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GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out

wsj.com

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Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out

#21

Post by nervousvarun »

Aloha wrote: post #7

The 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…

Absolutely agree...also didn't a similar thing happen with GM when they got rid of their internal financing division (GMAC)?

Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out

#22

Post by graycat »

ghaff wrote: post #19
graycat wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One "path" to a good, new business is just to see the opportunity and take it. E.g., what was the "path" taken by each of FedEx, Google, Facebook, or Amazon? FedEx: Nationwide overnight delivery of small packages, pickup as late as 7 PM and delivery before 10 AM. "Path": Founder F. Smith had a family fortune from Southern Greyhound, had flown in Viet Nam, and was running Little Rock Airmotive, executive jet lube, tun…

I don’t really disagree with a lot of what you say. There’s also a lot to be said with respect to the innovator’s dilemma. That said, I wouldn’t put a bet on Facebook outlasting IBM.

Yup. But the flip side of the innovator's dilemma is "Adapt or die."!

Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out

#23

Post by stallmanite »

astrange wrote: post #15
ghaff wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you're just being an unfunny smartass and not being condescending and insulting on purpose. It's not welcome.

I'm merely expressing regret for his bad luck in life, the same as you would for anyone who accidentally worked at Enron or Facebook.

Having worked at one of the two, I thought it was hilarious rather than insulting.

Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out

#24

Post by Aloha »

xapata wrote: post #10
Aloha wrote: post #7

The 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.

Demand for certain goods and commodities are cyclical - I design dispatch consoles, we tend to get customer verticals in clusters - public safety, power/utilities, transportation and it continues in a cycle, based on replacement intervals (on a 20 year lifetime) - I know Motorola sees similar cycles too - they'll oscillate between public safety and commercial markets.

I know there are similar business cycles in aviation, power generation and industrial controls.

Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out

#25

Post by xapata »

Aloha wrote: post #24
xapata wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm dubious that business has a cyclical nature. It's hard to distinguish a random walk from noisy waves.

Demand for certain goods and commodities are cyclical - I design dispatch consoles, we tend to get customer verticals in clusters - public safety, power/utilities, transportation and it continues in a cycle, based on replacement intervals (on a 20 year lifetime) - I know Motorola sees similar cycles too - they'll oscillate between public safety and commercial markets. I know there are similar business cycles in aviat…

If I understand you correctly, you're suggesting that the demand for dispatch consoles follows a wave with a 20-year period, because the device must be replaced approximately every 20 years? I can believe that for an individual buyer, but for the market as a whole to follow the same period, that'd imply that every buyer made the bulk of their purchases at around the same time. That seems unlikely.

Re: GE Powered the American Century, Then It Burned Out

#26

Post by gregw2 »

graycat wrote: post #20
astrange wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you end up working at both GE and IBM? I hope you've found something better to do by now.

Yes Dad's father ran the village general store, and his stepfather ran the village feed and grain mill. So Dad had a background in running a business. Still he got a Master's and a job for a salary. It paid the bills, paid for both my brother and I to get Ph.D. degrees, etc. But it wasn't real business . I was at GE because they gave me a big raise from working the Navier-Stokes equations for the US Navy. Soon I was…

I hear you about the DIMMs and ROBOCOPY. Tip: I spend less time on that hardware minutia and backup reliability and restore operations now that I rent servers on AWS. You might want to try it. Focus your time where your value add is. Also looks good to investors/customers. Also helps avoid overprovisioning (capital expense that doesn't get recovered when business falls through).
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