Great People, Wonderful Career Opportunities
Pros
GE has traditionally done a good job at hiring very high caliber people over the last few decades. The vast majority of the people you encounter here are very intelligent, highly competent, excellent team players, and fun to be around. Growth and development opportunities are abundant, but you can't be shy about asking for them if you want them. GE's also at the forefront of some exciting new technologies, like additive manufacturing. Direct/line management quality varies, but is overall good, and supportive of great work-life balance. If you look around within the company, you'll find some pretty amazing people to work for who will challenge you and help you grow your career the way you want to. The Edison Engineering Development Program is world-class and I would whole-heartedly recommend it to any young engineer with big aspirations looking for their first job out of college to launch their career. This program is one of the best things about GE, and I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to be a part of it.
Cons
In some parts of the company there is a disconnect and lack of communication between top-level management and what's going on at the individual level. There is a culture of being nice to one another and treating everyone with mutual respect, but sometimes this has led to senior leaders hearing what they want to hear and not what they need to hear from their direct reports. In the last few years the company has become increasingly short-term focused in order to stabilize its bottom line due to issues which can be traced all they way back to the 2008 financial crisis, and certain investment decisions which have been made since. While this is necessary it has also led to underfunding or under-resourcing new ventures, innovation and R&D efforts in some of the businesses. In combination with this, COVID has had a strong negative impact on the commercial aviation industry as a whole and this has resulted in significant down-sizing. I expect to see a correction over the next few years as we come out of this pandemic and things return to normal. There has been a lot of upper-level management change in the last few years, and hopefully the new leadership will help to right the ship and put the company back on a growth trajectory.
