To all you Cote bashers...

The single most important measure of how good a job a CEO is doing is the return on the shareholders' investments. This is the CEO's top priority. Let's call that Rule #1.

Any CEO who has priorities that conflict with Rule #1 will perform suboptimally. He is derelict in his duty and risks being replaced with someone with more properly aligned priorities.

Some of you believe that the CEO should be loyal to the employees. There have been markets in history where maintaining a large census of decent US-based employees aligned with Rule #1. That is no longer the case. Don't hate the CEO. Hate the market.

Some of you think that the company shouldn't be normalizing your pay, holidays, benefits, etc. The CEO should be more generous. Giving you more benefits in conflict with Rule #1 is being generous with other people's money. If you want your leaders to do that, you should've worked for the government or a non-profit.

Some of you even equate this normalization to stealing. If they have taken money out of your bank account, you might have a case as only the government can do that with impunity. If not, then hate the laws. Don't hate the CEO.

Some of you think the CEO shouldn't seek cheaper labor. A good CEO will do this to the full extent of the law as long as it supports Rule #1. Again, don't hate the CEO. Hate the laws.

If you want to actually change this situation, you need to support politicians who will improve the economy and create and enforce laws that support the American worker. Or you could just vent in this echo chamber about how evil Côte is.

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Your lack of knowledge in business is only surpassed by your black of knowledge in politics. Removing the value of your company by removing the people who have made that value is asinine and that is exactly what Cote is doing right now. One only does this if they want to destroy a company for the own personal gain. Cote is already under investigation by the SEC for insider trading that has to do with the United technologies bid. He would know how to preserve shareholder value if someone gave him a f** manual. When the new CEO takes over at the end of 1st quarter 2017, the market will no longer be able to support the smoke and mirrors that have kept the stock price artificially inflated. Maybe you should take a class on some of this stuff before you spout such stupid b* on a website.

Chasing off your best employees, demoralizing the rest and starting the countdown clock on the viability of major business segments isn't doing the shareholders any great favors. The fact that Cote will be retired by the time all the pigeons come home to roost should be a major concern for all shareholders. It certainly is for this one.

Dave Cote has been identified with the Jack Welch school of management, of whom Cote is supposedly a protege of. Even Jack Welch didn't destroy his company as much as Dave Cote.

Cote mostly gets his management model from this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Humphreys

This particular article doesn't do this guy justice; others and books are available. Humphreys and his mob cohorts took over/muscled in on various companies & looted the crap out of them, leaving them nothing but an empty husk which eventually collapsed. This management model at the time was considered "immoral/illegal/mobsterish" but was later adopted by Wall St. and MBA schools to be the modern "smart" way to run a corporation. This model was also used in mobbed-up unions such as the Teamsters, whose retirement fund is running out soon after all the years of being looted. Just to think Las Vegas and many other investments and in the end, insolvent.

That will be Honeywell in the future. No preparation for the long term is in effect.

The only way out is sell it out to another company dumb (or corrupt) enough to buy them. Tata? UTC?

You make some very valid points. Rule #1 is what should always drive the CEO's behavior, but having worked under Dave Cote as well as working under 2 other fortune 100 CEO's I have witnessed how rule #1 can be applied differently. I believe that Dave Cote has done a great job of delivering shareholder value and done it on the backs of his employees and created a model and culture that is not sustainable (I'm sure Darius will appreciate that). I have also worked under Inge Thulin and believe that 3M has a much brighter future due to a more engaged workforce that feels like they are an integral part of the company's success and are equally committed to driving shareholder value. I made a lot of money on Honeywell stock over Cote's tenure, but I think he has created a bubble and will leave at the right time before the long term impact of his shortsighted management approach takes full effect.

Oh yea. He's buying businesses and selling them. He's letting go of expensive labor and hiring cheap labor. Based on his record and what he's done with the company and stock price, he's not going to run out of anything. History will most likely judge him as a highly successful CEO.

Oh yea? Is the CEO supposed to sacrifice the company in favor of the stock price? Eventually you run out of company to sell and people to lay off. Then what? Then the shareholders are left holding a worthless stock and that is NOT the purpose of the CEO. Look at Apple and Google, those are two companies Dave wishes would give him the time of day. Both of those companies are tremendously successful and profitable and do not need to resort to stealing money from employees and selling assets/revenue streams to prop the stock price up. Dave is NOT a good CEO; he's a worthless hack.

Remember Carly Fiorina - the unpopular, EX-CEO of HP?

She is still paying for what she did to the HP employees (hint: layoffs, merge and acquisitions) as of NOW!

Thank you!!!

Amen and thank you! The problem is so much bigger than 'Dave Cote is a bad guy'. Get out and vote, people! And know who you are voting for.

Thread regarding Honeywell International Inc. layoffs

To all you Cote bashers...

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