Jack Welch has died • Hacker News Board

Re: Jack Welch has died

#191

Post by exclusiv » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #159

VLM wrote: post #5

Technically he's not dead, he's just been downsized to increase shareholder value.

Wow Fidel Castro didn't even get this bad of a response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13041886 I guess as long as you're a Republican you're free game, even in death.

Wow. Reading just the top comment there and then the responses in this thread is pretty eye opening.

But then again - "I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan."

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html

Re: Jack Welch has died

#192

Post by mywittyname » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

lazyant wrote: post #160

hintymad wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fol…

I may not agree completely with Netflix' philosophy but I love that it has "tests", like "would you fight for a person to stay? if not, let her go" https://jobs.netflix.com/culture

With the caveat that you need to be like Netflix to pull this off. Most companies don't have the endless talent pool to feed from that makes this strategy work. So many have to settle for, "Is this person better than no one?

Re: Jack Welch has died

#193

Post by dbg31415 » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

https://www.perdoo.com/resources/stack-ranking/

> Stack ranking is harmful because it creates an environment which encourages unproductive behavior. Instead of teamwork, it tacitly rewards backstabbing. The fear of losing one’s job makes people unlikely to speak their mind, leading to a closed environment, in which innovation suffers. Finally, it leads to the emergence of “brilliant jerks,” who don’t recognize or care that running a successful business is more than just hitting quarterly targets.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#194

Post by cxr » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

buran77 wrote: post #106

tyre wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

> It goes like this: you can do the wrong things but be in a long enough feedback loop that the effects only really start to show themselves some time later. So rather than successfully correlating results to their real causes, what happens instead is:

> a) people fool themselves in the meantime that bad things aren't bad, and

> b) in the aftermath, when the consequences do start to appear, the temporal offset from the real root cause is so large, and they have so many other things to attribute failures to, that they can (and probably will) go the intellectually dishonest route

https://www.colbyrussell.com/2018/10/11/mozilla-and-feedback...

Re: Jack Welch has died

#195

Post by hitekker » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

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.

> Finding a leader who can replace you is a miniscule piece of being a leader.

Is this view based on the way Seneca Systems was terminated?

Re: Jack Welch has died

#196

Post by amyjess » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #174

amyjess wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I purchase health insurance for my businesses, and it all seems the same to me, cost and coverage wise. I guess it might be a little cheaper if the company has a very young workforce.

Large companies all custom-package their own insurance instead of just buying off-the-shelf plans.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#197

Post by mrfusion » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

what exactly did he die of? It’s so amazing the super rich really don’t have access to any extra health care than regular middle class.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#198

Post by cma » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 9:52 PM UTC

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.

Didn't they start doing leveraged finacial product investments and stuff since it was heads their massive stock option incentives pay off, tails no big loss for them.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#199

Post by serf » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 9:53 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #184

michaelgrafl wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You‘re saying this as if it were realistic for the majority of people to save up a cushion of 6 months in a reasonable time frame (or ever).

A majority of people are significantly above the poverty line. If they're living hand-to-mouth, they are mismanaging their finances. For example, I know a fellow who told me he could not handle the slightest disruption in his paycheck. He was driving a new car, living in new house, wore expensive clothes, and was starting a family. A friend of mine living in an apartment told me he was unable to pay his bills. I aske…

> A majority of people are significantly above the poverty line. If they're living hand-to-mouth, they are mismanaging their finances.

Or, another scenario, the 'poverty line' is arbitrary and hardly an indicator of universal financial power.

In other words : the poverty salary 'line' tells you nothing of burden, it's just a magic number. If an individual has multiple unknown burdens, their 'poverty line' is at a much different , unknown, level.

I live in California, mostly. I know of families that live (far) below the 'Poverty Line', but because they send everything they can back to their home country for the rest of their family to live on.

Suddenly an individual at the poverty line is supporting 3-7 people in another country; and has no real legal way to justify or exemplify the practice in any legal financial way that would signify their increased burden - they become essentially a lost statistic and generally lie on their taxes due to fear of losing the arrangement.

Individuals that lead this style of life tend to go back home periodically simply because the burden of living in the US with a sub-poverty income isn't realistic.

tl;dr : The poverty income line alone means next to nothing in personal context. Don't assume that you can dwindle every persons' life down to fitting within it, that's not realistic. Saving money is absolutely important, I agree, but let's not just assume that that kind of financial flexibility exists for every individual. It'd be nice, but it's fantasy.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#200

Post by sgt101 » Mon, Mar 02, 2020, 9:56 PM UTC

unlinked_dll wrote: post #127

sgt101 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you have to sacrifice long-term stability for short-term growth, you're misreading the landscape Or eyeing your bonus pot and the golf course / opera house. Shareholders are holding for 3-6mths, executive incentive is aligned to those time spans.

Most shareholders are interested in holding for more than a year because they get 7-10% more money for free due to tax incentives. But regardless there are many kinds of investors. The bottom feeders interested in 3-6month time spans are just one of them.

This is so for retail investors. I do not think it is so for funds.