I'm not so sure. Welch was ruled by numbers. If you are #1 or #2 in your industry you are kept. If you are #3 or lower, see ya, plants closed. Foolish. But there was at least some logic to it.
Immelt seemed to not care if he was #1, he just shuttered and sold everything except services. Initially that made some sense (not really, but to him it did) because profit margins were immense for services and less so for capital intense businesses. So GE became a glorified bank under Immelt. And he kissed govt ass heavily, he wanted to be James Taggart (Atlas Shrugged reference). But 2008 happened and overly leveraged financial services businesses without a strong base of other sources of revenue were exposed. GE the banking firm never recovered. And that was Immelt.
Nobody made working more miserable than Jack.
Here is my experience. I worked for a company that distributed for a major manufacturer. I launched a new mark segment with an existing product that was proven unsuitable. An engineering team was created to solve the issue. One manager, four engineers. Four hand picked engineers. We worked with the customer reengineered some critical components and successfully relaunched. Sat down had a beer with the engineer group manager. She told me she was required to rank her hand picked and successful team. Bottom ranked member would have his career destroyed, top ranked would be promoted.
This was a Six Sigma manufacturer who went all in on the Jack Welch system. What a mess.
I asked the manager how she would choose the low man. She said she would have to draw straws. Thanks Jack.