Hacker News Reader

Comment by AtlasBarfed | Hacker News Reader

Wasn't GE long ago taken over by MBA sociopaths that cooked books with financial shenanigans, and deemphasized all the actual productivity and technology?

IIRC then the house of cards collapsed right after Jack Welch and his management cult of personality retired?

Likely this is a "last gasp" financial bloodsuck to sell off what remains of the legitimate parts of the company.

View on HN

> by MBA sociopaths

The former VC / MBA who succeeded Jack Welch [1] is the one who discovered the cooked books and financial shenanigans. Welch was educated as a chemical engineer [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Immelt

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Welch#Early_life_and_educ...

Yes. The problem is not MBAs, the problem is management incentives and shareholder incentives.

Because MBAs are morally and ethically rudderless sociopaths that only align to personal financial incentives and don't have any real integrity?

Unless you're trying to say that there were NO MBAs under Jack Welch's management team and organization?

MBAs are absolutely the problem.

MBA programs just cargo cult whatever is appears to be working. They're like trend followers who just amplify whatever is already happening not trend setters.

There’s a lot of negativity here about MBAs. Perhaps some of this is merited, but I think MBA programs can be beneficial and aren’t as “cargo cult” as some commenters have suggested. I am a principal software engineer working on cloud projects, but decided to get a MBA in 2017. I learned a lot of valuable skills such as accounting, finance, negotiations, and HR that I had little to no exposure to in my undergraduate Computer Science program. Knowing how to read SEC filings and how to sell projects and ideas to executives has only helped me in my career. The MBA program I was in helped me get exposure to many business fundamentals. There’s a lot of negativity, but if you look at many MBA programs, most of them focus on the fundamentals.

Two wrongs make it right?

The current CEO is doing a pretty good job, in my opinion. Has been very focused on fixing the debt situation and improving costs through process and manufacturing improvements rather than accounting non-sense. Comes off as very much a “manufacturing operations / kaizen” guy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com