by gwintrob on 5/26/25, 9:54 PM with 163 comments
by roenxi on 5/27/25, 12:28 AM
However it is important to recall that the people who actually made all the money extracting the wealth got out years before, retiring and/or selling stock. They're bystanders now and probably happy to run the whole operation again.
Although as an aside who these people are who think corporate pensions are a good idea is beyond me. People really should be in charge of their own savings in preference to their employer, expecting some random corporation to cover the cost was always a bit crazy even when it seemed sort-of possible that the system was stable. It is easy to have some sympathy but, as a practical matter, it was never going to work and it isn't a surprise that it didn't.
by ChrisMarshallNY on 5/27/25, 9:14 AM
The subunit I worked for, was almost supernaturally dysfunctional.
I was there for 18 months, and they had 3 reorgs, in that time.
Once, the VP of our division, called an “all-hands” meeting, to tell us that he was a lawyer that didn’t have a computer, didn’t like software (we were a software company), basically, didn’t like us, and that we’d better get on the stick, and make number go up.
Ah…fun times…
by Tycho on 5/27/25, 2:54 PM
Btw, there’s a great interview with the author of Power Failure on the Bloomberg Masters in Business podcast.
by azalemeth on 5/27/25, 6:30 AM
-- the superconducting magnet shell requires the accurate creation of 'nested doll' cryogenic containers, built to withstand magnetostatic forces in a highly regulated environment with defined safety requirements under catastrophic failure modes. Solving the design problem is equivalent to solving a huge set of nasty, coupled PDEs subject to loads of material constraints. This is directly analogous to aspects of jet engine design.
-- inside the bore of the magnet (but not in the cryostat) goes a device called the gradient set, whose job is to generate \partial B_z/ \partial_{xyz} as a function of time (that, very much indirectly, the radiographer specifies). This is a water cooled, resistive set of magnet coils with a defined frequency response curve, linearity requirements, etc. The current into them is generated by a set of three huge amplifiers, which have to actually take a signal delivered on a timebase of microseconds and volts and amplify it with negligible delay and deliver kA into a large inductor centimetres away from a patient. This is a formidable (power) electronic engineering challenge with huge parallels to various aspects of electrical engineering – e.g. managing (preventing) dielectric breakdown, thermal management, inverse solutions to Maxwell's equations in a quasistatic region (people use streamfunctions to do this well), etc.
-- the RF side of the system has to transmit kV and receive microvolts within microseconds into a definitively challenging electrodynamic environment with constraints on harmonics. Everything has to keep to a hard realtime constraint. The ADC must have a huge dynamic range and the problem is conducted massively in parallel. This is directly analogous to problems in telecommunications or RF design, but harder -- intermittent pulsed not continuous wave, and a hard requirement to accurately measure analogue voltages. Designing the RF coil ("probe" in NMR speak or ≈"antenna") is a further horrible (full-wave) EM design problem that even GE often subcontract out to one of about five specialist firms worldwide.
It's not a priori obvious to me that lots of competing companies would be better at creating stuff that requires the interaction of disciplines like this. Rather, I view the split up of GE and all of the woes of the article as evidence of a business mismanaged by MBAs. The defined benefit pensions should have been protected by law and overseen by an independent regulator - like my defined benefit pension that sits above my employer and shares risk among many different universities.
by irjustin on 5/27/25, 6:01 AM
My parents view pensions as gold standard. That it cannot be messed with and clearly this article shows that it can. The promise for your years of service can't be paid out.
Now something you believed would allow you to not worry until your passing, perhaps leave a small something to your children, won't be. Instead, you're beginning to worry about how you'll make ends meet in a few years with all the rising prices.
by zdw on 5/27/25, 12:28 AM
I'd love to see an explanation of what went wrong from those guys.
by geodel on 5/27/25, 4:44 PM
All that growth in GE credited to its executives was in large part due huge american spending power with massive and growing economy. So all these ways where GE fucked its workers, environment and so on worked because there were others who would balance out. How ever at some point it was no longer the case then gravity brought GE to its rightful place.
by MetaWhirledPeas on 5/27/25, 1:42 PM
by twoodfin on 5/27/25, 12:59 AM
I’m not even sure there’s a counterfactual world where GE is a $m trillion business: The global economy has largely evolved beyond these massive, diverse conglomerates, and likely all to the good.
What does a “wow, GE really has been managed wonderfully since 1980” story even look like? I imagine they split up much earlier, each spinoff establishes their own brand, and there’s no “GE” to talk about.
by squeedles on 5/26/25, 11:56 PM
Light Out by Gryta and Mann follow up by focusing on the Immelt years and how he tried to keep the ball rolling despite the hole that Jack left him in. Also an excellent read.
Sounds like Power Failure covers a lot of the same material as these two earlier books perhaps with some historical material.
by TomMasz on 5/27/25, 12:57 PM
I imagine those GE workers who were young enough probably moved elsewhere, but the older ones didn't fare so well.
by delibes on 5/27/25, 12:51 AM
by rtpg on 5/27/25, 12:45 AM
by sydbarrett74 on 5/27/25, 10:33 PM
by actionfromafar on 5/26/25, 10:00 PM
Hm, doesn’t ring a Bell.
by ViktorRay on 5/27/25, 5:58 PM
Here is a positive review of that other book from Bill Gates:
by fisherjeff on 5/27/25, 5:28 AM
God that’s insufferable, even by Jack Welch’s standards.
by BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 on 5/27/25, 4:49 PM
But the biggest was coming up with nice new technologies, selling to customers; then not that many years later dropping support and leaving customers without a path forward.
by TrapLord_Rhodo on 5/27/25, 3:41 PM
by IAmBroom on 5/27/25, 12:51 PM
This thread seems to be more about whether or not AI wrote the article, than the article's contents.
Easier to make yourself into a witch-smeller than a bonifide expert in what the witches are talking about, I guess.
by jxjnskkzxxhx on 5/27/25, 8:42 AM
THIS is a book about business.
by datavirtue on 5/27/25, 4:16 PM
by rkagerer on 5/27/25, 1:23 AM
by JackYoustra on 5/27/25, 7:56 AM
After reading it, Welsh was great (his creation of GE credit, while merely just a shadow bank, was a bit innovative, not to the point of lionized but certainly worth a merit, but his day-to-day running and operation and cost cutting / discipline, outside of a couple deal heat moments seemed really quite good).
...except for hiring Immelt, Immelt was a ridiculous disaster of a CEO that my god should've been fired nearly immediately, and Flannery got completely shafted, someone threw him out, grabbed his plan, and basked in the credit. Super tragic to see.
by KnuthIsGod on 5/27/25, 7:03 AM
Perhaps it is time to have rules about the submission of AI generated trash to HN as faux-articles.
by tonyhart7 on 5/27/25, 11:27 AM
by ivraatiems on 5/26/25, 10:51 PM
Sounds like an interesting book but the article says remarkably little.
by lenerdenator on 5/27/25, 1:59 PM
by Gud on 5/27/25, 1:49 PM
And in my opinion we are doing some amazing things right now.
I don’t think GE is dead at all.