Boeing battles brain drain as engineers chase the allure of space

The tenure of the average Boeing engineer is getting shorter, as rank-and-file talent departs the struggling plane maker. Boeing is cutting jobs by 10 per cent across the company, and this month a second round of lay-offs brought the total of union-represented engineers leaving to 400, ‘The Financial Times’ writes.

The average tenure of a Boeing engineer has fallen over the past decade from 16.4 years to 12.6 years, according to data from the union representing 12,000 Boeing engineers, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace.

Tenure shortened in almost every age bracket, with employees in their 20s and 30s averaging fewer years, as well as those in their late 40s through 65. The risk of this “brain drain”, as analysts, recruiters and union officials have described it, is that it drags on current operations and could make it harder for Boeing to launch its next new plane.

“All of this experience is gone,” said Matt Kempf, SPEEA’s senior director for compensation and retirement. That raises concerns because “aerospace engineers aren’t made, they’re grown”. Boeing said that it “continues to be in a strong position to compete for and retain top aerospace engineering talent with market-leading pay, benefits and work-life balance.

Competition with the space industry to hire and retain talent is one factor in engineers’ diminishing tenure at Boeing.

The company is fertile recruiting ground for Blue Origin and SpaceX as the space industry has boomed in Washington state over the last four to six years, said Stan Shull, founder of the advisory firm Alliance Velocity. He estimates about 15 per cent of Blue Origin’s workforce in Puget Sound has prior experience at Boeing.

Boeing has struggled in recent years. Two fatal crashes led to a worldwide grounding of the plane in 2019, while this year it suffered two public mishaps, first when a door panel flew off a jet during a commercial flight and then when Nasa chose rival SpaceX to return two astronauts to Earth.

The catastrophes of the last five years have left the company trying to repair its balance sheet, and chief executive Kelly Ortberg said in October that Boeing would eliminate 10 per cent of its workforce, or 17,000 jobs.

Boeing also has held back on announcing a new plane, depriving engineers of a moonshot project to excite imaginations. The last “clean sheet” aeroplane was launched 20 years ago and became the 787.

“Engineers are simple,” said Bank of America analyst Ron Epstein. “If you put them in a room with Coca-Cola, doughnuts, a pizza and a cool problem, they’ll never leave. So do you want to fix some old aeroplanes that are having production problems, or do you want to go to Mars?”

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