GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out
1–10 of 26 posts
Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out
#2Non-paywalled version here.
Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out
#3Non-paywalled version here. https://outline.com/zyHms4
This is turning into the modern day 'first comment.' HN should really just generate this link as a feature.
Edit: My bad, this has been covered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320147
Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out
#4Non-paywalled version here. https://outline.com/zyHms4
This is turning into the modern day 'first comment.' HN should really just generate this link as a feature. Edit: My bad, this has been covered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320147
Copyright Infringement As A Service (CIASS)— I like it!
Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out
#5TLDR;
11,000 words of gossip about GE CEO promotions with no insight into the actual business problems.
Makes the authors look like incompetent wannabe "journalists."
Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out
#6Well, maybe their "rank and yank" fostered a low teamwork environment or they fired the people who would actually of helped them with the next big thing. Frankly, their management contribution to American business has to be one of their darkest legacies.
Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out
#7The article gives the answer early on - the company is still in a phase of change from selling GE Capital - for 20 years they were used to using Capital as a source of excess cash to paper over other temporary market issues elsewhere in the company - they no longer have that ability - so now the cyclical nature of normal business will show directly on their balance sheets and statements.
GE will probably be just fine - in a decade.
Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out
#8Well, maybe their "rank and yank" fostered a low teamwork environment or they fired the people who would actually of helped them with the next big thing. Frankly, their management contribution to American business has to be one of their darkest legacies.
My employer is famous for hiring folks at executive levels from GE and I can tell you without doubt that most of them had been some of the the worse execs I have came across. I can easily see GE as frothing with some of the worst senior level clueless "talent" out there.
I think GE used to be great under Jack Welch because he ruthlessly demanded results. When you operate in that mode virtually anything works because everything other than success gets brutally weeded out. You can start any number of new businesses and the evolution system implemented by ruthless pruning eventually will yield successful species. After Welch left, GE decided to use most of his principles as blueprint except one: demand top notch results and ruthlessly weed out everything else. One company that operates like GE under Welsh these days is Amazon. It would be very hard for any exec to spend 5 years at Amazon without showing amazing results. On the other hand I know plenty of execs at big 5 tech who have sailed through for as much as decade by simply "managing up".
Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out
#9Well, maybe their "rank and yank" fostered a low teamwork environment or they fired the people who would actually of helped them with the next big thing. Frankly, their management contribution to American business has to be one of their darkest legacies.
My employer is famous for hiring folks at executive levels from GE and I can tell you without doubt that most of them had been some of the the worse execs I have came across. I can easily see GE as frothing with some of the worst senior level clueless "talent" out there. I think GE used to be great under Jack Welch because he ruthlessly demanded results. When you operate in that mode virtually anything works because…
This seems like a "darned if you do, darned if you don't" mentality
Allowing managers to coast and play office politics sucks but also squeezing them doesn't seem very positive (though I'm sure it's great for results)
Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out
#10The article gives the answer early on - the company is still in a phase of change from selling GE Capital - for 20 years they were used to using Capital as a source of excess cash to paper over other temporary market issues elsewhere in the company - they no longer have that ability - so now the cyclical nature of normal business will show directly on their balance sheets and statements. GE will probably be just fine…
I'm dubious that business has a cyclical nature. It's hard to distinguish a random walk from noisy waves.