#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.
@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...
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. 🙄
@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.