GE Reviews

Current Employee – been working at GE

Pros – Good place to start in one of the leadership programs

Cons – Too big and bureaucratic to allow people growth.

Advice to Senior Management – Empower people

Current Employee – been working at GE

Pros – Lot of opportunities to learn about a world class process and systems which are implemented way ahead of the competition.

Cons – Basically you are just a number and nobody cares about you or your career. Constant management changes makes it hard on the employees morale.

Advice to Senior Management – Understand and get to know your employees at a personal level and take care of them. This will result in better performance from the employees as they are proud in all the work they do.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at GE

Pros – The GE Benefits package in it's entirety remains a solid positive for this large conglomerate. Specifically the pension plan plus the 401k including a 3% employer match are very good parallel benefits. Their Health care program is as good but probably no longer better than other large capitalization stocks.

Cons – The Board of Directors of GE and it's 400 officers have systematically damaged the Value as measured by market capitalization ($400BB to $200BB over 11 years) and Reputation of this once great company. The reputational damage can be objectively assessed by looking at the dramatic drop in the Barrons annual rating of the Most Admired Companies where GE dropped from a consistent ranking as #1 to their most recent ranking as #78. This fall from grace has occurred with the vast majority of Sr management and Board of Directors held in place. An amazing example of the lack of integrity and responsibility of the BOD and equally appalling lack of accountability of it's officers.

Advice to Senior Management – Results Matter. Start this change with your HR department. HR presently dominates this company in a way no one truly understands and this may be why we are in such a state of array where personal relationships are more powerful than a persons capabilities. HR has eliminated the Candor that historically personified GE's culture. Specifically, HR eliminated the meaningful employee survey that allowed for employee feedback and replaced it with a useless set of guided multiple choice questions which prevent employees from discussing the topics that actually matter. Reinstitute a meaningful survey to give a voice back to our employees.. it may be tough to read by the Sr leadership but it's what's needed to get the hearts and minds of the employees back. Also, HR should henceforth never be allowed to be featured in a glitzy Business Week cover stories to share their view of the world.. as unfortunately their view it is wrong headed and self aggrandizing.

In conclusion: Results Matter. A new Leader and Team are needed to start achieving bottom up results and to accomplish this, the wholesale dismantling of the HR empire must occur before GE can rise again.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at GE

Pros – The money and bennies were good. The best and newest technologies were available. And the seperation package was fat. I liked some of the people a lot. Others...

Cons – We had a fine little company that GE bought and rather than develop and work with the existing employees they fired two-thirds and brought in GE employees from other areas.

Advice to Senior Management – What goes around comes around. Your cutthroat behavior will come back to haunt you. But that said, one of the best things you did was lay me off because I didn't have to see your ugly faces any more. Thanks!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at GE

Pros – Well-compensated compared to peer companies, but you find out why with all the crap you have to live with at the company.

Cons – Despite its large population, advancement is still very much a who knows who game. The best don't always get noticed, but the loudest always gets promoted.

Advice to Senior Management – Actually live like you preach the population. Implement the GE values you speak so often but never live up to in real life.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at GE

Pros – Very large international network that makes it very challenging from a information security standpoint. You will get lots of experience and challenges thrown at you on a daily basis that you will not see anywhere else because of the vast scale of the network.

Cons – Work for GE not as a contractor if you can. Contractor positions can be shaky but GE positions are very stable. Communication is very poor and there is a lot of political garbage that goes on between the corporate security team and the rest of the teams. This is because they have a leader who is more interested in his next book than actually establishing good relationships between teams. This makes for very poor information sharing and make it very difficult to do your job.

Advice to Senior Management – Get rid of the people with the "I'm a star" attitudes. Encourage information sharing. GE has money to spend on technology and needs to spend it. Stop being so cheap and give your security people the tools to do their jobs.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at GE

Pros – - Great place to learn about Treasury operations
- Biggest corporate treasury
- Biggest corporate borrower
- Close to New york city. OK OK work work environment

Cons – - Lot of incompetent people
-No ownership of responsibilities
-Blame game is the key to success
-Lot of my way or high way attitude.

Advice to Senior Management – - Build Expertise in people
- Promote people who have depth of knowledge instead of people who can just talk
- Keep & develop knowledge inhouse

Former Employee – worked at GE

Pros – For the most part you are surrounded by smart and motivated people. If you have a track record of success, you will have the opportunity to move into different areas (i.e. finance to sales). GE’s reputation for having great training and leadership development carries a lot of weight with other companies. I genuinely liked most of the people I worked with and made many friends while working with GE.

Cons – When times got rough, GE went back to its comfort zone. The “old boys” club is very much still in place. Generally speaking, GE still very much has a top down / command and control management approach. GE was trying to embrace innovation, but for the most part management does not really encourage it. The current year’s operating goals are priority one. Management and HR very much believe that GE is the greatest company in the world and that it is a privilege to work there. They take pride in paying employees below market. The most successful employees seem to have started with GE right out of college and have never experienced what it is like to work for another company.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to your customers and employees - act on what they are saying. Seek outside research and advice - do not just trust your gutt and do what you have always done. More coordination is needed between business segments in many areas.

Current Employee – been working at GE

Pros – Great health benefits.....until 2010 when they changed plans...and now they are similar to other large companies. Lots of available training and there is a huge knowledge base in your fellow employees. Opportunity to move within the company is pretty fluid.

Cons – You are a small fish in a huge pond. My manager wouldn't know my name if it wasn't for my name tag. Design engineers are basically mini-managers of the drafters....who actually create all of the models, drawings, and BOM's. You will become an expert in powerpoint and quite frankly that is all you truely need to know to do my job. None of the "engineering" software programs communicate to each other. Therefore to complete seemingly simple tasks you have to use upwards of 4-5 programs to get the job done. They always say they are going to get rid of this long standing problem....but in turn they just create a new program, which just adds another to the list that you have to use to complete your work. Every year there is a massive reorganization of the COE and you get placed in new groups with new hardware and new projects. A lot of knowledge is lost with this constant reshuffling and months are lost trying to get up to speed on the new job.

Advice to Senior Management – Fix the relationship between manufacturing and engineering. Decrease the frequency of reorganizations, this will create a better knowledge base.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at GE

Pros – Size, career opportunities, resume building

Cons – Slow to change and address needs of customers and employees.

Advice to Senior Management – Recognition for an employees effort goes a long way to keeping someone happy. Give a try.