Yikes!
After I grad college, a bunch of my classmates went to work for Boeing, believe in their Renton and Everett offices/plants. A few were working on escape systems (exit doors and other stuff). They were a wide range of engineering backgrounds. Civil, Mechanical (HVAC, Cooling, not airplanes), etc. It seemed like Boeing was hiring essenally anyone with a degree and a pulse. Yeah, there's OJT, but to have green college grads working on critical functions like escape systems always seemed
to me. . .
My first 5 years in the Air Force was working with the AWACS systems. The E-3 was built on a modified Boeing 707 airframe, so naturally many of the systems were built and provided regular upgrades by Boeing.
Boeing happened to be the company that produced and supported the onboard 4Pi computer which the AWACS crew needed for their operational missions -- communications, weapons control, surveillance, flight intercepts, etc.
I was sent to Seattle to visit Boeing once, just before a big "block" release of new software. Block releases were like an automobile's new model roll-out. The aircraft, the mission hardware and the software were all delivered in a block release, and I was there to see what's new with the configuration management portion -- all the IBM utilities and software being delivered to allow us, the customer, to code, integrate and test our own changes to the software.
The place I was in was a massive quonset hut shaped building that I'm sure was used as a hangar for some pretty large aircraft at one point. The floor was literally a maze of walkways, room dividers, desks and people. Since the systems were classified, they had some pretty decent security around the place. In fact, we visitors had to be escorted the whole time even though we'd transmitted our clearances to their security people.
I think it would have taken me 3 months to just learn how to get around in that building and learn who sits where, what they do, etc. So many people, and there was just three of us.
i can see how a company with that many people probably spends half their day just having supervisors updated on what's happening with their projects, what problems are being worked, etc, etc, etc.
If Boeing cut corners on quality control to save money, it would not take long with such a massive collection of people for the processes to devolve into a confused, uncontrollable mess.
I would think a company that takes the lives of millions each year into their hands would better understand the consequences to the company and the people in charge if they are in fact proven to have been cutting corners and covering up test results of products that should not be fielded.