we complement each other, each time I work with germans they fix my tendency to be quick and dirty and I push them to accelerate and take shortcuts when they make sense.
That started before airbus. People forget that Aerospatiale (a founder of airbus) was a partner in Concord (aka Concorde). That is where cross-boarder aerospace really got started. Many saw such partnerships as key to keeping Europe together politically. Without Concorde-Airbus, europe might have looked very different.
Your note on politics is interesting because my anecdotal experience was quite different.
I worked at an Airbus offshoot in Silicon Valley and my visit to Toulouse for a bunch of meetings with the teams working on new tech and AI things were somewhat shocking.
The amount of sniping in meetings, and the amount of post-meeting behind the back sniping was somewhat shocking.
This was somewhat mirrored to a lesser extent even in our videoconf meetings and other collaborations.
It left me wondering how a group of people who seem to think so poorly of each other and work so dysfunctionally could actually come together to build some of the most amazing machines on earth (because modern airliners truly are such things).
The best take I could come up with was "Maybe all the adversity and mistrust means the end up building things that survive intense scrutiny."
That level of sniping also means that groupthink can't happen, which is a major problem at Boeing: nobody wanted to speak up about obvious problems, and those that did saw their careers ended.
It’s fair to describe Boeing’s problems as being caused by Boeing now being actually McDonnell Douglas. It’s only called Boeing because MD had a terrible reputation.
Maybe the real reason is more related to Price’s law/Pareto’s principle, loosely meaning that 90% of the work is done by 10% of the people. In other words, in large companies most perons do not contribute much, at least not at the same time.
And it's also quite possible that my view (which was across a slice of new-technology stuff hosted by the "innovation" arm) was skewed, and things aren't the same elsewhere in the company.
Office politics, I guess, though it was kind of tinged since the offices were in different countries, but it still was Airbus-level, not nation-level, I guess.
While there is some amount of sniping and banter everywhere whenever Americans and French will have different ways of expressing " this is 90% great" or "this is only 10% usable"
Americans might praise a bad solution one moment (for politeness) and turn their back on you the other while French will say "this is ok" while they are deeply enjoying it
If we talk about the same „innovation“ offshoot, it happened right after I left the company. I think the cultural change that the top leadership at that time wanted to push was just too much to not cause a backlash. A new CTO who was perceived as an outsider, a somewhat implied message that the Silicon Valley’s way of working was superior to the company‘s traditional approach, and the internal realization that Airbus started to lag behind leading to the typical defensive behaviors. Curious how the culture evolved since then
I left A^3 (or Acubed, groan) 5 years ago, to relocate overseas, so I don't know how it's been since. There was definitely a bit of a "Silicon Valley knows best" attitude that I didn't buy into (because the people I met at Airbus were pretty damn sharp ... while I felt very overpaid, but anyway).
There was always some talk of maneuvering around other groups who wanted our project or wanted to beat us to the punch or whatever, which felt a bit pointlessly unproductive to me, so I did my best to ignore it and try to just deliver.
I did get to meet some cool people, though, including Grazia Vittadini, so I can't complain.
Well they had a good run in 80s and 90s now they are massively behind competition and being kept alive by government payouts (to be fair much like France itself..)
France is being kept alive by paying itself? Makes no sense.
Also arianespace group has 60% of their revenue from the development of the m51 nuclear launcher, the rocket thing is their side show and a way to subsidize our nuclear launcher development not the other way around.
Also ag studied a reusable launcher in the early 2000s and found it not viable economically, because it wasn't, to make it work space x had to have massive government subsidies in guaranteed launch AND starlink which was essentially let our own investors and the dod feed the finance of space x until it's viable. Which is a good strategy mind you, but as a result pointing the finger at ag being supported by government funding as if it was a bad sign is rather absurd.
> France is being kept alive by paying itself? Makes no sense.
For the past 18 years at least, France has been trapped in an economic stagnation driven by terrible economic policies (as if trying to outcompete eastern Europe on cost wasn't a great idea). The only thing that keeps the economist from collapsing entirely is the perpetual stimulus from public spending using foreign loans. (This also will probably stop being sufficient soon since the governing party seems to be obsessed by the idea of reducing public spending instead of fixing their economic policy).
Well I would disagree with that and laugh at the fact that this exact analysis has been published by The Economist and similar for the past 50 years, in fact for the first time France unemployment numbers have gone below the numbers they climbed to in the 90s, and in 2020 for the first time since the turn of the century our deficit was reaching a point allowing our debt to start lowering instead of climbing, and was stopped by a combination of both covid and then the energy crisis and the cover offered to french people.
We do have issues and for the past 3 years they've been amplified by our political standoff (parliament cut in three third and none agree to work with the others), but the core of our economic woes is from pensions.
Inflation != currency devaluation and France had a pretty tame inflation compared to many of its neighbors (significantly less than Belgium for instance), which again is a good illustration that inflation has nothing to do with the money supply or the value of a currency, no matter how prevalent this myth is.
Neither which is the same as expanding the monetary base (debasement if you want to be spicy).
An economy with a shrinking money supply can experience inflation and devaluation relative to other currencies. An economy with a growing money supply can experience deflation and a strong currency.
> Neither which is the same as expanding the monetary base (debasement if you want to be spicy).
“debasement” proper is also something else.
> An economy with a shrinking money supply can experience inflation and devaluation relative to other currencies. An economy with a growing money supply can experience deflation and a strong currency.
Yes. And an economy with a growing money supply can experience inflation and having a strong currency at the same time (see what happened to the US and the US Dollar in the first half of 2022).
> By 2021 it had increased by same % as 2009 to 2015.
It increased faster but the money supply variation was in the same ballpark, when the CPI evolution definitely wasn't (you can compare CPI between 2009 and 2015 and 2019-2021 you'll see that there's no link between inflation and the money supply).
> Not massive inflation in asset prices. All that money had to go somewhere, so stocks are now significantly overvalued and housing is unaffordable.
This has nothing to do with “inflation” (which, by definition is the evolution of CPI).
And the solution to this problem is actually quite simple: tax the rich (who got their free central bank money from nothing in exchange).
> Well I would disagree with that and laugh at the fact that this exact analysis has been published by The Economist and similar for the past 50 years
I'd be happy to live in a timeline where the Economist criticizes the bullshit that “supply chain economics” is, but if you paid attention you'd be aware that it's not really their editorial line.
> fact for the first time France unemployment numbers have gone below the numbers they climbed to in the 90s
You should thank the boomers for retiring, not the economic policy. (By the way, employment went up in pretty much all of Europe for the 2010-2020 period while the economy stagnated in most places but the east)
> We do have issues and for the past 3 years they've been amplified by our political standoff (parliament cut in three third and none agree to work with the others
Standoff caused exactly by the government dogmatic stand over their failed economic policy …
> but the core of our economic woes is from pensions.
It is not, this is government narrative. The “pension problem” is merely an economic activity problem. When the real wages go down (which is did in France since 2017) while pensions are inflation adjusted, obviously the share of income that goes through pensions increases but that's not a “pensions problem” it's a wage issue (and economy health issue).
In fact, public spending per capita is in the middle of what remwins of the EU15 (just above all other Mediterranean countries and below all the others). The reason why the spendings per capita ratio is too high is not because the spendings are too high, but because the GDP is far too low due to inept policies.
> France is being kept alive by paying itself? Makes no sense.
Yes, by borrowing. Any meaningful reforms seems infeasible due to social and political reasons.
> Also arianespace group has 60% of their revenue from the development of the m51 nuclear launcher
Yes, so we agree its hardly much more than a government military contractor making its money from legacy products and not some sort of an innovative company.
It's just an orbital launch vehicle. Something the US can produce by dozens per day it needed. Whereas the French have a stockpile which is no more than 50 with a production rate of maybe 1 or 2 per month.
NASA once offered the UK to launch its satellites almost for free. That offer was rescinded as soon as the UK abandoned its national space program. [1]
From a European perspective, it’s impossible to look at the current situation and believe it would be the same without Ariane 6, even if Ariane 6 itself isn’t particularly competitive. Sovereign access to space is invaluable. Once you lose it, you hand an extraordinary amount of leverage to the White House. And make no mistake: that leverage will be used, whatever the color of the administration.
Yes, that’s not the point I was trying to make, though. But in a way Arianespace doesn’t really need to innovate or compete because because they’ll always have funding due to these legitimate strategic reasons
I have met many former Airbus engineers and former Airbus contractors. Every single time I have heard nothing but bad things about the company.
Sure, selection bias, but everything I heard is exactly what I would expect from a large corporation, split across a continent at its worst. Long, tedious decision processes which are completely opaque together with a culture, where management sees it as their responsibility to create a large bureocratic processes to navigate the extremely challenging landscape, where culture and geography clash. Mind you these are complaints from people still working in Aerospace.
In general I have always had terrible experience the more diverse and intercultural Teams got. The best teams I experienced are homogeneous, ideally only including people from a small geographic region, with very similar sensibilities. Even inside a nation regional sensibilities can be a challenge.
Super sorry that these have been your experiences. Working for a very different company now, I again ended up in a highly international setting and - with good leadership - it can be incredibly enriching (the company is the result of several global mergers). Unfortunately, the way it works in many companies nowadays, the only situation where teams experience working with other countries are in settings that are imbalanced from the start (e.g., after offshoring)
Dealing with offshoring was very tedious, as you now have even more layers. Digital only communication, time differences, etc.
But in person is also very bad. I never was part of a well functioning multi cultural team. And every homogenous team I have been in was well functioning. At this point I will actively seek out employment in teams where I am only among native speakers and as far as possible only among natives.
>Super sorry
What are you sorry about? I quit the job, partly because I couldn't stand having half a dozen different communication barriers.
>it can be incredibly enriching
I have never found a single positive aspect. None of the multi cultural teams have "enriched" me in any way, most often they made me dislike the other cultures.
I found it really difficult to figure out if it is safe to turn on web search in a corporate (or privacy critical) environment. The AI companies generally seem to claim it’s safe but looking at this + the general ability of Google Search Console to display search queries, the answer seems a no? Did anyone already found definitive proof either way (beyond the bug(?) of this article)
I definitely wouldn't! Beyond the "glitch" I'm reporting here where full prompts are seemingly sent to GSC, it may still be that searches are scraped... meaning that while it's less obviously personal than a raw prompt it still could leak user intent.
the moment that prompt is typed to a third party, then we must assume that it's stored and will be eventually used for statistics or any other reason, it's a bit insane how we went completely backward in security since GPT 3.5, we have people defending privacy policies of tech giants but they are known to constantly breach them :/
"To protect user privacy, the Performance report doesn't show all data. For example, we might not track some queries that are made a very small number of times or those that contain personal or sensitive information."
While I fully agree that there are a lot of complicated rules for edge cases, for simple (non self employed) cases it is very straightforward. In fact, you don’t have to do anything at all in many cases and still won’t be screwed over as the German IRS will assume typical deductions. There is an official free filing software and if you spend 20-30 USD a year you’ll get access to super easy to use professional filing software. My situation is more complicated than most and I spend 2hrs a year for my entire family
That depends if one measures productivity in LOCs or business impact. As always, it’s not black or white, but my experience is that higher proximity is a net benefit
As with many things in economics the effect of a measure often depends on the timeframe one considers. Honestly, anything could be true if one just chooses the appropriate timeframe. However, the tariffs clearly introduce an inefficiency which - globally speaking - will be net negative. Locally speaking, though, who knows …
Tariffs existed before Trump, and existed by other countries against the US.
Did those not introduce inefficiency? Actually, it probably produced more inefficiency because most people were probably under thr impression most of the world was under free trade, hence the existence of the WTC.
Not knowing a tax is much more inefficient than knowing a tax.
Worked in a 2nd-tier city in France for a while. And, yes, salaries are low in comparison but I found it a very livable place. The French just emphasize different things. Good quality restaurants are very affordable, I had 45 days of paid vacation, etc.
I just spent a few weeks in southern France. Lovely place, lovely food, lovely people...
...with one national flaw. All that lovely food is available strictly between the hours of 12 and 2 (for lunch) and 7 and 9 (for dinner). If you don't eat on the precise timetable as everyone else (say, jetlag) then you don't eat.
It's a small city thing. In Paris and Lyon at least, some establishments have very extended hours or are even 24/7. And you can get a kebab at ungodly hours in even small cities.
Even in small towns in the US, it's fairly rare for restaurants to have such limited hours. It's more commonly seen with high end restaurants in cities.
I certainly understand why, I'm not mad about it, just a disappointed. I really liked the food.
To be honest, my Garmin watches always felt like engineering marvels to me. Rugged, very long battery lives, small form factors, and for many years at the forefront of what was thought possible. Progress slowed down somewhat, but I still get a lot of joy out of them (currently a Forerunner 965). I haven’t been wearing my mechanical watch for ages. And as a sports watch they are very hard to beat
Agree. If one is on the happy path, it’s perfect. Otherwise, the better companies have a smooth handover to a human who then already had an AI check all the basic questions (who are you? What do you want? Have you tried switching it off and on again?)
Maybe, but the opposite might also be true. There is value in aggregating sources and filtering signal from noise. The value of such should increase with the growth of social media. Maybe you won’t reach everyone with such a business (see the decline in newspaper) but some will always pay for this
- While the French and Germans love to hate each other, they culturally complement each other very well. I don’t think Airbus could have happened as a purely French or German project (and yes, the UK and Spain are also part of Airbus but are much less visible)
- Despite being a highly political entity, you wouldn’t feel any of that day to day. Even up to the highest management levels, it felt like an engineering company focused on incredibly hard engineering challenges. Every once in a while, there was fighting over which country would get which work share for a new project, but it felt more like internal teams pushing their pet peeves rather than external political influence
- It was a truly international company. My first team had eight colleagues based in four countries. To make it all work, they had some very early video conferencing systems where the equipment would take up entire side rooms.