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Former GE CEO Jeff Immelt Close to Becoming Uber’s CEO

88 points by xyzzy_plugh 9y ago

alistproducer2 9y ago
The culture change would be huge. I'm curious how the rank and file would respond.
pgodzin 9y ago
Any insight on why his failures innovating at GE that caused him to resign aren't a red flag for an innovative company like Uber? Just because they're looking for a grown up?
- OzzyB 9y ago
  Hush now the money men are in charge, it's time for grown ups to run things. Like that Pepsi guy that ran Apple (into the ground).
  - pocketsquare2 9y ago
    John Sculley. "Jeff [Immelt], do you want to sell planned-obsolescence dryers and weather derivatives the rest of your life?"
  - valuearb 9y ago
    The parallels are actually pretty interesting. You can argue that Sculley saved Apple. At the time Jobs was a terrible leader and manager, and he had way over-forecast Macintosh sales. And because of it, Apple was hemorrhaging. After booting Jobs, Sculley cut head-count, refocused Apple on it's bread and butter product, the Apple II and led Apple to a massive turnaround. Sculley did so well he lasted 10 years as CEO. Uber is a company that was a great idea, got off to a great start, but then management started to constantly sabotage themselves. Travis has acted as irrationally as Jobs 1.0 did. Bringing in a Sculley type is exactly the type of leader they need now. Clean out all the dumb side business ideas, refocus on the car sharing service, and work hard to rebuild it's brand. Ten years from now they might need someone more creative (and Immelt is so old there is no way he's going to run it for that long). But right now they need to survive and get back on track.
- deleted 9y ago
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- tootie 9y ago
  Uber is an international brand for taxis. I'm not even sure why they are considered a tech company.
  - deleted 9y ago
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  - moxious 9y ago
    This always blew my mind: a smartphone app for a cab company that doesn't even own any cabs raised $16 billion. It simply can't be that they spent even a small fraction of that writing software, smartphone apps just aren't that expensive. But they've got one helluva marketing engine and investor relations group... That, and a lot of their money is buying market share, effectively subsidizing people's rides. I've never understood how that's going to work, beyond vague handwavey arguments about potential future driverless cabs and other complex arguments that don't seem backed by data.
    - origami777 9y ago
      I think the lesson here is that kickstarting new markets (entering new countries) is not easy. They basically have a local or regional team that needs to find a way to drive user adoption. They also spend a lot of money on promotions to change user and driver behavior. IMO it doesn't do them just when we say "it's just an app". It's a complex operation that they've simplified to appear as that way.
      - moxious 9y ago
        It's fine to spend money driving a new market but you eventually have to capitalize on it. How will that work? Large price increases, or just betting that driverless tech will eliminate costs and get them to profitability? Also, they already have substantial scale. When would one reasonably expect them to stop losing so much money?
        fstuff 9y ago
        Just take a look at Didi. They won the market in China and now prices are up, driven incentive pay is cut, wait times are up because drivers are leaving the platform because pay is down. https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2016/09/14/didi-china-users-prices/%3fsource=dam https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2016/09/1...
- valuearb 9y ago
  Because they desperately need a grown up. Uber doesn't need to be innovative, it needs to execute without continuing to shooting off it's toes.
  - revelation 9y ago
    What exactly does it need to execute on? It's valued at $60B and is losing money with every. single. fricking. ride. It doesn't need someone to "execute" some sort of plan, it needs a miracle only innovation can provide.
    - QAPereo 9y ago
      What it needs is a time machine to bring the necessary automotive tech back from 2050.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      It needs to re-focus on it's core ride-sharing business and substantially reduce it's burn rate. There is little doubt that ride-sharing will be a massively profitable business, they get paid dollars per ride and their booking costs should only be pennies. The myth that their rides are unprofitable is because they spend money like drunken sailors in a whorehouse. Anyone analyzing their financials has no insight into whether ride sharing is profitable in the US, or other countries because the needed information is not broken out in those reports They have up to 100 side businesses like UberEats. They've spent a ton trying to design autonomous vehicles they don't need now and likely never will need (given they'll be freely available for purchase from Tesla, GM, etc when created). Lastly, they spend huge amounts opening new markets, basically paying drivers to sign up with such lucrative bonuses that Uber gets scammed constantly by them. The plan is pretty simple 1) Kill almost every side business, and do a substantial headcount reduction. 2) Dump the autonomous driving development group and cheaply settle the Waymo lawsuit. 3) Focus everyone left on ride-sharing, improving the brand, and efficiently expanding internationally. 4) Clean house in the HR department and of every remaining harasser. 5) Raise another round to ensure Uber's long term financial stability. Thats a plan that gives Uber a very long runway to achieve full profitability, even without an IPO.
ardit33 9y ago
Seems like the story of apple again. Jeff has no real tech credibility, he is a old school boys network business guy with dodgy/bad performance rap. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2017/03/28/ge-needs-a-new-strategy-and-a-new-ceo/#82df5f34ad28 https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2017/03/28/ge-needs... "At this point, it is probably too late to save GE. By losing sight of the need to grow, and instead focusing on optimizing the old business while selling assets to raise cash for reorganizations, Immelt has destroyed what was once a great innovation engine. Now that the activists have GE in their sites it is unlikely they will let it ever return to the company it once was - creating whole new markets by developing new technologies that people never before imagined. The future looks a lot more like figuring out how to maximize the value of each piece of meat as it's carved off the GE carcass." Good luck to the folks that work at uber. You are going to need it.
- valuearb 9y ago
  That article is a bit biased, especially given that it ignores that not only has GE has paid out around $15 in dividends since Immelt took over, and that GE stock was in a huge bubble at the time. Uber doesn't need tech leadership, it needs adult leadership. It's wounds are all entirely self inflicted.
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  - origami777 9y ago
    To really dispute GP's claim you'd need to make a claim that GE has innovated in new categories under Immelt. The fact it paid out $15 in dividends might only support GP's (and the Forbes article) claim that Immelt has optimized for better selling what currently exists. This is the same thing that happened to MSFT under Ballmer. MSFT stocked performed well, but they missed the biggest opportunity of the post-PC era (mobile), were late to the cloud game, and probably missed some other opportunities I can't think of.
    - valuearb 9y ago
cylinder 9y ago
Wow, this is going to be bad.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Why? He can't be anywhere near as bad as Kalanick.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    It's possible both can be bad for different reasons. To be fair, the GP didn't specify what "bad" meant.
  - wpietri 9y ago
    There are different kinds of bad. Immelt has been at GE since 1982, which was about the time the early SMTP RFCs were written. That's a long time. Will the skills and behaviors that worked for him there be what Uber needs? Personally, I'd be surprised if they were. Of course, it's not clear anybody has what Uber needs.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      There are many skills in managing a business and people that never change. Uber needs basic blocking and tackling, not some new age management wonderkind. They absolutely don't need a technology person.
      - dilemma 9y ago
        >Uber needs basic blocking and tackling Can you explain these terms?
        astrange 9y ago
        I was hoping it was some kind of pulley metaphor, but apparently it's just about handegg. http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/blocking+and+tackling http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/blocking+and+tackling
victor106 9y ago
Lyft would love this.
Powerofmene 9y ago
Should Immelt become CEO this would be a huge culture shock not only to UBER employees but also drivers given the button downed culture Immelt originates from. He is also very financially focused so not sure we would continue to see pricing that we are accustomed to in the long-term. On the plus side, he comes with a reputation of integrity and professionalism which may help Uber gain entrance to cities and other areas that have previously been inaccessible. I realize Immelt fits the picture that the Board is looking for (professional, intelligent, organizational, experienced, etc) but given SV's tendency towards men under 40, Immelt does not fit that bill at all. Would be interesting to see how well he would be accepted at all the tech conferences, events etc.
- blackguardx 9y ago
  To my eye, SV has a preference for founders to be under 40. I'm not sure many care about the age of the CEO once the company has hit its stride. Uber has hit its stride, right?
  - moxious 9y ago
    That very much depends on your perspective. They're losing huge amounts of money and they're in the middle of a pile of lawsuits. They may end up losing their driverless tech, which they may have never owned in the first place. They've hit their stride?!? Looks to me like a company in crisis that needs a turn-around artist.
  - Powerofmene 9y ago
    You are correct that he is not a founder and in that respect SV is a bit more forgiving of age. He will be a terrific asset in managing the legal issues that are surrounding Uber w Google and others as Immelt has vast experience in managing intensive litigation threats to a company.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    They've hit their stride only if their goal was to run headfirst into a wall.
  - 9y ago
WisNorCan 9y ago
The question is whether to focus on tech leadership or adult leadership. In Meg, they had a candidate that had both experience scaling a tech company and maturity in building a real organization. But TK and his buddies ruined that by leaking her name to the press and putting her in an impossible position. Given how leaky the board is - they can only go after candidates that are between jobs.
bedhead 9y ago
Well, if Uber needs some serious earnings manipulation, errr, management, Immelt is certainly the guy. And boy do they need it. Guy made something like $300-400 million during his tenure - GE stock did nothing.
fstuff 9y ago
Hey this guy and Travis were both on Trumps business panel. At least Travis quit months ago, this guy waited until till the bitter end. Probably the biggest reason Travis quit outside of the public was because his employees asked him to. I wonder how the employees will react to this new guy support of Trump
- chrischen 9y ago
  Being on the oanel does not imply support. Apple CEO is pretty anti Trump but still sits on panels. Ignoring the president just creates divide and conflict. If you sit on the panel you get Trump’s ear and don’t really have to give anything in return.
  - fstuff 9y ago
    That's true and Travis said that when he first got calls to quit but he listened to his customers and employees and quit. I'm no fan of Travis or uber but I feel like Travis deserves some points for making the right call months ago and I wish others followed his lead back then.
  - PakG1 9y ago
    The fact is that the employees wanted Travis to quit. Whatever the truth is about Travis or anyone else supporting Trump, that's what happened. And this new guy didn't quit. Those variables therefore matter. The capable of what the CEO actually thinks doesn't matter.
  - cowsandmilk 9y ago
    Just to correct, the Apple CEO, Tim Cook, has attended meetings with Trump, but never sat on any formally organized council. Jeff Immelt and Travis Kalannick sat on the "American Manufacturing Council" and "Strategic and Policy Forum" respectively, which had memberships and were regularly consulted.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    You don't have to be on the President's showpiece panels to not be ignoring him. Anyone who would be invited to be on one of those panels has no trouble hearing from and making themselves heard by government without being on a panel.
SoMisanthrope 9y ago
Yeah, since he's did such a great job with GE's stock...
thesausageking 9y ago
As someone who hasn't followed GE closely, why is Immelt considered a good CEO? Looking at the numbers, over his tenure, GE's stock is down ~38% while the S&P 500 is up 123%. He did take over during some rocky times, but in the last 10 years, it's the same picture. If you put $100 into GE at the start of 2007, today you'd now have ~$105. For the S&P, you'd have $210. For a basket industrial stocks, you'd have $205. http://performance.morningstar.com/stock/performance-return.action?t=GE&region=usa&culture=en-US http://performance.morningstar.com/stock/performance-return.... How can the CEO who delivered this be considered good at his job?
- mathattack 9y ago
  All you can argue that his skills (adult leadership) are what's needed. But (similar to here) he took office after a legend who puffed up the stock, and couldn't take it back to the original glory. But perhaps his job is to land the plane at a $30 billion valuation.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Welch left that company in a sorry state, and a lot of the financial machinations that pumped up that stock were played out (and worse became liabilities) by the time Immelt arrived. (Welch turned GE into a leveraged bank that happened to make generators and plastic) GE's stock performance imo is more about how the market no longer favors conglomerates and relatively boring industries.
  - nebabyte 9y ago
    That's a good context, thanks. Is there a better indicator of Immelt's measure as a CEO in your opinion?
  - thesausageking 9y ago
    If you assume Immelt was a great CEO and was just victim to Welch leaving GE in a very over-valued state, you'd expect the stock's performance to start off lousy and be better as Immelt's 16 year tenure went on. But that's not what we see. If you only take the last 10 or 5 years, GE has greatly underperformed both the market and similar industrial stocks. Total return for 5 and 10 years: GE 6.6% -1.6% S&P 500 13.7% 7.6% Diversified Industrials 13.0% 6.4%
perseusprime11 9y ago
Oh wow. When did Immelt become former GE CEO? With so much political news, I did not even notice he got fired recently. He will take Uber to the ground with his excellent non technical chops.
united893 9y ago
Historically speaking, putting blue chip CEOs in charge of tech companies, had worked out disasterously. The skill set, management style and risk profile is completely different.
- nebabyte 9y ago
  Uber's been at war on several fronts for a while now, imo they were on a course for disaster already. I don't see how money managers in charge might help but if ever there were a time for hail marys for them, this is it. I doubt it'll help but hey.
  - thebiglebrewski 9y ago
    Hi
- yladiz 9y ago
  Is Uber a tech company?
surfmike 9y ago
I think a visionary tech leader, like Robin Chase (zipcar co-founder), would still be better as CEO, and hire someone with experience running a big company like Immelt as a COO.
buddapalm 9y ago
They need to be in the self driving car game or the company has maybe a 7-10 year life span. Managing that innovation is necessary, and it's unclear they are optimizing around that. The other interpretation is this decision is entirely about managing short term to get to an IPO, so investors who have lost faith can cash out. The candidate they are considering fits that bill more closely.
- chipotle_coyote 9y ago
  As valuearb has pointed out in other comments, it's not at all clear that Uber needs to be in the self-driving car game to the point of making self-driving car technology, any more than they need to be in the human-driven taxi game they're in now to the point of buying an automobile manufacturer. It's not at all unreasonable to think that the way to save Uber is to ruthlessly cut costs and focus on the business of fleet and driver management, without banking on the assumption that the drivers are all going to go away within a decade. They should certainly still be watching autonomous cars, and perhaps find someone to partner with the way Lyft has with Google/Waymo, but I'm not at all convinced that's a business they should actually be in. (I also suspect that the belief that we're going to have "level five" autonomous cars within the decade is far too optimistic. Also, an awful lot of discussions apparently assume the vast majority of consumers will, as soon as it becomes practical, stop buying cars and switch to autonomous taxis for all transportation needs. At least among American consumers, I'm going to stamp that with "[citation needed]" until further notice.)
  - xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
    Why would anyone who is working on their own products partner with Uber (or Lyft etc.)? It's pretty clear that a genuine self-driving product would demolish the human driving equivalent. Forget network effect, it's going to be way cheaper.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      Because, if they're still in business long-term, 1.) they're potentially a very big customer and 2.) They can be a great source of data and broader insights about exactly how people use/want to use taxis in different locations. What are the patterns? Pickup and dropoff points. Etc.
viknod 9y ago
I worked 13 years under Immelts mediocre reign. Jeff tried to push rope, desperate knee-jerk reactions to stock analysts opinions, superficial restructuring with no real change to the company. GE leadership/management was vastly overvalued. Tech, and technical talent was a completely unvalued commodity, outsource to the lowest bidder in India. When he understood that software eats the world(via some SV guru whisperer) he tried to coin some "industrial internet" mumbo jumbo that was going to be a trillion dollar business. Out of touch like an unfrozen Dr. Evil.
- tedmiston 9y ago
  Not sure how it's played out in practice but I've heard a lot about GE Predix. It's something like an IoT PaaS "Heroku for factories". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predix_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predix_(software)
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kchoudhu 9y ago
This is great news for Lyft.
- godzillabrennus 9y ago
  And Apple, and Tesla, and Google, and GM, and Ford, and Toyota, and Honda, and Kia, and every other group out there working on a self driving car.
dredmorbius 9y ago
Among the more interesting speculation I'd seen was that Marissa Meyer might be considered. Putting a woman in charge would send a clear and strong signal. I'm not sure I'd want to inherit that particular mess, though, particularly not after Yahoo.
mschuster91 9y ago
I don't get why anyone would associate themselves with Uber at this point. There is no fix for the "bro culture" at Uber except firing everyone and rebuilding the company from the ashes. Also, regulators are starting to apply pressure to all this "sharing economy" crap (Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, Foodora and friends) which is basically just exploitation of workers combined with open ignorance of laws and regulations... which means that there is no way Uber can justify its valuation except they manage to roll out fully autonomous driving in 2 years.
- wenttomarket 9y ago
  We've been fixing "bro culture" given that it's largely a myth propogated by a select group of SV tech writers via cherry picking a small group of bad apples that are in no way representative of the majority of folks at the company. You associate with Uber if you want the chance to solve big problems with incredible teams to continually improve a product that you and millions of others rely on as a matter of necessity. The "Uber exploiting workers" meme is a classic, and holds little water given the fact that everyone on the platform consents to be there and can leave at any time. If anything, the flexible earnings opportunity Uber provides is transformational to a group of people who have historically had to make insidious trade offs (money over family time) to keep the lights on.
blakewatters 9y ago
Uber's valuation is entirely driven off the idea that they will reap monopoly profits in a market that is exploding. Like PayPal, Google and Facebook before them the wager is that they are going to be dominant and collect all the profits while all competitors are scraping up nickels and dimes. I think that there is good reason to doubt that premise. Driving people around has a very different cost structure from a SaaS business that can throw off 85% margin if you get to product / market fit. Uber is a commodity and is trying to create margin by sucking all the air out of the room for competitors. A key strategy has been weaponized fund-raising. But even if you snuff out Lyft the barrier to entry for any player with a platform and scale is very low. Then let's think about the tech. There's an implicit assumption that Uber is going to be a force in the self driving car market. Even if you set aside the Otto mess, why does anybody think that a 6 year old company that drew a car on Google Maps and did a payment integration is going to dominate the driverless car game? GM, Tesla, Volkswagen, Google have been thinking about this shit for decades. Why is Uber going to win? They can't run HR yet -- how are they going to own what happens next? It's a monster business and they should be super happy with where they are. But I just don't see how they win in the shift that is coming. Car ownership is dying. It's becoming about transit experience
- Systemic33 9y ago
  Uber has essentially become too-big-to-fail startup for all the involved investors, so at this point it's game of how you can get it into a stable state where the involved investors can withdraw without making the whole cardhouse fall down.

88 points by xyzzy_plugh 9y ago

The culture change would be huge. I'm curious how the rank and file would respond.

Any insight on why his failures innovating at GE that caused him to resign aren't a red flag for an innovative company like Uber? Just because they're looking for a grown up?

OzzyB 9y ago
Hush now the money men are in charge, it's time for grown ups to run things. Like that Pepsi guy that ran Apple (into the ground).
- pocketsquare2 9y ago
  John Sculley. "Jeff [Immelt], do you want to sell planned-obsolescence dryers and weather derivatives the rest of your life?"
- valuearb 9y ago
  The parallels are actually pretty interesting. You can argue that Sculley saved Apple. At the time Jobs was a terrible leader and manager, and he had way over-forecast Macintosh sales. And because of it, Apple was hemorrhaging. After booting Jobs, Sculley cut head-count, refocused Apple on it's bread and butter product, the Apple II and led Apple to a massive turnaround. Sculley did so well he lasted 10 years as CEO. Uber is a company that was a great idea, got off to a great start, but then management started to constantly sabotage themselves. Travis has acted as irrationally as Jobs 1.0 did. Bringing in a Sculley type is exactly the type of leader they need now. Clean out all the dumb side business ideas, refocus on the car sharing service, and work hard to rebuild it's brand. Ten years from now they might need someone more creative (and Immelt is so old there is no way he's going to run it for that long). But right now they need to survive and get back on track.
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tootie 9y ago
Uber is an international brand for taxis. I'm not even sure why they are considered a tech company.
- deleted 9y ago
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- moxious 9y ago
  This always blew my mind: a smartphone app for a cab company that doesn't even own any cabs raised $16 billion. It simply can't be that they spent even a small fraction of that writing software, smartphone apps just aren't that expensive. But they've got one helluva marketing engine and investor relations group... That, and a lot of their money is buying market share, effectively subsidizing people's rides. I've never understood how that's going to work, beyond vague handwavey arguments about potential future driverless cabs and other complex arguments that don't seem backed by data.
  - origami777 9y ago
    I think the lesson here is that kickstarting new markets (entering new countries) is not easy. They basically have a local or regional team that needs to find a way to drive user adoption. They also spend a lot of money on promotions to change user and driver behavior. IMO it doesn't do them just when we say "it's just an app". It's a complex operation that they've simplified to appear as that way.
    - moxious 9y ago
      It's fine to spend money driving a new market but you eventually have to capitalize on it. How will that work? Large price increases, or just betting that driverless tech will eliminate costs and get them to profitability? Also, they already have substantial scale. When would one reasonably expect them to stop losing so much money?
      - fstuff 9y ago
        Just take a look at Didi. They won the market in China and now prices are up, driven incentive pay is cut, wait times are up because drivers are leaving the platform because pay is down. https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2016/09/14/didi-china-users-prices/%3fsource=dam https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2016/09/1...
valuearb 9y ago
Because they desperately need a grown up. Uber doesn't need to be innovative, it needs to execute without continuing to shooting off it's toes.
- revelation 9y ago
  What exactly does it need to execute on? It's valued at $60B and is losing money with every. single. fricking. ride. It doesn't need someone to "execute" some sort of plan, it needs a miracle only innovation can provide.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    What it needs is a time machine to bring the necessary automotive tech back from 2050.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    It needs to re-focus on it's core ride-sharing business and substantially reduce it's burn rate. There is little doubt that ride-sharing will be a massively profitable business, they get paid dollars per ride and their booking costs should only be pennies. The myth that their rides are unprofitable is because they spend money like drunken sailors in a whorehouse. Anyone analyzing their financials has no insight into whether ride sharing is profitable in the US, or other countries because the needed information is not broken out in those reports They have up to 100 side businesses like UberEats. They've spent a ton trying to design autonomous vehicles they don't need now and likely never will need (given they'll be freely available for purchase from Tesla, GM, etc when created). Lastly, they spend huge amounts opening new markets, basically paying drivers to sign up with such lucrative bonuses that Uber gets scammed constantly by them. The plan is pretty simple 1) Kill almost every side business, and do a substantial headcount reduction. 2) Dump the autonomous driving development group and cheaply settle the Waymo lawsuit. 3) Focus everyone left on ride-sharing, improving the brand, and efficiently expanding internationally. 4) Clean house in the HR department and of every remaining harasser. 5) Raise another round to ensure Uber's long term financial stability. Thats a plan that gives Uber a very long runway to achieve full profitability, even without an IPO.

ardit33 9y ago

Seems like the story of apple again. Jeff has no real tech credibility, he is a old school boys network business guy with dodgy/bad performance rap. https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2017/03/28/ge-needs-a-new-strategy-and-a-new-ceo/#82df5f34ad28 https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2017/03/28/ge-needs... "At this point, it is probably too late to save GE. By losing sight of the need to grow, and instead focusing on optimizing the old business while selling assets to raise cash for reorganizations, Immelt has destroyed what was once a great innovation engine. Now that the activists have GE in their sites it is unlikely they will let it ever return to the company it once was - creating whole new markets by developing new technologies that people never before imagined. The future looks a lot more like figuring out how to maximize the value of each piece of meat as it's carved off the GE carcass." Good luck to the folks that work at uber. You are going to need it.

valuearb 9y ago
That article is a bit biased, especially given that it ignores that not only has GE has paid out around $15 in dividends since Immelt took over, and that GE stock was in a huge bubble at the time. Uber doesn't need tech leadership, it needs adult leadership. It's wounds are all entirely self inflicted.
- deleted 9y ago
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- origami777 9y ago
  To really dispute GP's claim you'd need to make a claim that GE has innovated in new categories under Immelt. The fact it paid out $15 in dividends might only support GP's (and the Forbes article) claim that Immelt has optimized for better selling what currently exists. This is the same thing that happened to MSFT under Ballmer. MSFT stocked performed well, but they missed the biggest opportunity of the post-PC era (mobile), were late to the cloud game, and probably missed some other opportunities I can't think of.
  - valuearb 9y ago

cylinder 9y ago

Wow, this is going to be bad.

valuearb 9y ago
Why? He can't be anywhere near as bad as Kalanick.
- noobermin 9y ago
  It's possible both can be bad for different reasons. To be fair, the GP didn't specify what "bad" meant.
- wpietri 9y ago
  There are different kinds of bad. Immelt has been at GE since 1982, which was about the time the early SMTP RFCs were written. That's a long time. Will the skills and behaviors that worked for him there be what Uber needs? Personally, I'd be surprised if they were. Of course, it's not clear anybody has what Uber needs.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    There are many skills in managing a business and people that never change. Uber needs basic blocking and tackling, not some new age management wonderkind. They absolutely don't need a technology person.
    - dilemma 9y ago
      >Uber needs basic blocking and tackling Can you explain these terms?
      - astrange 9y ago
        I was hoping it was some kind of pulley metaphor, but apparently it's just about handegg. http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/blocking+and+tackling http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/blocking+and+tackling

victor106 9y ago

Lyft would love this.

Powerofmene 9y ago

Should Immelt become CEO this would be a huge culture shock not only to UBER employees but also drivers given the button downed culture Immelt originates from. He is also very financially focused so not sure we would continue to see pricing that we are accustomed to in the long-term. On the plus side, he comes with a reputation of integrity and professionalism which may help Uber gain entrance to cities and other areas that have previously been inaccessible. I realize Immelt fits the picture that the Board is looking for (professional, intelligent, organizational, experienced, etc) but given SV's tendency towards men under 40, Immelt does not fit that bill at all. Would be interesting to see how well he would be accepted at all the tech conferences, events etc.

blackguardx 9y ago
To my eye, SV has a preference for founders to be under 40. I'm not sure many care about the age of the CEO once the company has hit its stride. Uber has hit its stride, right?
- moxious 9y ago
  That very much depends on your perspective. They're losing huge amounts of money and they're in the middle of a pile of lawsuits. They may end up losing their driverless tech, which they may have never owned in the first place. They've hit their stride?!? Looks to me like a company in crisis that needs a turn-around artist.
- Powerofmene 9y ago
  You are correct that he is not a founder and in that respect SV is a bit more forgiving of age. He will be a terrific asset in managing the legal issues that are surrounding Uber w Google and others as Immelt has vast experience in managing intensive litigation threats to a company.
- valuearb 9y ago
  They've hit their stride only if their goal was to run headfirst into a wall.
- 9y ago

WisNorCan 9y ago

The question is whether to focus on tech leadership or adult leadership. In Meg, they had a candidate that had both experience scaling a tech company and maturity in building a real organization. But TK and his buddies ruined that by leaking her name to the press and putting her in an impossible position. Given how leaky the board is - they can only go after candidates that are between jobs.

bedhead 9y ago

Well, if Uber needs some serious earnings manipulation, errr, management, Immelt is certainly the guy. And boy do they need it. Guy made something like $300-400 million during his tenure - GE stock did nothing.

fstuff 9y ago

Hey this guy and Travis were both on Trumps business panel. At least Travis quit months ago, this guy waited until till the bitter end. Probably the biggest reason Travis quit outside of the public was because his employees asked him to. I wonder how the employees will react to this new guy support of Trump

chrischen 9y ago
Being on the oanel does not imply support. Apple CEO is pretty anti Trump but still sits on panels. Ignoring the president just creates divide and conflict. If you sit on the panel you get Trump’s ear and don’t really have to give anything in return.
- fstuff 9y ago
  That's true and Travis said that when he first got calls to quit but he listened to his customers and employees and quit. I'm no fan of Travis or uber but I feel like Travis deserves some points for making the right call months ago and I wish others followed his lead back then.
- PakG1 9y ago
  The fact is that the employees wanted Travis to quit. Whatever the truth is about Travis or anyone else supporting Trump, that's what happened. And this new guy didn't quit. Those variables therefore matter. The capable of what the CEO actually thinks doesn't matter.
- cowsandmilk 9y ago
  Just to correct, the Apple CEO, Tim Cook, has attended meetings with Trump, but never sat on any formally organized council. Jeff Immelt and Travis Kalannick sat on the "American Manufacturing Council" and "Strategic and Policy Forum" respectively, which had memberships and were regularly consulted.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  You don't have to be on the President's showpiece panels to not be ignoring him. Anyone who would be invited to be on one of those panels has no trouble hearing from and making themselves heard by government without being on a panel.

SoMisanthrope 9y ago

Yeah, since he's did such a great job with GE's stock...

thesausageking 9y ago

As someone who hasn't followed GE closely, why is Immelt considered a good CEO? Looking at the numbers, over his tenure, GE's stock is down ~38% while the S&P 500 is up 123%. He did take over during some rocky times, but in the last 10 years, it's the same picture. If you put $100 into GE at the start of 2007, today you'd now have ~$105. For the S&P, you'd have $210. For a basket industrial stocks, you'd have $205. http://performance.morningstar.com/stock/performance-return.action?t=GE&region=usa&culture=en-US http://performance.morningstar.com/stock/performance-return.... How can the CEO who delivered this be considered good at his job?

mathattack 9y ago
All you can argue that his skills (adult leadership) are what's needed. But (similar to here) he took office after a legend who puffed up the stock, and couldn't take it back to the original glory. But perhaps his job is to land the plane at a $30 billion valuation.
Spooky23 9y ago
Welch left that company in a sorry state, and a lot of the financial machinations that pumped up that stock were played out (and worse became liabilities) by the time Immelt arrived. (Welch turned GE into a leveraged bank that happened to make generators and plastic) GE's stock performance imo is more about how the market no longer favors conglomerates and relatively boring industries.
- nebabyte 9y ago
  That's a good context, thanks. Is there a better indicator of Immelt's measure as a CEO in your opinion?
- thesausageking 9y ago
  If you assume Immelt was a great CEO and was just victim to Welch leaving GE in a very over-valued state, you'd expect the stock's performance to start off lousy and be better as Immelt's 16 year tenure went on. But that's not what we see. If you only take the last 10 or 5 years, GE has greatly underperformed both the market and similar industrial stocks. Total return for 5 and 10 years: GE 6.6% -1.6% S&P 500 13.7% 7.6% Diversified Industrials 13.0% 6.4%

perseusprime11 9y ago

Oh wow. When did Immelt become former GE CEO? With so much political news, I did not even notice he got fired recently. He will take Uber to the ground with his excellent non technical chops.

united893 9y ago

Historically speaking, putting blue chip CEOs in charge of tech companies, had worked out disasterously. The skill set, management style and risk profile is completely different.

nebabyte 9y ago
Uber's been at war on several fronts for a while now, imo they were on a course for disaster already. I don't see how money managers in charge might help but if ever there were a time for hail marys for them, this is it. I doubt it'll help but hey.
- thebiglebrewski 9y ago
  Hi
yladiz 9y ago
Is Uber a tech company?

surfmike 9y ago

I think a visionary tech leader, like Robin Chase (zipcar co-founder), would still be better as CEO, and hire someone with experience running a big company like Immelt as a COO.

buddapalm 9y ago

They need to be in the self driving car game or the company has maybe a 7-10 year life span. Managing that innovation is necessary, and it's unclear they are optimizing around that. The other interpretation is this decision is entirely about managing short term to get to an IPO, so investors who have lost faith can cash out. The candidate they are considering fits that bill more closely.

chipotle_coyote 9y ago
As valuearb has pointed out in other comments, it's not at all clear that Uber needs to be in the self-driving car game to the point of making self-driving car technology, any more than they need to be in the human-driven taxi game they're in now to the point of buying an automobile manufacturer. It's not at all unreasonable to think that the way to save Uber is to ruthlessly cut costs and focus on the business of fleet and driver management, without banking on the assumption that the drivers are all going to go away within a decade. They should certainly still be watching autonomous cars, and perhaps find someone to partner with the way Lyft has with Google/Waymo, but I'm not at all convinced that's a business they should actually be in. (I also suspect that the belief that we're going to have "level five" autonomous cars within the decade is far too optimistic. Also, an awful lot of discussions apparently assume the vast majority of consumers will, as soon as it becomes practical, stop buying cars and switch to autonomous taxis for all transportation needs. At least among American consumers, I'm going to stamp that with "[citation needed]" until further notice.)
- xyzzy_plugh 9y ago
  Why would anyone who is working on their own products partner with Uber (or Lyft etc.)? It's pretty clear that a genuine self-driving product would demolish the human driving equivalent. Forget network effect, it's going to be way cheaper.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Because, if they're still in business long-term, 1.) they're potentially a very big customer and 2.) They can be a great source of data and broader insights about exactly how people use/want to use taxis in different locations. What are the patterns? Pickup and dropoff points. Etc.

viknod 9y ago

I worked 13 years under Immelts mediocre reign. Jeff tried to push rope, desperate knee-jerk reactions to stock analysts opinions, superficial restructuring with no real change to the company. GE leadership/management was vastly overvalued. Tech, and technical talent was a completely unvalued commodity, outsource to the lowest bidder in India. When he understood that software eats the world(via some SV guru whisperer) he tried to coin some "industrial internet" mumbo jumbo that was going to be a trillion dollar business. Out of touch like an unfrozen Dr. Evil.

tedmiston 9y ago
Not sure how it's played out in practice but I've heard a lot about GE Predix. It's something like an IoT PaaS "Heroku for factories". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predix_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predix_(software)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

kchoudhu 9y ago

This is great news for Lyft.

godzillabrennus 9y ago
And Apple, and Tesla, and Google, and GM, and Ford, and Toyota, and Honda, and Kia, and every other group out there working on a self driving car.

dredmorbius 9y ago

Among the more interesting speculation I'd seen was that Marissa Meyer might be considered. Putting a woman in charge would send a clear and strong signal. I'm not sure I'd want to inherit that particular mess, though, particularly not after Yahoo.

mschuster91 9y ago

I don't get why anyone would associate themselves with Uber at this point. There is no fix for the "bro culture" at Uber except firing everyone and rebuilding the company from the ashes. Also, regulators are starting to apply pressure to all this "sharing economy" crap (Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, Foodora and friends) which is basically just exploitation of workers combined with open ignorance of laws and regulations... which means that there is no way Uber can justify its valuation except they manage to roll out fully autonomous driving in 2 years.

wenttomarket 9y ago
We've been fixing "bro culture" given that it's largely a myth propogated by a select group of SV tech writers via cherry picking a small group of bad apples that are in no way representative of the majority of folks at the company. You associate with Uber if you want the chance to solve big problems with incredible teams to continually improve a product that you and millions of others rely on as a matter of necessity. The "Uber exploiting workers" meme is a classic, and holds little water given the fact that everyone on the platform consents to be there and can leave at any time. If anything, the flexible earnings opportunity Uber provides is transformational to a group of people who have historically had to make insidious trade offs (money over family time) to keep the lights on.

blakewatters 9y ago

Uber's valuation is entirely driven off the idea that they will reap monopoly profits in a market that is exploding. Like PayPal, Google and Facebook before them the wager is that they are going to be dominant and collect all the profits while all competitors are scraping up nickels and dimes. I think that there is good reason to doubt that premise. Driving people around has a very different cost structure from a SaaS business that can throw off 85% margin if you get to product / market fit. Uber is a commodity and is trying to create margin by sucking all the air out of the room for competitors. A key strategy has been weaponized fund-raising. But even if you snuff out Lyft the barrier to entry for any player with a platform and scale is very low. Then let's think about the tech. There's an implicit assumption that Uber is going to be a force in the self driving car market. Even if you set aside the Otto mess, why does anybody think that a 6 year old company that drew a car on Google Maps and did a payment integration is going to dominate the driverless car game? GM, Tesla, Volkswagen, Google have been thinking about this shit for decades. Why is Uber going to win? They can't run HR yet -- how are they going to own what happens next? It's a monster business and they should be super happy with where they are. But I just don't see how they win in the shift that is coming. Car ownership is dying. It's becoming about transit experience

Systemic33 9y ago
Uber has essentially become too-big-to-fail startup for all the involved investors, so at this point it's game of how you can get it into a stable state where the involved investors can withdraw without making the whole cardhouse fall down.