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Jack Welch has died

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Re: Jack Welch has died

#221

Post by QuesnayJr »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #153
QuesnayJr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a strong opinion on Welch, but a) he fired lots of people from GE, and b) introduced stack ranking to the world, which got lots more people fired. Whether or not he was good for GE, he was a heartless man. Of course he gets a heartless response.

Yeah bullshit. Look at the reception Fidel Castro got: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13041886 Anyone conservative you people dance on their grave. Anyone socialist, including brutal dictators, you praise them. It's as simple as that. I can find you many examples of this. Common theme between them all is their political ideology.

"I don't want to be fired for a stupid reason" is a political ideology? Firing people for stupid reasons is a core conservative value?

Re: Jack Welch has died

#222

Post by WalterBright »

bjourne wrote: post #211
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a republican, people can't do this because of their failings and choices. If you're a democrat, it's because the economic deck is stacked against people. I thought that a very large majority of credit card debt was healthcare costs and other structural life costs, so that is score one for the democrat view, although we are a very unhealthy population (so back to the republican view a bit) Then again, the re…

Poverty and unhealthy eating goes hand in hand. If you work for more than 8 hours a day and/or with long commutes, how on earth will you have time to cook? The US has a huge poverty problem that is well-documented in countless studies. It has nothing to do with republicans vs democrats, it has everything to do with believing the facts!

> how on earth will you have time to cook?

As a non-cook myself, I can fry some eggs in 3 minutes or so, and a steak a bit longer. Sometimes I'll dump a bowl of frozen veggies into a bowl, put a pat of butter on top, microwave for a couple minutes, and it's ready to eat. A can of beans takes a couple minutes.

The idea that to eat decent food requires much prep time in the kitchen isn't true.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#223

Post by chirau »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #153
QuesnayJr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a strong opinion on Welch, but a) he fired lots of people from GE, and b) introduced stack ranking to the world, which got lots more people fired. Whether or not he was good for GE, he was a heartless man. Of course he gets a heartless response.

Yeah bullshit. Look at the reception Fidel Castro got: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13041886 Anyone conservative you people dance on their grave. Anyone socialist, including brutal dictators, you praise them. It's as simple as that. I can find you many examples of this. Common theme between them all is their political ideology.

Yup, there is a lot of toxic group think and western idealism on HN and they oppress anyone who points it out. I remember I commented on the same thread on Castro.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13042003

Somehow over the years, HN has become an echo chamber of very specific ideals and non-tolerant of anything else.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#224

Post by bjourne »

WalterBright wrote: post #222
bjourne wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poverty and unhealthy eating goes hand in hand. If you work for more than 8 hours a day and/or with long commutes, how on earth will you have time to cook? The US has a huge poverty problem that is well-documented in countless studies. It has nothing to do with republicans vs democrats, it has everything to do with believing the facts!

> how on earth will you have time to cook? As a non-cook myself, I can fry some eggs in 3 minutes or so, and a steak a bit longer. Sometimes I'll dump a bowl of frozen veggies into a bowl, put a pat of butter on top, microwave for a couple minutes, and it's ready to eat. A can of beans takes a couple minutes. The idea that to eat decent food requires much prep time in the kitchen isn't true.

You also have to drive to the supermarket and take care of the dirty dishes. But you are right, it's not the minutes per se, it is that if you work more than 8 hours/day, you don't have much energy for anything else.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#225

Post by billman »

stefco_ wrote: post #84
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…

Contrast with W. Edwards Deming's approach that stresses the systematics of the organization and considers rank-and-yank a symptom of bad management: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#Seven_Deadly...

+1 for Deming

Re: Jack Welch has died

#226

Post by magduf »

WalterBright wrote: post #190
WalterBright wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lot of people overspend their income because they're eating out. Restaurants are an extremely expensive way to get fed. Even a quarter pounder at McD's is $6, but I can get a half pound of good steak from the supermarket for $2. My drip coffee costs me $.03 per cup, compared to $4 at Starbucks. You can fry yourself 3 eggs for $.50.

Part of the problem here is that restaurants in America are extremely expensive. It's cheaper to eat out in other industrialized nations in my experience. Worse, they try to hide the prices from you by not including tax in the advertised price, and also expecting a "tip" for the service because they don't pay their servers.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#227

Post by magduf »

bjourne wrote: post #211
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a republican, people can't do this because of their failings and choices. If you're a democrat, it's because the economic deck is stacked against people. I thought that a very large majority of credit card debt was healthcare costs and other structural life costs, so that is score one for the democrat view, although we are a very unhealthy population (so back to the republican view a bit) Then again, the re…

Poverty and unhealthy eating goes hand in hand. If you work for more than 8 hours a day and/or with long commutes, how on earth will you have time to cook? The US has a huge poverty problem that is well-documented in countless studies. It has nothing to do with republicans vs democrats, it has everything to do with believing the facts!

The US does have a huge poverty problem, but that's not the whole story. There's tons of middle-class people living paycheck-to-paycheck because they just have to drive a BMW or have some giant house they don't need, or eat out all the time and get two glasses of wine with each dinner. Yeah, this doesn't describe the poor people getting by on minimum wage, but there's countless $50-100k people who this describes perfectly.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#228

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

QuesnayJr wrote: post #221
s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah bullshit. Look at the reception Fidel Castro got: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13041886 Anyone conservative you people dance on their grave. Anyone socialist, including brutal dictators, you praise them. It's as simple as that. I can find you many examples of this. Common theme between them all is their political ideology.

"I don't want to be fired for a stupid reason" is a political ideology? Firing people for stupid reasons is a core conservative value?

It's debatable whether they were stupid reasons, that's your opinion.

But yes, it's called Right to work.

> A Right To Work law guarantees that no person can be compelled, as a condition of employment, to join or not to join, nor to pay dues to a labor union.

This results in less powers to unions, which means employers have more freedom of discretion to fire employers, but also means employees are not forced into massive corrupt labor unions that halt efficiency.

Right to work states are mostly red states.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#229

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

chirau wrote: post #223
s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah bullshit. Look at the reception Fidel Castro got: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13041886 Anyone conservative you people dance on their grave. Anyone socialist, including brutal dictators, you praise them. It's as simple as that. I can find you many examples of this. Common theme between them all is their political ideology.

Yup, there is a lot of toxic group think and western idealism on HN and they oppress anyone who points it out. I remember I commented on the same thread on Castro. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13042003 Somehow over the years, HN has become an echo chamber of very specific ideals and non-tolerant of anything else.

I think I misunderstand, you seem to be very pro-Castro in that thread.

> 10k over 50 years? Wow, that's a lot less than I imagined from how he is described as a mindless killer, and the dictatorship as drenched in blood.

Wow, the responses there.

Re: Jack Welch has died

#230

Post by keenmaster »

fsckboy wrote: post #217
keenmaster wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"[GE Capital] seemed an easy way to make money...This thing looked like a 'gold mine' to me." A good MBA finance curriculum might kick off with the Modigliani-Miller theorem (M&M), which basically says: 1. Theoretically , you can't create value through your mix of financing. It doesn't matter whether you use 100% equity, 100% debt, or 50/50, your mix of financing won't create value (unlike good R&D for example). 2. #…

huh? you don't have this right. Modigliani-Miller refers to the financial structure of your corporation, GE in this case: it refers to the mix of capital that GE raises from investors (debt + equity). To give a simple example to illustrate, the value of your lemonade stand as a business is based on your revenue minus your costs, it's based on your "business". You need to raise money to buy your raw materials and equi…

I'm aware that GE Capital extended credit to suppliers (good, sometimes). However, my understanding is that it also enabled greater use of financing through off-balance-sheet derivatives for the core entity (bad). GE tried to create value through GE Capital, and it nearly destroyed the company. It's actually a good illustration of the agency costs of debt mentioned by M&M.
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