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Jack Welch has died

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Re: Jack Welch has died

#101

Post by ipython »

programbreeding wrote: post #42
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #29

The article has a good summary of his legacy and his gracefulness: Under Mr. Welch, GE became known for consistent profit performance and a surging stock price. Much of those gains came from GE Capital, the finance arm that ballooned under Mr. Welch and would almost destroy the company during the 2008 financial crisis. GE’s profit has plunged in recent years, dragged down by hidden costs in the company’s Capital unit…

>Much of those gains came from GE Capital >GE’s profit has plunged in recent years, dragged down by hidden costs in the company’s Capital unit >he gave himself an A for his execution of its operations, and an F for his choice of successor Am I reading it right that the reason GE Capital was so successful during his time was because there were hidden costs, making it appear more profitable than it was, that didn't com…

Previously discussed here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20753510

Re: Jack Welch has died

#102

Post by devonkim »

IOT_Apprentice wrote: post #86
dayofthedaleks wrote: post #4

My impression is that he was no management genius but rather fortunate in the timing of moving his company into the FIRE sector. All of that goodwill evaporated in the 09 crisis. Can someone speak to his lasting major contributions? I guess he also deserves the credit/blame for the ubiquity of Six Sigma.

I think they pushed outsourcing hard under his reign. They were one of the companies responsible for destroying a lot of IT jobs in the US as a result. Not a good guy at all.

Every other F100 was outsourcing IT like crazy in the mid-2000s because of that Harvard Business Review article that talked about outsourcing everything non-essential to your primary business. Meanwhile, Werner Vogels (Amazon CTO) thought that was a stupid idea because every business was being transformed by its IT and that it's a revenue multiplier, not a cost center (something that every other decent person in the rank and file of IT has believed since... ever). The whole "digital transformation" boom that swept the F100 in the past 10 years is essentially back-tracking on all these divestures and off-shoring efforts.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#104

Post by dredmorbius »

kingkawn wrote: post #80
dobleboble wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For claims like that it helps to link to a source for the data. Making inflammatory statements without backing evidence makes for poor discourse IMO. I found this article that seems to cover the topic: https://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Dredging-up-the-tru...

what I said is verifiable with a cursory web search, as you have shown. I know people with cancer linked to this pollution. Your standard of truth makes no room for any reporting of personal experience and is invalid.

If it's that easy, then the original submitter can post that link just as easily.

And not give grief to those who recommend doing so.

I appreciate your first comment. I appreciate the reply supplying the substantiating link more. And this particular subthread is regrettable.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#105

Post by Digory »

programbreeding wrote: post #42
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #29

The article has a good summary of his legacy and his gracefulness: Under Mr. Welch, GE became known for consistent profit performance and a surging stock price. Much of those gains came from GE Capital, the finance arm that ballooned under Mr. Welch and would almost destroy the company during the 2008 financial crisis. GE’s profit has plunged in recent years, dragged down by hidden costs in the company’s Capital unit…

>Much of those gains came from GE Capital >GE’s profit has plunged in recent years, dragged down by hidden costs in the company’s Capital unit >he gave himself an A for his execution of its operations, and an F for his choice of successor Am I reading it right that the reason GE Capital was so successful during his time was because there were hidden costs, making it appear more profitable than it was, that didn't com…

Correct. GE recognized fees up front, and pushed costs to the future.

The Wall Street Journal published a massive article on GE's problems back in 2018.[0] Well worth your time, if you want to understand how big companies game their earnings.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ge-powered-the-american-century...

Re: Jack Welch has died

#106

Post by buran77 »

tyre wrote: post #94
buran77 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's the type of leader who grew the company on a minefield of figurative debt and real hidden costs. Leaving behind something with a solid foundation makes you a good leader. Getting out in time from a Ponzi scheme you built doesn't. Another trait of a real leader is to be able to grow another leader who can do the same. By his own statements he failed.

GE crashed nearly a decade after he left. He spent decades building GE into a powerhouse in many industries. Finding a leader who can replace you is a miniscule piece of being a leader. Also, that's ultimately the Board's responsibility. The CEO reports to them.

Even a weak foundation takes time to crumble. Jack Welch built the foundation for GE's growth on the surface of a bubble that would burst in 2008. Perhaps the real mistake of his successor was not jumping off the pyramid soon enough.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/15/business/ge-jack-welch-im...

Re: Jack Welch has died

#107

Post by amyjess »

optimiz3 wrote: post #34

Steve Ballmer revered Jack Welch's rank-and-yank management style. During the 2000s and early 2010s Microsoft's stack-rank reviews were infamous for the internal politics created. Didn't matter if you had a full team of top-tier engineers, the bottom 15% WAS going to get managed out. Savvy managers would hire low-tier performers to protect the productive ones. That's the only lens through which I have to view Mr. Wel…

IIRC Welch came up with rank-and-yank because he needed to lay people off and decided he wanted to be "fair" about it and not lay off his best performers.

And somehow that got cargo-culted into "we should continuously get rid of the bottom X% of people all the time".

Re: Jack Welch has died

#108

Post by codazoda »

brandonmenc wrote: post #24

My father worked his way up from the foundry to "Business Leader" (management) at GE, starting in the mid 1970s. GE was a mess internally, all the way down to the shop floor, before Welch took over. His impact cannot be understated. We were big Jack Welch fans - if he hadn't grown GE the way he did, my hometown - where it was the largest employer for decades - would have been a lot poorer.

I had the amazing opportunity to sit through a training where Jack Welch came to our company and taught a dozen of us his simple time management system. This was back in 1996 and I’ve been using some of the idea’s he gave us ever since. His philosophy about focusing on creating leaders seemed solid. His philosophy on rank-and-yank cost him a lot of fans.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#109

Post by michaelt »

danmaz74 wrote: post #71
brandonmenc wrote: post #24

My father worked his way up from the foundry to "Business Leader" (management) at GE, starting in the mid 1970s. GE was a mess internally, all the way down to the shop floor, before Welch took over. His impact cannot be understated. We were big Jack Welch fans - if he hadn't grown GE the way he did, my hometown - where it was the largest employer for decades - would have been a lot poorer.

Would you mind expanding what you think he did right? I'm curious to have a counterpoint to the other top comments, which are pretty negative.

In some fields, acclaimed works seem cliched and obvious from where we are today, because the innovations that brought their acclaim have been so universally adopted.

I'm not a historian of management theory so I don't know if the ideas are original, or even of how well Welch followed his own advice, but plenty of the things in his books are straight-talking common sense:

* You should know your business well enough you don't need management consultants to tell you what to do

* HR and hiring are important and should be represented in your senior team accordingly

* If you want candour (which you do) you need to reward and praise it, not punish it

* When there's a crisis, don't deny there's a problem

He's not the first person to come up with every idea in his books, but even 40 years later there are companies that need to learn these things.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#110

Post by masklinn »

dayofthedaleks wrote: post #4

My impression is that he was no management genius but rather fortunate in the timing of moving his company into the FIRE sector. All of that goodwill evaporated in the 09 crisis. Can someone speak to his lasting major contributions? I guess he also deserves the credit/blame for the ubiquity of Six Sigma.

> Can someone speak to his lasting major contributions?

The ideas of outsourcing your core businesses, of fire-selling everything you couldn't exploit (any business GE was not #1 or #2, regardless how profitable), and top to bottom accounting fraud.

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