It really seems there's been a devaluation of engineering and technology in general from senior leadership for several years now. No doubt that engineering was bloated and needed to be reorganized/leaned out, so some good moves were made in the reorganization. But what doesn't seem to be realized is that the impact of a good engineer or a good IT employee can easily be a large MULTIPLE of their salary in efficiency savings across the company. Small details in a well thought out design can save thousands of touch labor man hours over the life of a product. Similarly, small improvements in an application such as Solumina (used all day by hundreds of well compensated employees), would save millions of dollars, and all you need is one or two skilled individuals focusing solely on that to streamline (but that doesn't look cool in a keynote presentation). Ensuring you have these types of employees in sufficient numbers is the key to long term survivability. So, these mindless across the board cuts, especially in areas that were already leaned out last fall will be what dooms Gulfstream in the long run. It's improvements in efficiency and technology that will allow us to compete with China in the long run. If we try to compete by simply telling fewer mechanics to work faster, we'll all eventually be working for $1.50/hour assembling iPhones by hand. Technology & innovation is the only way to save our jobs in the long run. Good luck to everyone - I hope this culture changes for the sake of our company and our country.
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Management is only worried about themselves and getting that bonus. I haven't seen a real manager at GAC in a long time, managers know how to manage. They keep promoting people who have no management skills but have all the oral skills one needs to move up at Gulfstream. And who is to blame for letting this happen? the CEO, the man at the top is to blame for what this company has become. I guess he is too busy looking for his next bonus to worry about what's happening to the company he is supposed to be running. All he is really doing is ruining the company that has made him a rich man and cares nothing about the worker bee's below him. To fix this issues at GAC all management needs to be fired and proven leaders need to be hired to replace them. Next the structure of the production operations need to be fixed. No one BUT production needs to tree up to the productions VP. Engineering and quality needs to be separated from the production tree, can we say conflict of interest when everyone trees up to production? When I see production telling quality and engineering what is going to be done no matter what quality and engineering says that is a big flashing red light that things are out of control and the company is heading for a crash.
GD really needs to clean house in the leadership ranks. Pay attention to the 360 reviews. There are some sociopaths on the LT who don’t care about anyone but themselves. The comment about dysfunctional organizations with employees living in fear nailed it.
Definitely agree that many became complacent and focused on empire building when there was plenty of cash, but that is in the rearview mirror now. Going forward, if a company is to survive, it might be worth investing a little more thought into what that will take. Cutting costs will help the near term margins, and stock price is tied directly to the executive compensation structure. So, that's what we get - decisions made only concerned with near term financial performance in mind. Sadly, this affects most all publicly traded companies. What's even more sad is that if they were smarter about the cost cutting, they almost assuredly could have better 5-year performance, but no executive is incentivised to worry about that timeframe - other than maybe wanting to continue to have a job. If they looked at the historical data, the case becomes more obvious. All of the last 3 RIF's at Gulfstream were followed by significant hiring within months. My area specifically has always hired multiple individuals within 2 to 3 months of RIF'ing other good employees due to easy to verify business needs. So, tell me how is it efficient to cycle through firing people, paying severance, then rehiring and retraining. Not to mention all the management & recruiting time needed. The data is there - too bad no one pays attention.
Below comment nailed it.
Look at your leadership team, your VPs, your directors. Ask yourself: are the leadership team members creating environments in which employees can thrive or running around panicked, taking phone calls from POd customers, getting into the weeds and minutiae of daily operations? Are your VPs setting up their organizations to be streamlined, oiled machines or bloated kingdoms complete with miniature support orgs built in? Are your directors collaborating with each other for the benefit of the Enterprise and equipping their managers to effectively use their teams or are they constantly infighting with each other while putting on jovial airs for their bosses? Gulfstream’s problems have long been deodorized by wheelbarrows of cash by way of high cash flow. But without that cash flow to cover up the leadership ineptitude, you get the stench. The stench ALWAYS manifests through uneducated, careless, and visceral actions under the protection of the ever CYA legal team and leeches in HR. I mean, why bother trying to manage properly during the good times? There’s money to count and credit to take.
Why is it so hard for our top leaders to understand that the organizations creating innovation are the ones you need most when your survival depends on increasing efficiency (which is directly proportional to 'margin' – the favorite word of our CEO). Maybe we don't need all the ops directors with mail order business degrees from the Guyton Institute of Technology.
I had a manager who used Boeing as a baseline for comparisons. I kept my mouth shut, but it was painful to hear.
Same mentality at Boeing and look what’s happening to them. 737 Max is a disaster. With all the experience being lost at Gulfstream I worry about the safety of the aircraft.
Amen!!! Thank you!