GE’s Jeffrey Immelt Is on Uber's CEO Shortlist

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-27/ge-s-jeffrey-immelt-is-said-to-be-on-uber-ceo-shortlist

by coloneltcb • 9 years ago

52 48 9 years ago

bloomberg.com

cft• 9 years ago

Why not Marissa Mayer?

vlad• 9 years ago

She'll stop remote work and require all Uber drivers to come to office?

rl32• 9 years ago

If only so she can read children's stories to them in condescending fashion:

http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-childrens-book-...

adamnemecek• 9 years ago

She's not a good CEO.

redditmigrant• 9 years ago

Marissa's tenure at yahoo was not successful. She was unable to turn around the company, made acquisitions that were too late, or didnt work. What about her tenure at yahoo was convincing of her ability to be a good CEO?

MegaButts• 9 years ago

Why Marissa Mayer?

dismantlethesun• 9 years ago

She did good work at Google, both in software engineering, user experience planning, and handling a large high-revenue department (Adwords).

Which from the sound of it might make her a better CTO than CEO, but I certainly wouldn't judge her just by Yahoo. She likely has the capacity to do well at a growing company, with a clear path to profit (aka no more pivoting), which is exactly what Uber is and Yahoo was not.

rdl• 9 years ago

Upsides: 1) female (so it somewhat allays the discrimination claims). 2) available

Downsides: 1) Tenure at Yahoo! was unimpressive

walshemj• 9 years ago

and as a Female will be happier taking on a high risk job

colordrops• 9 years ago

what has she done that anyone should care about?

Overtonwindow• 9 years ago

I'm not sure this is a good idea. Immelt feels too much like a manufacturing guy. Marissa Mayer sounds like a good choice, but again I don't think she's the right fit. They need someone who understands both software, and transportation. I think they should choose David Abney, CEO of UPS, or Gary Kelly of Southwest.

brandonmenc• 9 years ago

Immelt feels too much like a manufacturing guy.

Less than half of GE's revenue comes from manufacturing.

kayoone2• 9 years ago

Doesn't mean he is a good fit for Uber.

seren• 9 years ago

It was true before GE Capital had been divested, now I am not so sure it still holds.

staticautomatic• 9 years ago

Mayer is a terrible choice. If nothing else, her tenure at Yahoo! showed how little emotional intelligence she has. That's the last thing you'd want in a replacement for an allegedly out of touch douche bag like Kalanick.

zbruhnke• 9 years ago

I personally feel like David Cush (Former Virgin America CEO) should be the guy at the top of their list - he was previously on the shortlist in the COO search and if there is one person who understands building a transportation brand that people love its him.

Customers raved about Virgin America (and still do) even though they were largely a no frills airline - it shares a lot of similarities with Uber

Terretta• 9 years ago

Strongly agree.

I once lost a quarter billion in company value by bringing in a big brand name corporate CEO to satisfy VCs instead of continuing to make do with nothing but still-emerging domain experience and a passion for learning and evolving the customer experience.

In this kind of business, if the CEO isn’t relentlessly and ruthlessly proxying the customer needs, it will probably have a bad time.

phreeza• 9 years ago

Only on HN can a mere mortal like me read an offhand comment by a fellow commenter, claiming to have lost a quarter billion dollars (and believe it to be true).

dforrestwilson• 9 years ago

Yeah contrast that with Immelt who oversaw a 50% decline in GE's market cap since taking the helm in 2000. Drastically under-performing the S&P 500 over the same time period.

I can understand the board's desire to put an elder-statesman style CEO in place to reign the "kids" in, but just because he went to Harvard doesn't make him an effective CEO.

arthurcolle• 9 years ago

This kills the patient

slice_of_life4• 9 years ago

What are these folks thinking? Bring Travis back.

It's too early to have 1) a non-technical CEO 2) a CEO without domain experience & passion

There's nothing to demonstrate this guy even cares about what Uber is doing in logistics and technology.

orcdork• 9 years ago

   What are these folks thinking? Bring Travis back.

And people accuse me of being over-dramatic when i tell them the tech sector is morally bankrupt.

slice_of_life4• 9 years ago

Mistakes are made all the time. I swear to you, there's an exaggerated amount of hate towards Travis. You'd think he's the devil. What has he done that's so bad? He simply founded a company that was super successful within a short time, with an idea that seems so easy that everyone thinks they could've done it and along the way some missteps were made.

Are you sure you would've done better? Would you like it if the plurality of stakeholders in your ecosystem vilified you in a similar way? I'm sure you wouldn't. Cut Travis some slack!

surfmike• 9 years ago

I always thought Robin Chase (zipcar founder) would be a great pick. She's been a pioneer in transportation for a long time.

elmar• 9 years ago

WHAT UBER'S NEXT CEO NEEDS TO SAY by Robin Chase

https://www.wired.com/story/what-ubers-next-ceo-needs-to-say...

19890903• 9 years ago

I don't think Uber will last too long. The founder instilled a very bad culture from the very beginning. Travis is everything wrong with the valley right now.

emodendroket5• 9 years ago

They've also never made a profit and don't seem to have a clear path to profitability.

slice_of_life4• 9 years ago

I would rather have Uber crash and burn under the stewardship of Kalanick (unlikely scenario) than have the same happen under a clueless board and a replacement CEO (likely scenario).

I said it before and you can mark my word. This decision to hire Immelt as Travis' replacement only goes further to solidify my claim. Bad decision. Very bad decision.

dna_polymerase• 9 years ago

Bad decision. Very bad decision.

I agree. Immelt is an HBS educated manager. <- Full stop. That's the only thing about him. He has no Silicon Valley experience and worked for the GE his whole life. The only thing I would hire him for is to stabilize the company to finally go public. I bet the VC's plan exactly for that. I would not expect any innovation in Ubers business from now on. Immelt will bring Uber in shape for Wall Street, VCs cash out and then the whole thing can go to hell. As bad as Kalanick was, he was aggressive and hungry for success. Immelt is nothing of that. Bye bye Uber.

wastedhours• 9 years ago

How much do we think the CEO position will be genuine, or more of an honorary position to make the company seem stable?

slice_of_life4• 9 years ago

I hadn't seen it that way but like @dna_polymerase pointed out above, it may very well be. I still maintain it's myopic and undeserving of a company I'd like to think of as the next facebook/amazon/google/microsoft

These are outfits that have provided tremendous value to the entire planet. My view was that Uber could have followed the same trajectory. Now, not so much anymore.

redorb3• 9 years ago

I don't want to be ageist but I believe there is a correlation between your age and ability to understand a paradigm shift. I think Jeffrey Immelt and I've also heard speculation about Meg Whitman are a bit 'old school' for this role. Not solely based on age but it's a factor. The sharing economy and the idea eventually autonomous cars are the play - is in fact in my opinion a radical shift in the way thing have been, the world Jeff and Meg led.

jeffjose• 9 years ago

Unfortunately, that's the definition of ageist.

If you cant see what's wrong, try finishing this sentence in your head "I don't want to be sexist, but women .."

emodendroket5• 9 years ago

To be fair, he said he didn't want to be ageist, not that he wouldn't be.

redorb3• 9 years ago

Age is a factor though in how people think and perceive the world yeah? I do apologize thankfully I'm not in a position where my bias hurts anyone but myself and I'll work on my thinking.

jpm_sd• 9 years ago

It'll be Mayer/Yahoo all over again!

GE’s Jeffrey Immelt Is on Uber's CEO Shortlist

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