GE

NgineER said:
“My success will be determined by how well my successor grows it in the next 20 years” - Jack Welch
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There you go!

[Sorry - I had an overdose of Mr. Welch gloating on CNBC in the early 2000s. I forgot GE owned NBC, which explained his frequent appearances, I suppose.]
 
Our company was bought out and we were invaded by the GE managers . All from Boston or the far east coast . Several had went to the Jack Welch management school . Their ideas were that every year they would get rid of 10% of the workforce and add new blood. So draining and demeaning. The result was they bought a 5 billion company and ran it into a 1 billion dollar company . They would walk away from low margin business with a major in one area thinking because they were GE management that they would get the high margin business elsewhere . The majors laughed at them . No love for those people and no love for GE . What happens to GE is what they brought on .
 
Breedlove said:
Their ideas were that every year they would get rid of 10% of the workforce and add new blood. So draining and demeaning.
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Ballmer, ex-CEO of Microsoft, was a Welch fanboy. At MS, forced rankings were the rule and managers had to figure out who’d get stuck in the 10% bucket every year.

No wonder MS was such a power under his leadership?
 
Breedlove said:
Our company was bought out and we were invaded by the GE managers . All from Boston or the far east coast . Several had went to the Jack Welch management school . Their ideas were that every year they would get rid of 10% of the workforce and add new blood. So draining and demeaning. The result was they bought a 5 billion company and ran it into a 1 billion dollar company . They would walk away from low margin business with a major in one area thinking because they were GE management that they would get the high margin business elsewhere . The majors laughed at them . No love for those people and no love for GE . What happens to GE is what they brought on .
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This was the Enron way of supporting their employees.... look what happened to them...
 
Huston55 said:
Do you not like forced ranking systems in general or, was it the implementation you didn’t like?
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I do not have a problem with the rankings, what I do have is that you have to get rid of 10% each year...


It is rare, but I was on a budgeting team that had all good people... nobody was a slacker.... but there was some very talented people.... also, they knew what to expect because they had done it for years... it would be foolish to get rid of someone who is doing what is needed to be done just to get rid of 10%....


I also do not believe in keeping deadwood around... this was on a different group, but there was one guy who just could not pull his weight... at the end of the budget season the manager had a word with the guy and worked to get him moved into a different job where his skills would be more useful... if he did not want to move he was out... that is how to manage people...
 
Texas Proud said:
I do not have a problem with the rankings, what I do have is that you have to get rid of 10% each year...


It is rare, but I was on a budgeting team that had all good people... nobody was a slacker.... but there was some very talented people.... also, they knew what to expect because they had done it for years... it would be foolish to get rid of someone who is doing what is needed to be done just to get rid of 10%....


I also do not believe in keeping deadwood around... this was on a different group, but there was one guy who just could not pull his weight... at the end of the budget season the manager had a word with the guy and worked to get him moved into a different job where his skills would be more useful... if he did not want to move he was out... that is how to manage people...
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Well said.

My first megacorp was run by GE fanboys who implemented the same system.

I was blessed as a first time manager to have a small, but talented team of 4 attys and an admin. All good to very good performers. When the annual review time came, I was told one of them had to be ranked "unsatisfactory" because of the same 10% rule.

I said 10% made sense if you were talking about a much larger group, but I only had 5 people -- 10% wasn't even a full person. Didn't matter. No exceptions. I had to identify one of them as unsatisfactory. :(
 
They tried this in the oilpatch with our company . A company that went from 280M to 5.1 B in about twenty years . The motto was we will take the job and we will make money ! If we have to work harder longer we will win. This was the former company . The peer pressure was great and everyone worked real hard together. Very few managers hardly any supervisors , but very good salaries. GE came in terminated the purchasing manager , he was 65 so what . Brought is a person from the grocery business with a masters degree from OU in Zoology . I asked the VP why he said this is how GE gets new Ideas , people from other industries.
They had a person assigned to run a report for the Directors to make sure people were using their laptops on weekends and evenings and what application programs were they in . We were supposed to spend 60 hrs. on the laptop either at home or the office. In 2008 GE told us we were going to build these very large pieces of equipment Value 1.1 million each . One every day or 30 a month , we were going to become #2 in our industry . Of course it failed , they had large pumps that rusted up had to be rebuilt before they were ever used . Diesel Engines that the bearings got ruined because they never got used . I could go on and on , The Ge people sure could read reports and run SAP I remember our last VP telling us like lions we were going to run with the leaders . One of the old fellas whispered I thought we were to be better then everyone else .
 
GE under Welch was a charade of buying companies, draining pension plan and reporting pension gains as income for steadily increasing profits and playing with book accruals. By underreporting expenses on pensions and underestimating expenses for long term care insurance policies, profits could be booked that had decades to come to roost, while cash is pulled out to fund operations and appear to show growth. For the last 13 years of Jack' Welch's tenure there was not a single pension contribution made and some pensions, such as the 1986 merger with RCA where GE took 1.6 billion out of the pension fund by claiming it was fully funded with a 10 percent annual return estimation.

All this lay the ground work for the losses to come in the future and cash flow was dedicated to buying stock back. Once a conglomerate stops acquiring companies, the accrual process begins to fail as valuations come home to roost. The 35+ billion they are short in their Pension & Long Term Insurance totally hamstrings the business.
 
I believe Low Cost Country sourcing was also a GE mantra. Our supply management folks were challenged to source at least 30% of new parts on one of my projects from LCC. After a toe-to-toe meeting, I was not so politely informed that they were not going to miss that 30% goal, and were willing to pay up to 130% to hit that target. What was even sadder, most of those suppliers could not meet our quality goals. By the time they found suppliers that could come close to the goals, the project costs were in a serious over-run.

You would think that there would be some learning and adjustment, but no. By the time the tragedy hit, the Supply Management MBAs had already celebrated their victory and moved on to the next assignment, or left the company headed to their next great adventure!


Not to cross threads, but there is a lot of manufacturing that could come back into this country. All it would take is to get a new Harvard Journal article and we would have new tee-shirts and slogans!
 
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Texas Proud said:
I do not have a problem with the rankings, what I do have is that you have to get rid of 10% each year...


It is rare, but I was on a budgeting team that had all good people... nobody was a slacker.... but there was some very talented people.... also, they knew what to expect because they had done it for years... it would be foolish to get rid of someone who is doing what is needed to be done just to get rid of 10%....


I also do not believe in keeping deadwood around... this was on a different group, but there was one guy who just could not pull his weight... at the end of the budget season the manager had a word with the guy and worked to get him moved into a different job where his skills would be more useful... if he did not want to move he was out... that is how to manage people...
Click to expand...
The really fun part was that this was year after year. Sure, you might have found 10% deadwood initially, but it very quickly got to the point of someone being the sacrificial lamb. I've never seen such disgusting sucking up and pandering as prior to these ranking meetings.

The other fun part was the maximum of 10% top ratings. In departments where the manager really worked hard to have a top notch team, I saw good talent move to the competition when they were down rated to meet the 10% maximum goal. They took it very personally and it was real money out of their pocket when they were downgraded.
 
It's part of the trend .... the US is becoming a total service economy. Not a producer.
 
I have 3 GE appliances in my home, one of them brand new.
 
travelover said:
The other fun part was the maximum of 10% top ratings. In departments where the manager really worked hard to have a top notch team, I saw good talent move to the competition when they were down rated to meet the 10% maximum goal.
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Yes, this was the "feature" of the system the USAF introduced in the late 1970's that helped me decide the grass was greener elsewhere. I only needed to see the wing commander downgrade the rating of a top 10% officer once to tell me all I needed to know about screwed up the system was. (The wing commander's drinking buddy - who also occasionally failed to show up for duty - got a low rating from his unit commander, so when the ratings got to the wing commander's desk, he "made things right" for his O Club pal.)
 
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REWahoo said:
..........so when the ratings got to the wing commander's desk, he "made things right" for his O Club pal.)
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Same stuff at Mega, all adding to the soul sucking. :(
 
GE Took our company's cash on hand . Where it went was when some of the GE people left our company to their golden parachutes. As what Clone said the supply chain sent letters to all suppliers telling them that going forward all invoices would be paid at a 10% discount . If you do not accept we will end all business with your company. GE wanted to build oil tools in Brazil , leadtime for the completed units went from 5 weeks to almost a year. But their MBA twits saw value in this .They eventually walked away from that business. GO to GEthelayoff.com to see what employees are saying .
 
Clone said:
I believe Low Cost Country sourcing was also a GE mantra. Our supply management folks were challenged to source at least 30% of new parts on one of my projects from LCC. After a toe-to-toe meeting, I was not so politely informed that they were not going to miss that 30% goal, and were willing to pay up to 130% to hit that target. What was even sadder, most of those suppliers could not meet our quality goals. By the time they found suppliers that could come close to the goals, the project costs were in a serious over-run.

You would think that there would be some learning and adjustment, but no. By the time the tragedy hit, the Supply Management MBAs had already celebrated their victory and moved on to the next assignment, or left the company headed to their next great adventure!


Not to cross threads, but there is a lot of manufacturing that could come back into this country. All it would take is to get a new Harvard Journal article and we would have new tee-shirts and slogans!
Click to expand...


That reminds me of the mantra we had to work with... but we could only use local as it was dealing with the companies real estate... but they required 30% minority or women owned businesses...



There were scams going on where some guy would have the ownership of his company in his wife's name so he could get on the list... and like you, it did not matter if they did a shitty job compared to someone else... gotta hit that 30%.... to be fair, there were a number of good companies that met that label and did a great job.... and a good price...
 
Instead of being productive, you are constantly trying to CYA and claim features to make sure you stay out of the bottom 10%.

Ballmer was a failure. Microsoft has gone from $30/share to $100 share since he left.
 
I bought a couple hundred shares when it dropped under $16/share
Then they cut the divi, and it's been down hill since.
Maybe it will be fine in a couple years, but it is just one negative story after another right now
 
gstillson said:
Instead of being productive, you are constantly trying to CYA and claim features to make sure you stay out of the bottom 10%.

Ballmer was a failure. Microsoft has gone from $30/share to $100 share since he left.
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All of the discussion above helps me understand where my Megacorp's behavior came from. I'd rather not reveal Mega's name, so I'll just say that a few of our top 5 officers are formerly of GE. Explains a lot! Explains why I am getting the hell out.

Someone mentioned thelayoff.com. There is a lot of BS on those boards. However, they give a "temperature" of sorts. My Megacorp is lit up with high velocity complaints. The temperature is high. Microsoft, however, has cooled off incredibly. Employees of M*soft used to be loud complainers. Lately, you speak with them and they are truly changed. I mean, really. And they like working there. I speak in general, of course. There are exceptions.

Does management not get the fact that happy employees (or at least content) make great workers? Do they not see what the constant threat of job-death does to them? All the youngsters in my department are currently on the lookout for a job elsewhere. Just soul crushing.
 
MRG said:
I was in a couple of those insurance companies after acquisition as a consultant. They were interesting companies who had some very unique free thinking people. [emoji12]
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If you were in KS between 2003-2012 we may have crossed paths! When the Six Sigma gurus came in it was interesting. A few "got" insurance and they were fantastic, as were the people who had an insurance background and got advanced Six Sigma credentials. The others were a joke. I swear their projects came up with conclusions such as "Write coverage for smaller buildings because they have lower average losses". Another genius concluded that loss amounts didn't follow a normal distribution. Any baby actuary could have told them that- and that in many cases the LOGS of the loss amounts follow a normal distribution.

And don't get me started on their attitudes towards loss reserves- a significant portion of any insurance company's liabilities and subject to a lot of judgment and uncertainty. The GE guys would book the lowest number they could browbeat an actuary into accepting (the actuary has to sign off on whatever is booked and can be disciplined by his/her professional society if the reserves turn out to be grossly inadequate). To them reserves were a cookie jar that could be used to help them make the numbers. When they sold my unit they had to make a significant concession on the sale price because the acquiring company wanted more adequate reserves.

No use at all for Welch and his groupies.
 
athena53 said:
If you were in KS between 2003-2012 we may have crossed paths! When the Six Sigma gurus came in it was interesting. A few "got" insurance and they were fantastic, as were the people who had an insurance background and got advanced Six Sigma credentials. The others were a joke. I swear their projects came up with conclusions such as "Write coverage for smaller buildings because they have lower average losses". Another genius concluded that loss amounts didn't follow a normal distribution. Any baby actuary could have told them that- and that in many cases the LOGS of the loss amounts follow a normal distribution.

And don't get me started on their attitudes towards loss reserves- a significant portion of any insurance company's liabilities and subject to a lot of judgment and uncertainty. The GE guys would book the lowest number they could browbeat an actuary into accepting (the actuary has to sign off on whatever is booked and can be disciplined by his/her professional society if the reserves turn out to be grossly inadequate). To them reserves were a cookie jar that could be used to help them make the numbers. When they sold my unit they had to make a significant concession on the sale price because the acquiring company wanted more adequate reserves.

No use at all for Welch and his groupies.
Click to expand...
They didn't let us talk to knowledge workers. We were changing how the back office folks worked. Away from paper onto images and our system will tell you what work your going to do next. Insurance was challenging in the early days, we didn't have enough resources for some of the larger documents. Computer performance was my specialty.

Aucturaries in insurance and fund managers in fund companies were both off limits! It's pretty funny how easy it was to see how organizations cared about their daily routine. Back office folks were not treated nearly as well as knowledge workers. Many of their simpler jobs were automated and no longer exist.
 
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