Finding Some Cracks in the Famed ‘GE Way’

I read James Flanigan’s “Welch Says ‘Tough Love’ Personnel Policy Good for Employees, Company” [Nov. 18] with the same interest I read all the stories about Jack Welch--hoping for a reporter who will see past the PR to discover that the “GE Way” is a myth--at least at the division I worked at for 10 years.

I was a mid-level executive at NBC Television until August 2000, when I left to start up my own small company. I saw firsthand that the superior performers at the network were not rewarded, the bottom 10% were not penalized for their performance, and that people were promoted for the same nonproductive reasons they’re promoted everywhere else: They didn’t rock the boat, and they didn’t intellectually upstage their boss.

In my experience, I never saw the “up or out” personnel policy put into practice. Ditto for the vaunted “Six Sigma” programs we heard were always coming “soon.” In short, General Electric was no better, and no worse, than any other employer I’ve worked for.

I can only speak for NBC, of course, but I wonder how many other employees of other GE divisions would report similar tales.

Michael Kaplan

Burbank

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Part of the employee “rating systems” that corporations such as GE use are nothing more than a legalized cover to get rid of older, better paid and nearly vested employees.

This allows the company to hire younger, lower paid people, and in many cases, employees who get cheaper benefits, if any.

Any employee who is loyal to his company beyond what he is paid to do is an idiot. They are not family, as millions have learned of late.

Ernest Salomon Santa Barbara