GE CEO, Jack Welch, who raped and pillaged RCA, dead at 84.
 

New York Times, March 3, 2020 Page B1

Neutron Jack ruined the best job I ever had, at the RCA Sarnoff Labs. :thumbsdn: I did television R&D there, invented 11 patents in about 5 years, probably would be at 45 patents by now if GE never took over and raped and pillaged RCA. Never bought any GE products since. I realize that GE wouldn't notice this, but would you hire the guy who raped your daughter to mow your lawn?... :thumbsdn:

Atleast you know who to blame(and now have out lived them). The best job I've had so far is slated to end because some corporate bozo (probably in Holland) decided we need to close and consolidate a number of offices to "give us a more green footprint". So fire almost the whole staff of my office which is one of the most profitable business units under it's category and ship our jobs to India.

There are days I start thinking that if I knew someone with a time machine planning to stop Hitler from being born, I'd be tempted to ask them to do the same for some key proponents of green.

Post of the month. Never forgave that SOB.

John

Not saying nothing bad happened but I sense a liiitle vitriol. ;)

oops

Lastly, RCA factory service had at least an honest rep until those 'hooers at GE cut 'em loose.

The Dodgers beat the Twins in the World Series in 1965 and I still hate them, lol. Sometimes it is appropriate to hold a grudge for decades. I dont blame you at all.

For the record I cant even remember that World Series and I still hate them. Dont even get me started on the teams that beat the Vikings in the Super Bowl, lol

Ain’t nothin’ wrong with hating the Dodgers. Although it is unfortunate they may have had the 2017 World Series stolen by the cheating Astros. :thumbsdn:

Hmm.. some would argue that the Dodgers would have been playing the Yankees if the Astros didn't cheat the Yankees out of a WS appearance.

In any case, any team that pitches Kershaw twice in one post season series is begging to lose...:banana:

John

GE CEO, Jack Welch, who raped and pillaged RCA, dead at 84.
 

Maybe he is catching hell from Sarnoff now.

Welch was the kind of idiot who thinks one management technique applies in all situations - unfortunately also true of many others whose "expertise" is in generalized "management."

His favorite "rank and yank" method of ranking everyone in a department and getting rid of the lowest 10% is applicable only to departments with a group of people doing exactly the same job, like answering customer phone calls. It is absolutely counterproductive in areas where each employee is specialized, like R&D, because it ignores the local managers' on-the-scene knowledge of the worth of each employee's contribution, and cripples their ability to recruit and keep the employees that are most beneficial to the company.

Over the years, I have winessed multiple cases of adoption of the management technique "flavor of the day" and applying it everywhere instead of where appropriate. This tunnel vision worship of one method or another was always detrimental to the company compared to a pragmatic adjustment per situation. Unfortunately, it often resulted in adoption of a new fad after a few years, rather than real consideration of what to do.

I suspect, unfortunately, that many companies have disciples of Welch's special form of incompetence.

Yeah we don’t know what would have happened, there’s a million different possible scenarios. But I tend to agree with you... death, taxes, and Kershaw choking in October. That wouldn’t have gone any different, Astros cheating or not.

I do wonder what RCA would be like today had it not sold out to GE and stayed independent.

All kidding aside, someone asked me if I thought the Astros would have beat the Dodgers fair and square. I said we'll never know, will we?

John

Given the CED was a financial bleed and RCA wasn't doing too hot before the GE buyout RCA likely would have been bought by a foreign interest sooner or later.

GE CEO, Jack Welch, who raped and pillaged RCA, dead at 84.
 

I read that CED cost RCA $500,000,000. A big hit for sure.

With respect to CED, I’m sorry, and no disrespect to the hard working engineers at RCA, (my problem is with the suits) but the rankest of the rank would see that you don’t put up a 100 year old tech against a contactless laser system. It was doomed to failure before it got off the ground.

The problem in America is short term profits and lack of vision. America relishes corporate take overs and destruction of competition and it continues. Look at what AT&T is doing right now and so many good American companies in the past. The commonality, short term profits and lack of vision. Take over and destroy. Japan fosters competition which in the long run benefits their society. I acknowledge in an ever increasing global society, it’s harder to compete, so a company can’t rest on its laurels and admire their work, because if they do, they become a “Jonny come lately.” Gone, poof.

The CED was in development since the 60s. If the politics between different divisions working on it had been more cooperative and a fire had been properly lit under them such that it came to market before Betamax it likely would have been commercially successful.

Laser vision was being developed in the 70’s by Philips. RCA had to known this. Every time you play a record with a stylus, the tremendous forces of a diamond on plastic at 33 rpm deteriorates the record. The public was ripe for new innovation, and contactless tech, not some recooked 100 year old idea. RCA was marketing CED against Laservision, and again, the lack of vision was their downfall. IIRC, LASERVISION had hit the market first, another disadvantage.

Some folks complained of laser rot. I never experienced it.

As for CED, there's a pretty good history of it here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnpX8d8zRIA&t=64s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSFwyM2L5h4&t=493s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpwL...LZ7SOU&index=3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1dD...LZ7SOU&index=4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASuo...LZ7SOU&index=5

I heard that RCA dropped 2/3 of a billion dollars on this thing.

I had a player and some discs, the video resolution was about 3 MHz, vs VHS which did about 2 MHz. However, and this was a big one, any impurities on or in the disc plastic would cause skipping severe enough to ruin playback.

Yes, if CED had been launched in 1972, or 1973, it would have been a success. As Beta and VHS, not to mention LaserDiscs were not on the market. And RCA was then still a strong company behind it.

I have never forgiven Neutron Jack either. He also helped not only kill off RCA, but also the USA TV industry. He gutted GE, and GE's on the skids too. Hated the SOB's mentality just as much, and he also helped kill off the USA TV service industry too. Good riddance!!!!

One thing I was surprised to learn is that RCA originally started as a spinoff of GE.

RCA was such a success because it was always on the cusp of the "next big thing". Superheterodyne, TV, Color TV, solid state TV. I guess young Sarnoff wasn't enough like his father. They developed LED's and video tape systems, computer systems, in the 60s then got rid of them all and brought out the CED and had to sell rebadged Japanese VCR's. The company really needed to be the one who came out with VHS, and then the CD, then the DVD, then the flatscreen. The old RCA would have done that.

I suspect if GE hadn't come along Thomson might have just bought RCA directly at some point, unless GE made them a better deal to buy their standalone consumer electronics division. I really can't imagine GE staying in that business for very much longer than they did.

RCA would now be Radio Corporation of Asia.

When I worked there in the 1980's, we called ourselves the "Relabeling Corp of America" as we relabeled VCRs from Japan.

What about the damage that Robert Sarnoff did to RCA?

This is true for a lot of corporations: Without getting the next big thing, they wither and die. Apple did this with the iphone, ipad, and getting into media sales (app store). They missed the boat with media streaming services and were late to the party.

Apple has a "Reality Distortion Field" mentality to their userbase which allows them for the most part to survive unsuccessful product launches. The last time around it took them over a decade of really awful consecutive product debuts before they nearly went bankrupt.

I don't think RCA had the same userbase that could of backed them up on a flopped product. In a way that's a good thing because it means RCA's primary customers were not licking windows.

Unfortunately management styles only seem to become worse with time. MBA ought to stand for "Mindless But Arrogant".

I briefly worked in the area of my undergraduate degree, biomedical physics, but purposely went back to earn a PhD in mathematical physics to better insulate myself from the idiocy of the Fortune 500 type executives. The work wasn't too bad I suppose, but it definitely didn't look as future proof as something in academia or at a national laboratory.

I'm currently working on problems in geophysical inverse theory and enjoy it immensely; the pay is decent, I get to work on problems that are more intellectually interesting, and most importantly, funding for my work has been relatively easy to attain.

I wouldn't go into engineering right now for anything. Far too easy to outsource and half decent engineers are a dime a dozen not only here, but in India and China as well.

We just bought a new refrigerator; the number of noises it makes are amazing, all considered "normal". The manufacturer went to the trouble of posting YouTube videos to demonstrate this, and keep you from complaining. Ours makes one noise that certainly couldn't be normal, a "gong" sound like a ball-peen hammer hitting a large bell, every time the compressor cycles. Repairman came out and listened, said they all do that now, the new "normal". He blames it on the replacement of experienced engineers with recent college grads who've never owned a refrigerator before.

Mine is two years old and sounds like there is something alive inside and trying to get out. Maybe whatever it is woke up when it saw the light coming through the three holes that rusted clean through the "stainless steel" construction.

I came across a video on YouTube a few weeks ago of a Canadian TV show investigating the fact that all new appliances are junk not made to last more than a couple of years. The biggest culprits were American brands like Kenmore, Maytag, and GE.

My tenant is an appliance repair shop, and I fix a lot of the control boards that new appliances have for them when I can, and let me tell you, LG and Samsungs are the biggest offenders.

Aside from that, the biggest problem is that in order to make these refrigerators more efficient, all modern refrigerators and freezers have complicated compressor inverter boards, and they are filled with cheap electrolytics, so you can guess what the biggest problem with these is.

In the back of my shop, I have a 1947 GE refrigerator that we bought used back in 1971 from the side of a road for $20. It's been running continuously since then. It's never been apart.

It's a very simple machine to be sure, but it's also extraordinarily well built. How an electric motor and a compressor can be in continuous duty for over 70 years is beyond me, and this is not an extreme example. Most of these have been scrapped out because they're inefficient, but there are a lot of these in basements that are used for backup.

John

I definitely agree about appliances. I still have two of the last "Newton" models of Maytag washer and dryer. The Newton models were built in Newton, Iowa. I can easily repair them, but fortunately haven't had to do so very often. They are approaching 30 years in age.

I also own a 2009 model Whirlpool refrigerator. The manual in bold print mentioned that this model would make more, different noises than my old refrigerator. After owning it 6 years, it quit cooling. The problem was the discharge line from the compressor that was routed in the condensate tray. The line corroded and sprang a leak. Since I do all of the AC work on my vintage cars, I had the equipment needed to splice the line and recharge the refrigerator. Still running fine 5 years later.

Finally, I worked for a company that was taken over by a Jack Welch disciple who came from Schenectady. He turned a great place to work into a miserable place to work which eventually started to lose a lot of business.