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Jack Welch has died

wsj.com

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Re: Jack Welch has died

#161

Post by lotsofpulp »

rmason wrote: post #145
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 whi…

> None of his successors could manage the company so what he built is slowly being dismantled.

Or GE Financial was hiding a ton of bad debts while he was in charge.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#162

Post by Psyladine »

briandear wrote: post #37
quaquaqua1 wrote: post #32

Jack Welch is indirectly the reason I got fired at Oracle, because some group of bean counters thought it is smart to fire people regularly based on some subjective measurement. However I am very sad he died because I subsequently got a raise and met my wife at my next company.

There is something to be said about your comment: this illustrates the value of free markets and the efficient allocation of resources; you were allocated more efficiently and you made more money and got your wife.

The best part of survivorship bias is when you are a survivor.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#163

Post by technotony »

vl wrote: post #148
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.

But at the same time enterprize value increased 40x. Paying 1/3 of the gains to management seems fair given the performance.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#164

Post by jcomis »

hummel wrote: post #157

Jack Welch, head of GE Plastics that polluted Pittsfield MA and the Connecticut River, acceeded to the throne of once-solid General Electric. Through his gentle ministrations he turned the company into a graveyard, driving Schenectady, NY from a middle class heaven into a rust-encrusted hellhole. Jack's financial acumen provided for monotonically increasing stock prices through his tenure. He did this through financi…

I grew up in Schenectady (after the glory days of GE) and it's crazy how much GE destroyed the town. Still has yet to really recover. Oh, and now they put a casino in.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#165

Post by amyjess »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #156
WalterBright wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Why would you need COBRA? You can go to healthcare.gov and buy health insurance that is probably as good or better than what most employers offer. And you wouldn’t have to pay for months you didn’t need healthcare.

Exchange health insurance is still pretty unaffordable if you're unemployed or underemployed, and it's much less likely than employer health insurance to cover medical conditions that aren't required by law to be covered (e.g. gender dysphoria).

Our system is messed up.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#166

Post by tgv »

hugi wrote: post #47
alehul wrote: post #31

Given that every single comment I've seen so far is a joke or a negative, it's worth offering a more respectful perspective of his accomplishments and story from Wikipedia [1]: Jack Welch was the child of a railroad conductor, born and raised outside Boston. He worked as a golf caddie, newspaper delivery boy, shoe salesman, and drill press operator, throughout middle school and high school. Welch joined GE in 1960 as…

They always make you sound nice in the obituary.

What a nice, capable man he was:

THE death of Stalin, like the death of Lenin 29 years ago, marks an epoch in Russian history. Rarely have two successive rulers of a great country responded so absolutely to its changing needs and piloted it so successfully through periods of crisis. Lenin was at the helm through five years of revolution, civil war, and precarious recovery. Stalin, coming to power in the aftermath of revolution, took up the task of organizing and disciplining the revolutionary state, and putting into execution the revolutionary programmes of planned industry and collectivized agriculture. He thus equipped the country to meet the gravest external peril which had threatened it since Napoleon, and brought it triumphantly through a four years’ ordeal of invasion and devastation.

That's from the Times obituary.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#167

Post by Clubber »

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…

I like the analogy, "Want to lose weight fast? Cut off a leg!" strategy.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#168

Post by vl »

technotony wrote: post #163
vl wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But at the same time enterprize value increased 40x. Paying 1/3 of the gains to management seems fair given the performance.

But it's more complex than this. Would it increase as much without paying 1/3? Were short-term gains optimized at the expense of sustainable business?

Re: Jack Welch has died

#169

Post by gowld »

vl wrote: post #148
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.

Was that 31percent purchased or seized?

Re: Jack Welch has died

#170

Post by gowld »

teej wrote: post #81
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…

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

Why? Those are people who couldn't get a better job anyway.
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