Does anyone actually remember the smell of the shop floor in the 90s?

tx · 2026-04-29T00:00:27.256Z

I walked past the shadow of a fuselage today and realized I don’t recognize the ghosts anymore. It used to be that the engineers held the keys to the kingdom; now, it feels like we’re just managing a spreadsheet that happens to have wings attached to it. Back when we were "The Company," a concern raised on the floor stopped the line. Period. There was a sacred weight to the work—a quiet, heavy responsibility that we all shared. Now, communication is just a series of filtered slide decks and "alignment" meetings where the truth is sanded down until it’s perfectly smooth and entirely useless. We’ve traded craftsmanship for a cadence of quarterly optics. They talk about "streamlining," but it feels like we’re just hollowed out, waiting for someone to tell us what we’re allowed to care about next. I miss when we built planes instead of defending positions. Does anyone else feel like we’re just watching the slow sunset of a masterpiece?

Does anyone actually remember the smell of the shop floor in the 90s? | Boeing Discussions