Jack Welch has died

The first paragraph is basically how I'll always remember him. Stack ranking is a farce. He was incredibly fortunate, but insisted it was his ideas instead. It's the equivalent to a vice heavy person winning the lottery, then writing a book claiming that if you want to be rich, you need to smoke and drink daily, and the proof is that I'm rich.

He was supposed to have created this company that cranks out highly capable managers in all eternity but somehow it didn’t work out. I read his book and already got a bad feeling about him. And from his latest TV interviews I got the impression that he was just a selfish prick that had learned nothing and gained zero wisdom in old age.

Obvious he was a very powerful and capable man but he used his powers only for his own gain and overall made a negative contribution.

"'Neutron' Jack Welch, who led GE's rapid expansion, dies at 84" (Reuters)

...Welch - known as “Neutron Jack” for cutting thousands of jobs - bought and sold scores of businesses, expanding the industrial giant into financial services and consulting. Under him, GE’s market value grew from $12 billion to $410 billion, making Welch one of the most iconic chief executives of his era.

But his push to build out the GE Capital financing business nearly proved the undoing of the entire enterprise during the global financial crisis more than a decade ago, and GE now trades at a fraction of its peak value....

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-jackwelch/neutron-...

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 and losses in the core Power business. The troubles have prompted the company to break itself apart, overhaul its leadership and slash its once-generous dividend. GE’s share price tumbled roughly 75% in 2017 and 2018, erasing $200 billion of wealth for millions of investors.

In his later years, Mr. Welch witnessed the GE he built get dismantled. The decline of the company pained him, according to friends, and he sometimes said he gave himself an A for his execution of its operations, and an F for his choice of successor.