GE – “Research job in India”

Pros

Good top management - the quality of leadership is excellent. The training received by top management at global training centres ensures consistently good people guiding the company. The research & development centre in India is one of a kind since such centres are quite few and far between in India as compared to the rest of the world. So for someone who is not too keen on cutting edge research and is looking for a fairly challenging job without core software development, it is a good fit. The work life balance, team spirit & benefits (not compensation which is very poor) are great!

Cons

The centre especially focusing on research is touted as being on par with the centres in rest of the world - US for example. But this is far from true since most of the cutting edge work is executed in the US and only small bite sized work chunks manage to reach India. The quality of people is not as good either - there is a heavy compromise, due to abundant availability of Masters candidates - while PhD is a must in the US thereby ensuring greater quality of research output. Also, restrictions on offshoring work from US due to defence/security concerns prevent great work coming this way! The biggest downside is the terrible pay, where quite well qualified candidates are paid even lesser than freshly graduated software engineers elsewhere!

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on maintaining standards across the world's different centres. Increase the compensation levels. More opportunities to travel to conferences worldwide. Treat Indian employees on par with the best across the world