#Boeing was an aerospace engineering firm that manufactured and sold airplanes. General Electric was an energy engineering firm that manufactured and sold energy and power products.
Both were transformed by the single minded focus on "shareholder value" and "production" over quality and innovation.
Jack Welch was a pox. McDonnell Douglas had a terrible reputation for quality because it was run by ex-GE finance people. The new CEO is the current COO. SSDD.
Stonecipher - GM > GE > MD > Boeing. (moved HQ to Chicago)
McNerney - PG > GE > Boeing (this is the dude who signed off on the MAX, lost out to Immelt at GE for Welch's job)
Muilenburg - started at Boeing as an intern in '85. He was 6 months in when the first MAX crashed and was the sacrificial lamb.
Calhoun - GE > Blackstone > Boeing
Oh and GE? Gone. But the stench of Welch lives on in Boeing.
"From being the most valuable company on Earth, GE fell to the point of essential irrelevance in the American economy. In 2018, with all of Welch's bad decisions catching up with the company, GE was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the bluest of blue chip indexes and a real bellwether of the American economy. GE had been one of the very first companies included in the index"
This is a fascinating article about the last Boeing crisis that put Calhoun in the chair.
And as a complete aside, Allegiant, not really known for it's safety record, is taking delivery of it's first 737 MAX in April.
Discounted merch much? 😱
@Cosmichomicide He had the whistle blower taken care of and now he's getting his golden parachute.
While I am inclined to believe Barnett did not commit suicide, I find it far more likely that one of the thousands of workers that Boeing laid off in SC blamed him (or could get to him) rather than a suit in Chicago.
@Cosmichomicide Some one in the company pointed that guy to him.
@Cosmichomicide: If resurrection exists, then someone should resurrect Welch and put him in a gulag.
Someone today asked me about Jack Welch and I enlightened them about his "innovations":
Outsourcing
Offshoring
Stack Ranking (Rank and Yank)
Mass Layoffs (100K in his first years)
Relocation (non-union)
Services contracting (if you can't fire the janitors and cafeteria staff and security, sell them to someone else and rent them back cheaper)
My ex was all about Welch after he went back for his MBA. Marriage lasted about 2 years after that.
@Cosmichomicide: That tracks, I'm sorry to say. I knew some folks whose bfs/gfs/spouses went bananas over Welch and his bullshit. All of them were aspiring or already businessfolk, and many of their relationships, not only their marriages, hits the rocks in short order. Heck, I noticed the changes. In brief, they all became casually cutthroat and even what I'd call pathologically mercenary and greedy. A few were folks I'd know since grade school. They burned all kinds of bridges, and the...
@Cosmichomicide: ...bananas thing is they many of the Welchians didn't care, at least not for, say, twenty or more years later when they realized all they had was money... if they had any left. More than a few wound up like my dad, pathologically blew through cash on "new ways" to cut corners and such, few of which ever really had returns. Spiraling behavior, as predictable the movement of the stars.
I'm completely stealing "casually cutthroat". It perfectly encapsulates his personality change from quality focused IT guy to spreadsheet focused MBA.
I remember having a HUGE fight over stack ranking, with me pointing out that it cuts valuable members from high performing teams and pits teams against each other in really unhealthy ways - like managers trading "corpses" to save "rockstars". HIm? Clears out the deadwood. important to a healthy, innovative business. 🙄
It's worth noting that a lot of folks are going "But the guy they fired over the crashes was an engineer!"
Yep, he's definitely the one they fired. Of course, he wasn't the one who decided to cut corners on the MAX, that guy left before they started flying into the ground. He was an MBA.
So, to recap the CEOs (next post):