Work Hard You'll Get There Eventually (hint: no you won't)

I'd have thought your grandfather was retired by the time Welch took over. In any case, Welch changed GE corporate culture away from what your grandfather would have been nostalgic about.

Because they had to. The original "bond of trust" was never about actual two-way loyalty; it was about the company bottom line. Companies used "bond of trust" rhetoric to lure employees in; they never actually meant it.

In the period following WWII, most industries in the US were growth industries: companies had to get and keep workers by hook or by crook, even if it meant giving them lavish compensation well beyond what their work would actually be worth in an equilibrium, non-growth market, because the alternative for the company was to lose all the growth business to their competitors, as people bought cars, refrigerators, etc. who had never had them before. (Pg talks about this in one of his essays: basically, companies like GE in the two decades or so after WW II were startups overpaying for labor to capture market share.)

By the 1970s and 1980s, much of that growth had stopped because most of the markets for the big US industries were reasonably saturated. Most people now had cars, refrigerators, etc., so those companies all had to shift from a growth market to a mature market where most business was from repeat customers wanting to upgrade their products, not new customers who had never had the product before. So the companies, in order to stay in business, had to drastically change the way they treated employees, since the costs of those employees were now a significant driver to their bottom line.

I'm not saying the companies were good and sweet and true; of course not. They broke a lot of long-standing employee agreements in the process of downsizing. I'm just saying that any employee who didn't see it coming from a mile away wasn't paying attention, and any employee who actually believed the company rhetoric about the "bond of trust" was living in a fool's paradise from the beginning.

> Jack could've given these guys profit-sharing, equity or other incentives to work for him.

He could have given some of them those incentives, yes. He could never have given all of them those incentives; there wasn't enough to go around. The plain fact was that companies like GE had too many employees for a mature market; there was simply not enough business any more to support all of them.

Again, that doesn't mean the way he did it was good. But if it took what he did then for employees to realize they couldn't depend on him, then again, those employees weren't paying attention; they should have known from the start that they couldn't depend on him, that if push came to shove he was going to do what was best for the company, not best for them. Any employee should always know that; that's what it means to be an employee.

I mean, I get it: There are plenty of people who are less deserving than you that have been wildly, disproportionately successful. I can understand why you're envious. But don't kid yourself, most people would kill to have the supposedly miserable failure of a career that you've had.

Ah, the New Deal, when our leaders thought they could lead us out of famine and into prosperity by burning crops. Birthplace of big-agribusiness! Et cetera.

He used "fire 10% management" strategy for years, maybe even started that thing. I find suspect that someone who is not particularly ambitious man working 9-5 survived long in that stab back otherwise you will be one of fired 10% environment. Maybe he retired before or was stable due to connections?

There were bound to be many many people who worked hard, did their best, achieved a lot and then fired cause somebody had to be fired no matter objective absolute performance.

Jack Welch contributed his share to dropping loyalty. Whether the "old high loyalty" was better or not, Jack Welch is among those who destroyed it.