Virtually no experience in the software business, nor in enterprise solutions. Mostly niche hardware stuff. No familiarity with high growth tech areas critical to GED and its customers. Only qualification is being a friend and minion of Culp.
This was the final nail in the coffin for any hope of GED turning around. It’s dead, done, kaput.
CV reads like something out of the 1980's. Anyone think he could march into a VC's office on Sand Hill Road and walk out with a $100 million funding commitment? Me neither! Exactly NOT the kind of guy who's gonna turn things around. No matter, my 1970's CV is polished up and ready to go...
Hard disagree on GE IT, I think you’ll need to walk the ground more or talk to some engineers. Find one SV company (not just the ones you listed) that 1) has a TLS proxy, 2) OS update being held up for 1yr+ (not just a security concern, actually impacting some development teams to deliver results), and 3) a self-help forum for IT problems. That’s right, employees are supposed to solve each other’s issues and if that doesn’t help, you can create a ticket and it’ll get assigned to a contractor that would like to close it as soon as possible without solving anything because your problem is hurting their metrics.
If that doesn’t sound like a joke I don’t know what is. I’d be surprised if you can find a big SV company that has more than one of the three problems I mentioned.
@ZVNRvZt-nibn I am in agreement with you here. NewCo still remains to me the right path forward. It seems to not be ready at this point but going back is actually not an option. I no longer see the value of GE as it applies to the NewCO business. This is due to 3 reasons,
@ZVNRvZt-kpmk
I hope your perspective is not a shared one among management otherwise GED is f—ed. Let me explain.
Customers can still be treated well while you take care of your employees. These are not mutually exclusive; you should treat both well. Without customers you don’t have sales and without employees you don’t have a product.
And that’s exactly why you have a hard time retaining talent. Those who are able are leaving for more lucrative jobs, regardless if the company is B2B or B2C.
I think your argument is more towards how NewCo is a bad idea (premise of a separate legal structure is autonomy which you argue is not necessary in B2B). I also don’t agree with that view. Two other benefits of a spin-out is separation from GE IT, and lacklustre performance of other GE BUs. GE IT is a joke especially if GED is trying to succeed in a cloud business. Bonuses are heavily weighed down by GE Power downturn, so there is really not incentive to do well because bonuses would always amount to peanuts. A spin-out solves those problems.
In terms of autonomy, sure, B2B software might not need to be that nimble, but that’s autonomy at the PM level. If an engineer feels the lack of autonomy then that’s a management problem because there is a lot of interesting problem space no matter if GED is B2B or B2C.
@ZVNRvZt-jqso I have a different perspective about customer first. GED customers are all mega customers. Not even small-to-middle size customers. This is different from consumer market software companies and those cloud software companies who serves small-to-middle size industrial customers. To serve mass market, individual customer does not have much leverage, and product innovation plays bigger role here. Thus employee/internal R&D are important to the success. For GED, it is not the case. Requirements from each customer are critical and often unique. no single size fits all. not much freedom for employee to take lead. I did not say employee is not important. it is still the second important part of the equation. but it is not as important as those in consumer market software or cloud software companies in Silicon Valley.
@ZVNRvZt-jdmw Agreed, and they should’ve sold GED before embarking on the NewCo endeavour. Now they’re in the predicament of moving either forwards or backwards are both worlds of pain.
On a more general note, I really dislike the constant rhetoric of focusing on customers. Yes that’s how you win sales but that’s only half the equation. Just because Jeff Bezos has that mentality does not mean we have to worship it. Employees are treated as a second thought and the brain drain is real. When you keep aligning your salary and benefits with “market rates”, guess what, all the engineers that are worth a damn is going to leave for places that pays “above average”.
Be serious on Power - given the magnitude of problems there, growing software cannot be a major priority.
As far as gaining new customers, the best bet seems to be in Power leveraging the acquired Grid assets, that is at least a real business although technology may not be as impressive as Predix.
"Customers" refers to existing customers (many internal) who don't want their existing investment to be lost because the company goes out of business and no one supports the technology. The reality in the field is that no new customers will seriously consider GE Digital after the miscues and amateur handling of the events of the past two years. The choice of leadership was indeed a poor one, and it marks the end of GE Digital as a viable choice to customers.
Customers are pushing for NewCO and GE to stay together. That being said my impression is NewCO well behind in plan to actually become a viable standalone, and so they needed some air-cover to defer.
Right -but were those recommendations solid ? Hard to believe given the capabilities of the extended team...
And the first thing he does is to backtrack on the spin-out of NewCo? Flushing Steve Martin (and team)’s efforts for the past 6mo down the toilet does not instill confidence.
DO NOT AGREE - Byrne was the CEO of a public company and a board member on two others. He doesnt need "experience" in a specific segment in order to align organizations and work with his teams to achieve goals. He is not a "business unit manager" with a CEO/VP title, he is a real CEO.
good luck to all. yes current mgmt needs continued cleanse...
Many challenges and interesting to see it play out although will not be billions in revenue anytime soon. "Management" still remaining particularly on the commercial side is really weak, maybe can maintain what they have and put out PR, will not be able to define growth path or be credible to anything other than legacy customers. Walsh and others need to go...
GED's problem is not leaders donot understand software industry but leaders donot understand industrial software. SR guys donot have experience working with industrial customers. In industrial world, you have to live with aging/legacy systems and have to interact with outdated legacy hardware. It is not closed apple ecosystem and you do what ever you want within iOS and iphone hardware. That's the ignorance of SR guys when they claim to build Predix as apple's iOS.
Cannot agree more. People older than 50 has no idea about software industry. I assume GE still looks for selling ged product piece by piece.
Nothing actually exists so what does it matter. F--- you ge digital and ALL of the slide ware b---s--- you’ve ever done.
A strategy of software as an extension of hardware is a terrible one though. IIoT applications are not islands. If GED shifts to more HW centric solutions, margins will suffer greatly. I agree with the OP - very poor choice in my view. This selection also makes me seriously question Culp's suitability as CEO for GE. He's a backwards looking fellow it seems, focused on optimising the financial performance of legacy businesses rather than building new ones.
Worst than Millar, Run, never those two jokers were supposed to generate $228Bn a year by 2022 from IIoT according to dreamer immelt
it would indicate perhaps a strategy more centered on sw as an extension of hw (ie what ge does) and away rfrom enterprise solutions.