The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M. | Hacker News Reader

The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M.

nytimes.com

50 pointsblogimus41 comments

Obama's press operation is flawless. Every single junior official who is leading anything of import gets a profile article in a major leading newspaper full of quotes from senior officials praising him.

I supported Obama, but I'll wait till I see some results before buying into all the hoopla about his oh-so-smart group of govt. officials.

I think the press likes the Obama administration the same way they liked the Bush administration at the start. I still don't see how they go from the facts:

"While far more prominent members of the administration are making the big decisions about Detroit,"

To this headline:

"The 31-Year-Old in Charge of Dismantling G.M."

I think the press likes the Obama administration the same way they liked the Bush administration at the start.

Yes, indeed. The press is generally favorable to the group in power, at least since Reagan (I don't remember much before him). Even when much of the press was anti-Bush, much of what they reported toed the administration line. It's easy; it's good for the career -- why wouldn't they be pro-power?

Nixon and the press had a really bad relationship. Kennedy and the press, however, was something to behold.

Dude, the press hated Reagan, disliked Bush, and loathed George W. Bush...

Who is "the" press? I think who hates and loves whom is pretty predictable.

Easy to think that looking from 2009 backwards, but at this point in his administration he was just as fawned over from the media as Obama is today.

http://books.google.com/books?id=9L9qIIuj4WMC&dq=bias+bo...

but evidence doesn't always cut it with emotional debates now does it...

Well, not so much right after his first election, but there was a time right after 9/11 where he was extremely popular.

I found it very easy to come to hate George W. Bush even without the help of the press.

"While far more prominent members of the administration are making the big decisions about Detroit,"

The part of this sentence you left out is "...it is Mr. Deese who is often narrowing their options."

With this information in mind, a case could be made that the headline is accurate. Secretaries and gatekeepers make and break businesses every day.

Yet few people complain about the level of experience of a CEO's secretary. I might setup a briefing for senior army leadership, but I don't decide what to do with it.

If Obama says what about option X, you can bet this guy or someone like it is going to research it and bring back some more information.

How dare you question the inevitable success of the best and the brightest....

He's a political campaign staffer with no business experience whatsoever.

However, it was the people with decades of business experience that got us where we are today. So, exactly what good is this experience that everyone needs it.

High finance is different from business experience. Yes the two worlds cross-pollinate, but by and large they are not the same. In some ways, it is like software development and IT. I contend that it is the people who did not learn the lessons of the past that were more likely to decide to become over-leveraged (let alone the massive pressure to do so as it seemed to be working for everyone else.) I presume (baselessly) that the appreciation for experience and history is something that is cultivated and evolves over the length of a person's career.

That being said, adaptable and intelligent people should be able to pick up on business decisions relatively quickly if they are given adequate support staff.

And this is the auto industry. Their bad decisions based on their vaunted experience has led them to the situation they face now.

Experience didn't save them. Hell on the other side, experience didn't make Toyota the company it is now (although they did recently post a loss, they are hardly in GM's position). Willingness to disregard that experience and try something that made sense did.

Years of experience is a poor indicator of success.

"Years of experience is a poor indicator of success."

That's a bold claim that defies common sense. Do you have anything to back it up?

the phrase "necessary but not sufficient" comes to mind. there are exceptions, of course.

Experience did make Toyota the company it is now. If you read about LEAN, it is all about learning from what you do, and performing constant variation to see if you can do things better. it is NOT about "disregarding that experience."

The present shape of the auto industry is complex, and not simply attributable to the hubris of its leaders. The outsourcing of parts manufacturing, a labour union that is too strong, a lack of funding for attractive design, a government that offered too many protections, and last but not least, the entitlement culture of the american auto industry.

The American auto industry was not competitive. I am not suggesting it was easy to make money, I am suggesting that we simply did not keep up the hunger for "new & better". To say that is merely the product of age and experience is foolhardy at best.

The change to LEAN and JIT production was a radical new way to produce cars. That's what I meant by disregarding experience, not that they are completely fly by the seat of their pants all the time. They completely revamped what it meant to be an automobile manufacturer by trying a new process they had no experience with. They realized experience isn't a goal in and of itself and that sometimes it can be a hindrance.

Just as in any other field, there are those with experience that are good at their jobs and those that are bad at them. This does not mean that someone with no experience should be hired to do the job.

In this case though, the job to be done is one that noone has experience doing. Putting an operation like GM into receivership is unprecedented.

And expecting experience in the face of unprecedented events that require restructuring the old order is somewhat counterproductive. You do not want someone who is determined to save certain features of the old order merely because that is what they understand; what is needed is someone who is comfortable mediating the different forces at work and discovering workable approximations of the new order that minimise the damage overall.

It is not unprecedented - worldcom comes to mind, I'm sure there are others. Don't forget GM isn't monolithic, there are lots of sub companies.

Really? GM is not the largest company to ever have gone bankrupt in this country. Many of the railroads were larger when they went under.

According to this article, GM is the largest industrial company to go bankrupt in the US:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6451802.html

Overall, it is only the 4th largest bankruptcy in the US.

I don't mind smart people with limited relevant experience having opinions or even defending them vigorously. However three passages in particular struck me:

Mr. Deese was not the only one favoring the Fiat deal, but his lengthy memorandum on how liquidation would increase Medicaid costs, unemployment insurance and municipal bankruptcies ended the debate.

Every time Mr. Deese ran the numbers on G.M. and Chrysler, he came back with the now-obvious conclusion that neither was a viable business, and that their plans to revive themselves did not address the erosion of their revenues.

How is he drawing his conclusions? Does he really have a deep enough understanding of the underlying model when he 'runs the numbers'?

From there, he can make it quickly to the press office to help devise explanations for why taxpayers are spending more than $50 billion on what polls show is a very unpopular bailout of the auto industry.

I'm sure the NYT is not giving us the whole story, but there's a piece of me that worries that what makes this guy successful is not intelligence (though he certainly may be smart) but charisma. Just because you can sling a good presentation / memorandum and speak eloquently about it does not mean you should be setting critical government policy about tremendously complex problems.

When the driver of a race car has a terrible accident, it isn't a sign that someone with less experience would have successfully avoided the crash at that speed.

The obvious: auto industry needs revamping. The not so obvious: How do we get there, in what time line and with how much pain?

I don't care if you are 31 or 61. Hope these NYT profiles are not just resume builders for these people. I truly hope these people make wise choices when there are so many lives depending on the industry.

"The obvious: auto industry needs revamping."

What's obvious about that? Many auto companies are doing just fine. Why would Toyota need revamping?

I am fairly certain that he meant "American auto industry".

I think he meant the _American_* auto industry needs revamping.

(*And by American, of course I mean the United States of America, I was using the common term to refer to stuff from the United States of America since it is the dominant nation on the North American and South American continents with the word America in its name.)

Even Toyota is not doing fine. They make good cars at a good price but that does not mean their market capitalization and spending has been/is in line with what the next few years may hold. If it was, they would not have had to take a loss this past year.

Well, Japanese companies also has to contend with the deflation of their currency.

NYT's registration wall is infuriating.

Here is a working link:

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http://www.nytimes.c...

Actually, that just redirected me to the "log in" page.

This is a better solution: http://www.bugmenot.com/view/nytimes.com

Or you could just register and then be cookied in for the foreseeable future. Choose your battles I guess.

NYT does not require a log in for google news referrals. Search the article name on google news and go from there.

That is what I did. I just wanted to share with everybody so that they didn't have to do the same.

I'm apologize if the link isn't working for some people, I was just trying to help out.

get the bugmenot firefox plugin.

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