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Businesses The Almighty Buck

EDS Silent On New CEO's IT Consulting Past 114

Posted by timothy from the rubber-chicken-circuit dept.
theodp writes "Slate reports on the press release issued by IT consulting giant EDS to announce new CEO Michael H. Jordan that curiously doesn't show Jordan to have any experience in the IT consulting field. In the late '90s, Jordan helped create IT consulting firm Luminant, took it public, and served as chairman of its board for 21 months. Luminant raised $80+ million from its IPO and paid $422 million to buy businesses as part of its pure-play roll-up strategy before filing Chapter 11 and having its assets sold for a mere $3 million. Slashdot readers may remember Luminant as the wacky workplace of My Fake Job, in which an ex-"Late Night" writer described 17 days he spent faking a job at the dot-com."
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EDS Silent On New CEO's IT Consulting Past More

EDS Silent On New CEO's IT Consulting Past

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  • EDS is the outsourcee of choice for my provincial government. In fact they are entirely willing to give a multi-million dollar contract to EDS, without a tender, because "no one locally can do the job".

    Uh-huh, yeah. Right.

  • Ex Lumie (Score:2, Informative)

    by hhawk ( 26580 )
    I worked at Luminant and Michael did work there... although I don't think he had much if anything to do with the day to day managment. I was hoping he would have had a very active role but I didn't see it.
  • curiously doesn't show Jordan to have any experience in the IT consulting field

    Of course not. He was busy playing basketball

  • from baseball to basketball to IT (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 29, 2003 @04:51PM (#5623498)
    After a failed career as a member of the Chicago White Sox minor league team...and a lackluster return to the NBA, I suppose he now had some divine inspiration to try his hand at IT Consulting?

    Should've stayed retired, man.
    • The baseball money only buys so much booze and so many hookers; we all know that IT Consulting is a business in which everyone makes it big and ends up a millionaire.

  • Another proof (Score:5, Insightful)

    by niom ( 638987 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @04:52PM (#5623501)
    That a high profile failure is better than a low profile success, at least in the management world. I can't understand it, but then again I'm just a lowly engineer.

    • Re:Another proof (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rinikusu ( 28164 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @08:27PM (#5624176)
      A prominent CEO was once asked what makes a great CEO:
      "Good decisions, boy, Good decisions," he answered.
      Asked how one learns to make good decisions, he answered:
      "Bad decisions, boy, Bad decisions."

      The key is learning from the mistakes of the past and not repeating them. And I don't know about you, but if I were to do a collosal fuck-up, I'd be more certain to be extra-careful and mindful the next time a similar situation arose.
      • "Prepare three envelopes..."

      • Re:Another proof (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Billly Gates ( 198444 )
        Speaking of learning from fuck-ups if you got fired from a job would you put that as an asset on your resume? Or do you think it would HR or the interviewer would look at this is an asset or a potiental liability?

        If you did no one would hire you or it would count agaisnt you when being interviewed. You really have to show the interviewer that you learned from your mistakes or you were just not good for that particular position.

        Mysteriously CEO's are not subjected to this stigma even though regular workers

  • ITS A MATTER OF PERSPECTIVE (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Syncroswitch ( 656450 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @04:59PM (#5623519)
    You dont need IT experiance to lead or start in that position, your not doing the grunt work in a firm that size. you hire experts to handle the IT and consulting part. His job was to assemble the crew, and steer the ship (into the rocks...). It dosent seem to me to need to be listed as IT consulting background. rather as executive experiance. the skills you need there are sneakiness, a lack of morals, and an absence of ethics classes. I think he has already demonstrated those skills quite well. I wish him good luck, as I make a note to keep his connections out of my portfolio...
    • Experience is an important asset. You need it to work with lower level employees as well as understand how the bussiness works.

      You mention executive experience but his experience being an executive has not been sucessfull. If he had a lower end job and had the same track record he would of tried a different career path.

      Maybe I should be an executive. When I get canned I can just add it as experience and apply for more executive positions.

      • It is a matter of perspective: it's a matter of how you approach "failure." On my last two job interviews (got both jobs) I told how a previous employer was sued over a product I designed. The interviewers and I always laugh about it because the whole story is a tragedy of how not to run a business. The point I make by telling that story is that I understand how contracts can go bad and the right and wrong way to respond to it. It also demonstrates that I know to pay attention to the customer's wishes. Most
  • Whetever happened with regards to this? Did legal action follow? This is the funniest thing I've read all week, even if its a bit dated now.

    siri

  • A better idea... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ajuda ( 124386 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @05:03PM (#5623530)
    Rather than spending millions on 1 guy who doesn't know much about technology, wouldn't the company be better off hiring a few hundred low to mid level tech people? No wonder all these companies are going bankrupt.

    • Re:A better idea... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Rob.Mathers ( 527086 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @06:06PM (#5623745) Homepage
      While on the surface your idea sounds alright, it's really not a good one. A company with 100 employees but no leader will fail. You need to have a good CEO and management for a company to achieve anything. It's like waging a war (perhaps not the best analogy given world events, but nevermind). You have all sorts of low level officers to make tactical decisions, but you still need generals planning the whole thing in order to have a cohesive strategy.
      Sure, a few tech people can get the work done, but they probably can't oversee the entire company and set up a solid business plan.
    • I happen to work for EDS, we have 125,000 employees worldwide, and some of the best technical minds I've ever worked with.

  • Does it matter ? (Score:4, Informative)

    by ramzak2k ( 596734 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @05:04PM (#5623533)
    Does it really matter that Luminant was not successful business model and it failed under the effects of the Dot bomb crash ?

    When advertising the appointment of a new CEO why would a company mention his negatives like
    "he was at the driving seat of a tech company that that ran into bankruptcy". It would be obvious that they would dwell on what he did successfully.

    Also, just because someone failed in a dot com start-up would not strip him of all the success he seems to have enjoyed - and he seems to have had quite a lot of it.
    - 10 years at McKinsey
    - Pepsi, where he rose to president and CEO of PepsiCo WorldWide Foods
    - Turned the old industrial company Westinghouse into a New York media heavyweight
    • "Turned the old industrial company Westinghouse into a New York media heavyweight"

      Westinghouse was big in broadcasting before this guy was born.

      • "Westinghouse was big in broadcasting before this guy was born."

        True. Westinghouse had half a dozen profitable radio stations. The other Westinghouse businesses were heavy industries that had been run into the ground.

        Jordan merged Westinghouse with CBS, sold off all the unprofitable industrial businesses, and named the resulting company "CBS." Jordan preferred being a media tycoon over trying to turn around the industrial businesses. The new CBS was later bought by Viacom.

        The industrial businesses li

  • big dick brown (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As an EDS employee, I think anyone would be better than former CEO Big Dick Brown. Big Dick drove EDS into the ground. He was too busy building jets in the air, running squirrels, and herding cats to care about the business. The finical woes of EDS had nothing to do with the IT consulting, it had more to do with poor business decisions. He was canned board of directors and received a $35mil severance package. He has publicly stated that he needed the money because his wife has expensive tastes. What a

  • Couldn't be worse than Dick (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @05:15PM (#5623570)
    The previous CEO was gutting the business, gutting employee moral, and gutting the share price.

    Lou Gerstner wasn't a tech guy either and he saved IBM.

  • Good things? (Score:3, Informative)

    by martins99 ( 168363 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @05:19PM (#5623583)
    Well, one good thing is that I, as an EDS employee:

    -> Won't see the "Action, urgency and excellence" emails no more..

    -> Perhaps can sell the book, written by Mr Brown, on EBay for loads of money in 10 years?

    *rofl*
    • Nor will you...ever...have to see...an email with...an absolute...overabundance of...ellipses... I'm dancing the happy dance of "No More Dick" with... Action...Urgency...Excellence!
      • For a good year or so I started to graph the number of ellipses and bold statements in his stupid emails against the total number of words in his emails. Looking at the graph now, he had about 1 ellipse for every 30 words, and about 1 bold/underlined word for every 10 normal words. With an average of about 850 words per email, it's easy to see how FRIGGING ANNOYING it got.

  • con + insult = consult (Score:4, Funny)

    by stonebeat.org ( 562495 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @05:21PM (#5623588) Homepage
    a consultant comes in, cons you in giving them all your money, and then insults you :)
    I read this in a Scott Adams' book. :)

  • Understandable (Score:4, Funny)

    by dodgyville ( 660660 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @05:23PM (#5623597) Homepage Journal
    We all have things in our past we don't like to talk about.
    For me, it was the period in the early nineties when I wore
    silver parachute pants and hypercolour t-shirts.

  • Fuck em... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Nezer ( 92629 )
    They laid me off in 2001. Management there as a whole is clueless (moreso than average). It was an *awful* enviornment entagled so deep in political wrangling it was a miracle we ever acomplished anything. Our customers hated us. The employees hated management. Management treated employees like shit. Everyone was afraid of getting canned so they could spend more money re-doing the christmas decorations at the corporate HQ in Plano.

    I once heard a Poli-Sci guy once say that a people gets the governmen
    • DISCLAIMER: I'm a bit bitter still so this view should be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps my area was exceptionally bad.

      Maybe but I doubt it - sounds about how things were in the 'solution centers' in '99 when I bailed out.


      Funny thing was, my supervisor was an EDS-for-lifer and was hurt that I was 'abandoning the company.' Then a year later when I called to see if she'd be a reference, she'd bailed out too!

  • Slate reports on the press release issued by IT consulting giant EDS to announce new CEO Michael H. Jordan that curiously doesn't show Jordan to have any experience in the IT consulting field.
    EDS sold out and now they are paying for it. ~The Devil

  • Why EDS Sucks (Score:4, Interesting)

    by argoff ( 142580 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @05:30PM (#5623623)
    IMHO, EDS is evil - stay away.

    At one large multi-national company I worked for, EDS made this cozy deal with high level managers - and our company signed a very long term IT outsorcing contract at a very expensive rate. Of course the contract stipulated that EDS would take over all IT services within the company.

    After my company was locked in, EDS proceeded to hire a large number of low wage McWorkers who were billed out at an extremely expensive rate as consultants. Of course, I doubt some could even figure out how to use a mouse, but that did not stop them from trying to run all the infrascructure and datacenters. It was truely an amazing sight.

    Thankfully, at the time - the dot.com boom was still going pretty strong so it didn't take much to quietly tip-toe out the door as the IT department fell into chaos. I'm still sorry for them to this day, poor souls.

    • Re:Why EDS Sucks (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @07:22PM (#5623982) Journal
      Happens everywhere, not just EDS.

      To offer a counterexample: I did work for a telco who had outsourced all their IT management, procurement and support to EDS. I was pleasantly surprised at how efficient these guys were running things. Everything from support to getting new software on your PC or a new PC itself was efficient and fast. The EDS guys worked with the comfidence that comes with experience. When we audited their operation, we found everything fully documented.

      If this is a representative example of how they work, I'd hire them anytime.

      • A few years ago, I made some critical statements of Adobe systems - and soon after and a smooth sounding pro posted after me and made the most buttered up statement glorifying Adobe that I had ever heard. Later on, I found out that he was actually acting as a representative of Adobe - you can imagine how duped I felt.

        Well this time, I have multiple examples. EDS not only did this to my company, but a relative of mine who works for the Navy (not in IT, but uses the computer systems alot) - is having the s
        • Heh.

          I'll stand by my statement. And this wasn't just data entry work they did, it was complete IT outsourcing. Oh well... this was in Holland, perhaps they work differently here?

          In any case I'd like to prove I am not a representative of EDS, but I am not sure how.
    • You can substitute this same strategy for IBM, Accenture, Deloitte, Coopers, Ernst, KPMG, and who knows what else.

      Those deals weren't as lucrative as the usual consulting gigs, but looked great on the bottom line and secured a partner his partner points.

  • un-iLuminant? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by watchful.babbler ( 621535 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @05:33PM (#5623642) Homepage Journal
    Well, that's amusing -- I worked for one of the dot-coms purchased by Luminant; during the due diligence process, they told me roughly what they were ready to pay, and I told them they were insane -- we had lackluster management, overstaffed departments, a poor sales record, and our clients were hiring away our own programmers and project managers to take their sites in-house. And yet they bought us anyway, with predictably dismal results.

    To me, combining that kind of incisive decisionmaking with the geniuses at EDS who allowed the geeks-gone-wild environment of Chaos2Order to flourish ("Mister accountant dude, you know what we need? A car! In our ninth-floor office! And we need, like, a crane to get it in here!") means that I should either dump my stock, or offer to let them buy my consulting business.

  • You do know the Saskatchewan government turned down the EDS proposol don't you?
    http://www.gov.sk.ca/newsrel/releases/2003/03/06-1 29.html [gov.sk.ca].
    And I believe CGI and TMC have more Government contracts in Sask than EDS. .
  • Here is part of "My Fake Job" found on alt.punk. It goes up to Day 16. Anyone have a link to the rest?

    alt.punk part 1 of "My Fake Job" [google.com]
  • My dad works at EDS and said that he hoped this new guy was better than the last one....

    I really hate to send him this, but better he know now... time to unload those stocks.
  • I read the article, I read this thing, I flipped through some jokes on here about the references to the basketball player by the same name...

    but why the hell is this on the front page of slashdot?

    I think I'm missing some part where I should care about who is appointed as CEO of some company?
  • Slate reports on the press release issued by IT consulting giant EDS to announce new CEO Michael H. Jordan that curiously doesn't show Jordan to have any experience in the IT consulting field.

    Ya, I remember when he tried playing baseball. This probably wont be much better.

    On the other hand, how could you do worse than the last guy, especially when its a guy named "Dick Brown". that name is just begging people to make fun of you; wouldnt it be smarter to have people call you "Rick" or something?

  • How can it be worse? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Seahawk91 ( 585715 ) on Saturday March 29, 2003 @06:25PM (#5623794)
    I am on the pointy end of the NMCI stick as one of the first 30,000 of the supposed 350,000 seats that EDS is supposed to roll out for the government. The contract is three years behind schedule (hey, it was a four year contract) and Congress recently approved them for two more years (I guess they were doing a really good job). The contract costs my boss $4,000 a year to rent (yes, rent)a 900 MHZ Dell Laptop. But, without that rental, we will no longer be able to communicate with the rest of the organization. If I want to upgrade to a CD burner or heavens forbid a DVD player, they are an extra $350 a year to rent..each. That is OK since I have to have NMCI tech support install the drivers at $150 a tech support call. Oh that is right, EDS is cash strapped. Apparently $8 billion to roll out 350,000 1998 Dells is just not enough. When will the madness end?
    • 22857$ per machine !! Try asking your boss to deal directly with Dell. With a volume of 350K machines, they might be too willing to provide you full end to end support for this work!! I know I can buy a Dell laptop for personal use for less than 1500. Even considering the premium of stringent support requirements and the cost of managing the migration etc., this is just preposterous.

      Disclosure - Not affiliated with Dell, so please do not question my motives. Although I work for one of their competitors, bu
      • I wish we could. Our money is controlled at the Congressional level..one or two (ok, light years beyond my pay scale). Unfortunately, no one will say the emporer has no clothes. I can only assume massive payoffs. Could the crumbs from $8 billion buy a congressman or two? Heck for a bililon, I am pretty sure I could roll out the Dell's myself...even something a little more powerful than 900 Mhz. I mean, can you even surf ebay and find a 900 Mhz any more. It must be a bitch to ask Dell to scour all of

  • I wish EDS luck. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 29, 2003 @06:28PM (#5623802)
    I wish EDS better luck than past Jordan companies.

    I used to work for a company known as Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Mike H. Jordan came to us from Pepsico after previous CEO's nearly bankrupted us through incompetence, but at least it was well intentioned incompetence (lost 4 Billion USD in bad Florida real estate).

    Jordan didn't know anything about Westinghouse either, other than we had Group W broadcasting. That would be the start of his media empire that he appearantly wanted to build.

    Short version: Mike comes in as Westinghouse CEO, buys CBS, Westinghouse changes name to CBS. CBS sells off all non communications assets. Viacom buys CBS and Jordan goes elsewhere.

    All during this time, Jordan and his buddies pay themselves royally while killing a company that while a bit down in the dumps, could have survived. I'm sure George Westinghouse and Nikola Telsa are still rolling in their graves.

    It sounds like after that, he destroyed another company, Luminate. I'm sure he got paid real well for that one also.

    I give EDS 3 years or less.

    • Re:I wish EDS luck. (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't think Tesla can spin any faster. He's spinning every time the media rewrites history making Edison out to be some sort of national hero and great innovator.
    • But, from the company shareholders (public or private), did he do the right thing?

      The right thing is "make money for shareholders". Did he manage to do this?

      Sure, it might have been short-term gain rather than long-term prosperity but not all companies are up for the risk that long-term gambles present.

      Besides, with the way you've presented the way events occured public companies might love the guy.
    • Makes you wonder if EDS is planning to fold, and Jordan was a perfect match?
  • Perhaps we should start hanging these CEO asswipe types up by their testicles: if their balls separate from their bodies they are honest and may have the job, if they remain attached they are crooks and can be left that way forever.

    This might discourage having the position of CEO in the first place, and we might then find a better way to run our corporations. If you think this is drastic, you should see what I **didn't** write here...

    (

  • EDS sucks (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    As a civilian employee of the Navy, I can attest to the fact that EDS "IT consultants" are a bunch of know-nothing crooks. They were given a huge contract to create a network for the Navy/Marine Corps (NMCI) and have done nothing but screw it up. People can't do any development on it (and we are a research lab), it doesnt work with ERP software, and it routinely loses or outright deletes people's mail or mailboxes. The only explanation people in the trenches have of this sorry mess is that there were huge

    • If you've worked with the government, you... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      ...should already know that kickbacks and log-rolling are quite common with Defense contracts.

      For example, there's another boondoggle going on with the "mult-year" SAP implementation within the Navy. Why does the Navy need KPMG to implement SAP, when they could work directly with the company? Which leads to another question - wtf are we spending our defense dollars on a FOREIGN-OWNED ERP SYSTEM to help manage our national defense?

      Last time I checked the news, the German public aren't too fond of us righ
  • The selection of Jordan isn't about IT. It is about fixing EDS which is just now starting to feel the heat from low cost offshore IT services. They have avoided the pounding the rest of the industy has taken by selling longer term contracts and by seeking co-dependent client relationships. I'm glad Dick Brown is gone. That name has implications concerning how he would treat his business partners.

    $G

  • Four words for you. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dsk052 ( 230739 )
    THE OLD BOY NETWORK
  • Lots of people mentioning the Action, Urgency, Excellent emails we used to get spammed with at EDS. The emails would be received last name, first name, so Dick Brown's emails came in as Brown, Dick. Now the rest of the world knows what we knew from this very appropriate description - he was fucking his customers and employees up the ass.

    $55 million dollar salary and a $35 million dollar severance. My friends who got laid off got 2 weeks severance, which they changed from a one month severance just befor
  • ...assuming he had any functional use within Luminant at all.

    As an ex-Managing Director of one of the successful, pre-absorption companies, I can attest to the fact that he showed no presence at all, either in person or by directive.

    Those with interests in EDS take note, watch this guy and make sure he takes an active role, or dish him quick. We saw nothing from the guy. They (Michael, Gil and their buddies in Houston) had no plan or discernable strategy even after months "on-the-job".

    His tenure epitom

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