I've admittedly been at Ford for less then a decade, but when I joined the company, in hindsight, things seemed largely functional. Program timeline was followed, decision makers were largely clear, things flowed. To me, things started going south under Hackett. Smart Redesign was the straw that broke the camel's back. It led to a string of departures, elevated new leaders, created new groups, and we have never really recovered from it. Churn has gone parabolic, every decision on every program can be vetoed by a number of decision makers with no clear accountability, Program timeline is a joke and the dysfunction is paralyzing. Now add all the new california hires who think everyone here before them is an id--t.
27 replies (most recent on top)
The problem is Junior and the rest of the addled Ford family with preferential voting stock that should be illegal.
He was not able to run the company himself.
Lucked out on Mullaly and chased him away one year early.
Fields looks pretty good in hindsight considering the sub clowns that came after him.
Hackett was and is the biggest joke of an Auto CEO there has ever been.
His foolishness and non awareness of being on the wrong side of Dunning Kruger and not knowing it is legendary - could write multiple books on this sub sub clown - he is not capable of a single thing other than to blather on about how much he knows - sub sub sub clown.
Current sub clown is a dilettante car racing wannabe who has no real concept of anything that is functional - in a real time comparison with GM CEO he pales so badly it makes me heave.
Up next - the apple sub sub sub sub clown Doug Fields - blah blah blah car is a phone blah blah blah see what my phone does blah blah blah
Again the connection is Junior and the other addled Fords.
Enough.
I can't say when everything started going downhill. It was well before I started. A few co-workers said Ford 2000, some said Nasser, others the 2008 financial crisis. Strangely, nobody ever mentions the Firestone Explorer rollovers.
But I am convinced we hit rock bottom on July 11th, 2019
Detroit Free Press Front Page Investigation "OUT OF GEAR" The DPS6
When that paper came out it was as if everyone in the building had just lost multiple family members on exactly the same day. Hush quiet in the building. Heads hung low. Cold unfriendly passings in the hallways. Small huddles of people whispering in their cubes.
It made me realize that it is deep rooted problem in the engineering culture at Ford. Condensed timing, missed milestones, late validation, inexperienced new suppliers, risky cost save designs, AIMs closed within days of being opened, 8-Ds rushed without proper closure.
Fixes were always too expensive and there was never enough time to get corrective actions in for J1. It is never acceptable to launch with design issues, so it always became a political exercise of proving any issue discovered during validation is not really an issue. Validation methods were changed using new data collected from a special vehicle in order to justify that the loading was not realistic in the real world. Fixes could easily be ready for implementation just after launch, which would limit the fleet exposure to a small population, but now you have just convinced everyone needed to approve a robustness change that the issue is not an issue just so that launch could happen on time.
What the DPS6 news story did at Ford was insure that there will be no more e-mails.
IMO - It went down hill after Fields. Poor bets from Mr. Hackett & Co, the guy was clueless and lost the eye on quality. I recall it took years to get the 'smart redesign' and re-orgs implemented - mass confusion. Now Mr. Farley continues the destruction with help from Field and the Tesla hires. No more affordable vehicles, wait until the Economy Tanks, who can afford a Truck at $60-100K? Hackett & Farley all lost touch with reality, buying Spin, Argo-AI, Rivian, etc. I'd like to see the figures on that and see if Ford made any money at all on any of these deals. I suspect they lost a lot.
Things went south in my area around 2017-2018. We were at the height of the push for autonomous vehicles, bought up plenty of totally overpriced small businesses, and the targets were changed: suddenly we became "high output". Like BMW for example.
We were literally told by management that we have to fill features lists with as many features as possible. At the same time we launched new programs at very high speed and the prototype vehicle count was reduced.
2017 coffin was brought out…2019 reorg last nail in the coffin
the F board of directors must be just a rubber stamp like the Theranos board. no real board of directors would have approved hackett as CEO of a complex company. no real board of directors would have let that Theranos woman go so far off the rails. in fact i am surprised she took the fall for them. in a public company, the board has oversight on the CEO. they are just as responsible as the CEO when things go bad.
Let me see... What ruined the company... Hiring Hackett, retiring Joe Hinrich, promoting Farley, eliminating cars, botched launches, poor quality, DEI initiatives,...etc. Honestly, I'm not sure that it's recoverable at this point, especially since the ja----s leadership has run off most of the true subject matter experts.
Greed that ki-led the goose. From all levels in the company. We boasted about making thousands on Town Cars back in the day. We bragged about how our transaction price on the F150 were way higher that GM or Chrysler. From all levels we got greedy and forgot how to make high quality affordable vehicles for the everyday person.
We threw money at Rover, Jag and Volvo.. Junkyards and Formula 1... We tried to make Lincoln like Lexus... We stopped making high quality affordable vehicles...
We failed to fix the issues right in front of us... We designed new instead of evolving designs...Our products got so complex our own people could not fix them. Our management played musical chairs grooming the next level of leaders with no regard for respecting technical experts .. We threw out so much knowledge with each layoff...never having an employee transition plan.
It was fun while it lasted..
Got Retired Aug22
30 year @ Ford from FCG to now ....Rose from Grade 7 to LL2
Worked @ WHQ very close to senior Management
Alan M brought comapny on even keel from the 2008 economic meltdown...we did superior products....U502 (Explorer) went from 60K to 300K, did the Al F150 shook the market place, revived Lincon from dead, made Mustang the best selling sports car in the world incl. in Germany, Won LeMans and did an iconic Ford GT ....
Fields was good enough to continue the Alan work but then BF wanted a change and he bought on Disater #1 who had no clue of automotive or management...he drove out the best ford execs we had...Joe H, Derrick, Raj, Fleming, Shanks, Holland. Hau, Szopo. Callum etc and then we got the comedian....he now has basically destroyed the morale and the very fiber of the company...Ford was a true family company where you were greeted by the team members ...why did we want to show EV results seperately...nobody in industry does that but for 100% EV companies...shows how his own lies are now catching to him....hoping and praying that he is gone soon....feel very bad for the folks who were imapcted...luckily i get to retire but with a very heavy heart
I agree with what everyone said so far. I started at Ford in 1993, I have worked in transmission all these years. The first time I started seeing concerning things was when the mass exodus happened, I believe 2007. After that, even the most basic steps needed in the new build process were thrown out the window. Any time prototypes would fail testing, failed parts would just be replaced or modified the test continued. If new designed parts were delayed, the older level part would be used until they were available. All of this being done with zero documentation. Most of the time no one would know what was in any given build. Timing for build phases began shrinking rapidly and no one wanted to be responsible for being late. I am not surprised that quality has been declining fast. Scary because many of those who approved of that behavior went to EV.......
The death spiral began to accelerate the Memorial Day weekend Mark Fields quit and Professor Moon beam took over. It was an unconventional departure and one can only wonder what assignment Fields was given that caused him to quit on the spot.
Alan Mulally righted the ship and pointed us in the right direction. After he left Fields reverted to old Ford behavior and we started going downhill again. Professor Moonbeam was an absolute disaster and Farley is even worse! I blame Bill Ford! He’s been there the entire time overseeing this sh-t show.
Who in their right mind would invest so heavily in EV when the losses are enormous, and then continue down that same path. Ford is headed for bankruptcy!! Only the government, using our hard earned tax dollars can bail them out of their stupidity!!!
Never too big to fail
@13 Year Ford Veteran -What a overview of the history! Thank you for sharing!
I worked at Ford from 1993-2006. Red Poling was the CEO when I started, and Ford had 5 of the top 10 selling vehicles through the mid-1990s. Everyone was so proud to work back then at "Ford's."
There were so many salaried employees at Ford then with 30+ years, and no one was forcing them to retire. One of my coworkers celebrated his 40th Ford anniversary in early 1996 and didn't retire for another 2 years at age 62.
Alex Trotman's Ford 2000 reorganization got the company off track, but SUV sales were strong which hid some of the damage. Vehicle quality dwindled under Trotman and acclerated exponentially under his successor.
Jac Nasser did more damage than any Ford CEO in history. He wasted billions on buying Land Rover, Volvo, junkyards, and creating the Premier Automotive Group, which moved hundreds of employees from Michigan to high-cost Southern California.
Ford's leadership forgot that it was in the business of making quality cars and trucks and instead focused on being a company of the future. It's making the same mistake now. Ford has exited the car market for SUVs and trucks, and is abandoning the internal combustion engine for EVs. Although EV sales are increasing, even the biggest dunce should know that EVs now and for a long time in the future are not practical for most consumers due to insufficient range and long charging times. Their battery materials are not easily recyclable, and the profit margins on EVs in the future are unlikely to match ICEs.
Although nice and loyal to the company, Bill Ford, a self-proclaimed environmentalist, didn't have the technical judgment nor leadership skills to lead a global Automotive company. I left Ford in June 2006 because I didn't see a bright future for the company.
When I started in 1993, every full time employee had a pension. The company's 401k match was 6%. Financial gifts to charity were matched dollar for dollar, which I used annually to give to my alma maters. I gave a donation to the American Red Cross after the 9/11 attacks, which Ford matched.
Ford eliminated the 401k match from January 1, 2002 - June 30, 2004. That will cost me about $60,000 when I turn 65. The company eliminated the matching gift program in 2006. The 401k match returned, but it has never been 6% since 2001.
Ford has tried twice since 2012 to get me to take my future pension as a lump sum, even offering a 20% higher payout amount than the actual value the first time. I have longevity in my family. Many of my ancestors lived to be in their 90s. If I am as fortunate, Ford will have to pay a 4-figure monthly pension to me for nearly 40 years!
There is life after Ford. I have been in the oil and gas industry since leaving Ford. Most global energy companies still have pensions, a 7% 401k match, and my company double matches gifts to charity!
Even better, I don't have to use any of my earnings on a management lease car as I did at Ford. My 14-year-old Honda with 150,000 miles runs like new. I haven't had a car payment in 13 years!
I am proud to have worked for Ford, but I made a great career decision leaving 17 years ago. I continue to wish the best for the company.
Hackett destroyed the company. Of course Bill’s hands are not clean.
When Hendrichs was pushed out and Farley was made CEO, it was game over.
Sad thing is Farley has a compensation package that pays him $20M+/year for this fiasco. He is rich no matter what happens. Middle class gets squeezed while trying to earn for their families, rich keep getting richer. All these new external hires come with high signing bonuses, stock options etc.
I totally agree with @tvn!
My time here started right after Jacques the K.nife implemented his round of cuts that was quickly established to be blatant age discrimination. So much for the cost savings there after having to shell out when caught red-handed there. Billy was outright incompetent and uninspiring. If it wasn't for the rest of the family kicking him out of the driver's seat, thus resulting in Mulally bring brought in, this place would've collapsed before the gov't rescued GM & Chrysler. Fields was a big dose of "meh", but beat Billy to the punch on wasting billions of dollars on fancy buildings to establish a legacy of some sort. Hackett man was hit too many times in the head in his football days and his hiring was the inflection point where things definitely went back to the path for Ford being driven into the ground. Jim "Car-Car" may end up needing to change that to "crash-crash" with the way he's been running the j.oint.
The firing of Joe Hinrichs was the turning point to me. Hackett was floundering prior to that but nothing he was doing really had an impact. Getting rid of Hinrichs basically guaranteed Farley the top spot which has been an absolute disaster.
Fields got bamboozled by Google. There was a plan in place, it got thrown out when Google refused to play ball (they were too greedy) Fields protected Ford and walked away. He paid the price for it soon after that.
Smart Redesign, not so smart...
Someone brought in the Rally app, it probably cost Ford millions; waste everyone's time to create stories for their works, projects... in the system, but sometime it ended with duplicate stories, tasks...
Mulally stopped the blood loss. Fields was floundering with no clear direction, but Hackett was the beginning of the slide down. Farley is accelerating the descent even faster than I thought possible. Should have kept Hinrichs.
We were in the toilet when Nasser was here and it continued under Billy, but everything turned around when Mulally came in. I didnt notice much happening during Fields' reign, and then the furniture boy came bebopping along. His cutesy analogies and goofy leadership left everyone baffled as to what they were supposed to do. And that led to where we are today. Nasser was reviled. Mulally was respected/admired. Hackett was laughed at. Farley is hated.
One thing we can all agree on is Ford and the entire auto industry is in a transition, for a better or for worse. Only time will tell.
During this transition I watched new orgs/business units get set up, and ultimately fold. These new organizations needed new talent and disciplines to solve the problems they were tasked with. I watched critical roles in these new orgs be filled with tenured folks who jumped at the opportunity who had ZERO business leading these new endeavors and managing talent for which they couldn’t speak a word on. Sure those people felt like id--ts, but they were far from it actually. This was a major issue imo that still persists.
Let’s not even get started on Ford’s AV LLC effort that turned out to be a massive waste of time and resources.
Things started to go downhill in 2000. Jac Nassar did a lot of damage. I saw it first hand. The stock price correlates with this timing as well.
Jim Hacket was brought in to make Ford a tech company
while the only tech thing on his resume is selling overpriced steelcase furnitures to silicon valley
CA person here… myself and nobody that I worked with in CA saw MI employees as id--ts or inferior. Sure there were some a**holes and elitist among these newer hiring waves, but trust me they made the same poor impressions on local CA teams too.