Jack Welch: Not So Tough

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Legendary Hero-CEO of GE and Colossus of Capitalism Jack Welch was ridiculed pretty soundly for his jobs report tweeting. Stunned and bewildered, he has gone home to sulk and spend quality time with his pet blanket. I hope he doesn’t run out of smelling salts.

16 thoughts on “Jack Welch: Not So Tough”

  3. Sounds like Jack and Suzy need to complement their Winning series with Losing, that is if they can even compute what the word means.

    …Together with her husband, Suzy is co-author of the #1 international bestseller Winning, its companion volume, Winning: The Answers, and The Welch Way, a weekly column on business and career challenges that appeared in BusinessWeek magazine from 2005-2009 and that was published in 45 major newspapers across the globe by The New York Times Syndicate.

  4. These rich assholes have got to learn that you can’t just shoot you big fat privileged mouth off and not get blowback. Act like a dick, get treated like one.

    He may think he has the right to say stupid things, and of course he does, but when you make knee-jerk observations based entirely on your racist assumptions, you will get plenty of feedback. And most of it won’t be agreement.

  5. There’s an interesting & infuriating article in last week’s New Yorker about several of the billionaires who’ve frothed themselves into the delusion that Obama is the Class Warfare President (and, at the same time, that the billionaires themselves aren’t the true class-warriors). This sense of entitlement has been around for ages, of course, but the real irony is how wrong these guys are about Obama.

    One common factor among these super-rich coots was their age– all in their late 70s at least; one ranting lunatic is 92. (I believe Jack Welch is in his 80s, either that or his skin-care regimen has gone horribly wrong.) Generationally, they all have a fixed idea about how, ahem, certain types of people should know their place. I call it the Pullman Porter Outrage.

  7. Joan, I appreciate the skin care line! Visited my dermatologist yesterday, and I look better than Jack Welch even after my treatment! But personal attacks aside, what you point out about the entitled rich coots is so frequently demonstrated that I think we could name it The Prostate Principle, sorta like The Peter Principle but with an AARP card involved.

  8. I wonder if Suzy negotiated an expiration date on her prenuptial agreement like wife #2 did?

  9. Poor widdle Jack. He thought he was admired and respected back in the GE days, rather than being feared as a powerful bullying d-bag with a TV network. It’s so sad for them when they step outside the privileged bubble of cringing lickspittles praising the smell of their farts and get a whiff of reality.

  11. The experience of being CEO is an ego builder. Ass-kissing subordinares tell you of your genius and build a personal mystiqe that is associated with the corporate brand. In politics, at least half the ‘company’ is in opposition. The backstabbers are out there every day. And the POTUS can staff his cabinet with supporters, unlike a CEO, he can’t fire anybody he wants.

    Jack isn’t prepared to deal with opposition. Neither was The Donald, who quit his presidential bid after tbe best Obama smackdown of all time. A speech right after POTUS released the long form of his birth certificate and The Donald found himself laughed at in public by prominent people at the dinner. He didn’t like it. Like Jack, his prior experience not only left him unprepared, his CEO experience was a liability.

    Politics is not big business.

    There is a related topic that I agree with. Military generals have to adopt a totally different mindset than they had in the military to succeed in politics and most can not.

  13. All these insightful comments into the gulf that separates a powerful, white, male CEO from the experience of being POTUS is giving me vivid, horrific head-movies of a day in the life of “President Romney.” Tantrums, SNAFUs, stupid public remarks, heartless miscalculations and deadly missteps; as a nation, we would be so, so screwed.

  14. All these insightful comments…is giving me vivid, horrific head-movies of a day in the life of “President Romney.”…as a nation, we would be so, so screwed.

    At least under Welch, GE actually produced stuff that people wanted, and became a corporate collossus, and a much admired company. Sort of the like the way Mitt’s father’s company, American motors actually made stuff, paid workers, something George Romney could rightly be proud of. Mitt’s nothing like his father – a vulture capitalist who has to lie about everything. We would be more than screwed.

  15. They were a colossus company before Welch. remember he helped move the parts overseas, to lower the costs to you and me, taking the well paid union jobs and ditching them. Funny how profits are going the way of welch, shrinking. Fewer well paid people to buy his products. Not as many as before. But labor costs and outlays are more now then then. Funny, the stock holders didn’t get any more money, The banks didn’t charge more, wonder where the profits went.

  16. They were a colossus company before Welch..

    Maybe in size, but in the way it was run pre-Welch, basically by bean-counters, it would’ve gone the way of GM – moribund and overly bureaucratized. I worked at GE during the Welch years, and had parents who worked there before he arrived.

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