Jack Welch has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Jack Welch has died

#141

Post by PopeDotNinja » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 6:57 PM UTC

martin1975 wrote: post #138

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…

The problem with performance reviews is that they are mostly subjective instead of mostly objective. I've yet to see a company specify a clear objective criteria for advancement.

I have the same problem with behavioral interviews.

"Tell me about a time when..."

"I want to see how you think."

"What your greatest..."

95% of my philosophy is don't be an asshole, work hard, know my stuff, and don't let the turkeys get me down. I spend no time dwelling on mistakes, as I internalize the lessons and throw out the reason I learned those lessons.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#142

Post by jjoonathan » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:06 PM UTC

akitzmiller wrote: post #90

teej wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring folks to act as telomeres for your team seems so cruel.

Ooh. This is good. When I write my best selling Management Genetics(R) book filled with cellular jargon to describe The Business Double Helix(R), I am totally using this. With attribution, of course.

Ugh, I hate it already. I am sure it would be wildly successful.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#143

Post by hintymad » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

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…

I find Netflix's model works better: allocating resources by visibility of a team. Roughly speaking, a manager gets a chunk of budget from her manager, and she can decide how big a package she gives to each of her team members. The more important a team becomes, the more budget the team gets. The more visible a person becomes to her manager, the more likely this person will get larger package. This comes with the following nuances: * A team member is responsible for her visibility only to her team and her manager. There is really no need for any popularity contest if the team is small enough. I deem it as fair as it can get. * A manager can definitely abuse the system, but then the team would suffer churn and productivity loss, and the manager would be punished. If the team performed anyway with little churn despite the manager's misbehavior, well, did the manager really misbehaved? * To make the system work, the management chain needs to be perceptive, and teams need to be small. Netflix delivered both, which showed that Reed Hastings is a truly great CEO.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#144

Post by jdkee » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:20 PM UTC

This thread is relevant.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1234474399694237696.html

Re: Jack Welch has died

#145

Post by rmason » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:23 PM UTC

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…

I think a better way to remember him is his insistence that all GE's company's be either first or second in their market. So under performers got a chance to go for it and if they failed they were sold.

Welch more than quintupled GE during his time. None of his successors could manage the company so what he built is slowly being dismantled. What I never understood is why they didn't just split the company in half which would have returned more value to the shareholders.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#146

Post by random_savv » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:29 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #133

neves wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like this became the basis of American economy. And you can't loose your job, because you'll miss your mortgage or education payments and loose your health care. So you must do anything your employer tell you to do.

I would say it's become the basis of worldwide modern central banking capitalism, gas and water socialist countries included.

Can't tell if this is meant as sarcasm or truthfully :-)

Re: Jack Welch has died

#147

Post by gumby » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

exclusiv wrote: post #140

gumby wrote: post #137

Welch was destructive for GE and the cult of his approach has been destructive for the industrial sector. He turned around GE for the short term, but undermined the fundamental model of a conglomerate (there are good arguments for and against conglomerates, but GE was an is one). The metrics used were ultimately all short term ones and allowed the business to become lopsided, a disaster from which it has still not re…

> Good riddance to this blood sucker. Really? You don't agree with his corporate style / strategy / books and that justifies saying something like that?

I could not care less that he destroyed GE and became rich in the process. That's a GE shareholder problem. But I had hoped my message was about more than corporate "style".

First: he's been fundamentally destructive to the global economy, which has had a particularly brutal effect on, IMHO, the majority of people who live in countries that were industrial economies in the 1980s. The hollowing out of the middle class and precarious economic position of younger GenXers and millennials can be laid in a large part at the unthinking adoption of the bullshit he promoted and demonstrated. (note that I am at the beginning of GenX and my child as younger than a millennial so I am not bitter from some personal hurt here).

(BTW although GE outsourced during this period, so did many companies, and I do not lay that at his feet. And the result of outsourcing is much more of a mixed bag than it is often described, and in the balance is likely even positive, though the way it was implemented in the US was a combination of this "strip to the bone" which yes has been destructive.)

Second: true, he's dead and that's a tragedy to his family and close friends which I don't downplay. But also he was an asset stripping parasite whose model has ultimately been destructive and he was a lauded champion of such behavior. His death is an opportunity for people to reflect on his immoral behavior the consequences of which we are still suffering from.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#148

Post by vl » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

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…

Welch also invented corporate raiding by management. When he started, employees owned 0, when finished 31 percent of GE, with majority of 31 owned by management. This effectively transferred 1/3 of value from shareholders to management. Since then same thing happens with most other corporations.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#149

Post by jonny_eh » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

amyjess wrote: post #107

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".

> And somehow that got cargo-culted into…

his book maybe?

He was still defending the practice in 2005: https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/educate/college/careers/Advi...

Re: Jack Welch has died

#150

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 7:36 PM UTC

neves wrote: post #125

asveikau wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, at some point in American business culture it does seem like a number of people did lose sight and become convinced that the only way to deliver shareholder value is to lay off continuously.

It looks like this became the basis of American economy. And you can't loose your job, because you'll miss your mortgage or education payments and loose your health care. So you must do anything your employer tell you to do.

> because you'll miss your mortgage or education payments and loose your health care.

This is why the sensible thing to do is to save up a cushion of 6 months. You can continue with your employer health care with COBRA for 6 months or a year.