Thread regarding General Electric Co. layoffs

Big larry drank the lean cool aid, and think that will save us. Good god,you have a bunch of OMLP kids running the show down the drain. Get rid of the OMLP program,let them count parts and get some seasoned knowledgeable people to run the company.

@2xnl+167HTrBg - The issue isn't diversified conglomerates. The issue lies with people running them after the creators of the conglomerates leave. The upper management that moves in after the original conglomerate creators leave - like Jeff Immelt at GE, Carly Fiorina at HP, etc., normally don't have the passion, drive, energy, or even a damn clue about running a conglomerate. Besides, they are assured of fat payouts regardless of their performance. I don't understand one reason why Jeff Immelt was worth what he got paid, or even why the current CEO for that matter. Today's CEO's don't take any risks of their own. They take risks on other people's jobs, savings, retirements, investments, etc., and regardless of how awful they perform, they are assured of a fat payout. The notion that in a conglomerate one set of business can support poor performance in other sectors (albeit for a short time) is fundamentally flawed. That is a receipe for disaster. In a successful conglomerate, all businesses continue to pull their own weight all the time. The only advantage should be synergies to grow together - not support a failing sector.

The idea of shutting down Crotonville is interesting. Either that, or temporarily shut down and completely rebuild it from the foundation up in terms of management philosophy and content. BTW, the first picture with people in https://jobs.gecareers.com/global/en/crotonville isn't from Crotonville. That is from a GE site that was started in Richmond, Virginia in 2011. The attrition rate in that photo is interesting. Upper left and upper middle left for Capital One a year or two ago. I think lower right quit within the past year after being upset at being called back to the office (after having decided declare herself fully remote some years prior without proper HR approval). Upper right is still with GE. I don't know lower left or lower middle - I assume those were with the film crew that came to shoot fake recruiting pictures from time to time at that site. The filming crew would go around a grab young and attractive people to stage like they actually were working together.

Can anyone say more layoffs on the way

Definitely agree with the last poster on "diversified conglomerates". Does not seem to work well in the last decade or two and definitely probably not in the future.

Like sports teams changing names to be socially right, maybe GE should be separated into individual businesses and name retired to end the decades long pain for employees and investors.

A good start would be closing Crotonville the Leadership training ground that clearly was not effective in developing leaders.

If “diversified conglomerates” outperformed, the world would be full of them. Guess what: they don’t and it isn’t. A rational investor would never hire a corporation to do the diversification. She would want to own the best specialists in attractive industries.

By the way, this has been known for at least 3 decades, and is taught at essentially all business schools. Welch and then Immelt (for a while) convinced investors to ignore it by providing a story that the financial press ate up, aided by results that were the effect of earnings management (supposed to have been outlawed by SARBOX but apparently still alive and well) and potential fraud (still under SEC investigation) but inevitably they woke up.

And back to the attractive industries. GE happens to be in really unattractive industries. In fairness, jet engines were really attractive until COVID-19. But the others have been garbage for a while. Thus the results of hiring a corporation to allocate capital across different industries.

Double digit growth demanded by Immelt fast tracked the company demise

should never have sold off so much of Capital, was easy money off money. again GE extremism comes back to k–l

No surprise for those of us who work here. Correction: those left...so far.