GE Energy Reviews in Atlanta, GA Area

Pros

Good people, corporate processes, onboarding, coaching and mentoring. Great place to build career.

Cons

Matrix organization, can be confusing to people who have not worked in this type of organizational environment. "Decisions by commitee." Younger, leadership...too much "inside the box" thinking...not enough external experiences by leadership team. Most manager have spent 8-12 years from college, and then run an organization..the "GE way"

Advice to Senior Management

Simplification and eliminating "red-tape" grew GE when Jack was running the organization. Too many layers. Length of decisions cost money and resources...get back to basics!

Pros

- Challenging work;
- Great work atmosphere;
- Great management;
- Great advancement opportunities;

Cons

- Too many rules and procedures that slow us down;

Advice to Senior Management

Keep believing in your employees and the world is ours!

Pros

Good benefits. Computing hardware is pretty good. Very flexible and helpful IT department. Nice work environment. Books are easy to order, and training is easy to get set-up.

Cons

Poor project management. Lots of dead weight. Hard to stand out. Departments are very closed-off. Very much a "sit down and shut up" environment.

Advice to Senior Management

Actually listen to employees. Encourage an environment of openness and collaboration. Remove barriers to communication and actively create cross-discipline teams.

Pros

You don't see a lot of mass firings in the engineering department. They are happy to put you in a position to do a job that you may not be considered for in another company because of lack of experience or qualifications. Free parking, coffee and occasional lunches.

Cons

Like others have said. They have trouble getting rid of dead weight and difficulty motivating the top talent to stay. Very much a sit down and shut up environment. Feedback is not encouraged. Everything is political. Requires a policy and procedure for everything. It is common to see people thrown under the bus. Getting basic tools to do your job is impossible. Lots of lip service to software development methodologies in use etc., but no execution to back it up. Turnover is high.

Advice to Senior Management

If you want to attract the best and the brightest you need to create an environment that encourages it. When I was recruited into the company the HR person told me about how GE looked for people who can connect the dots etc.. The culture actively discourages this kind of thinking and many of your hires have trouble doing this. Ditch the ceremony and get to the essence and give your people the tools that they need to do their job...if people are not able to perform after you have given them the tools and environment you need to remove them from the team.

Pros

GE holds the FMPs in high regard. Almost all senior leaders are FMP grads and will want to help you succeed. The path to high levels of management is laid out, and is attainable, but you must literally give your life to GE to get it.

Cons

People at GE do not know how to relax. They are very concerned with the numbers of hours they work, often staying at the office doing literally nothing so that people can see that they are there late. They love to brag about how many hours they work. A disturbing majority of the Finance employees have either never been married, or are married to someone in GE.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't take yourself so seriously. There are only two people at GE who anyone outside of GE has ever heard of.

Pros

The have a decent benefits package and reasonable time off policy by American standards.

Cons

The entire organization is unable to execute. Getting simple resources like a server are next to impossible even on critical projects. You are buried in "required" training that does nothing to benefit the organization or your career. Lots of hubris throughout the organization. They talk about developing a center of excellence, but they are far from achieving any of that. The environment, and talent that is attracted to it is not the best and the brightest. Lots of customer commitments have been made for products the organization does not have the ability to deliver on.

Advice to Senior Management

Smart Grid is about software, but your organization is set up for making big machines such as gas turbines. You need to either be willing to
1. Set up your organization with a clean slate, with a culture and appropriate processes
2. Buy a company that actually has the ability to do this
3. Get out of the smart grid business.

Pros

There are many different branches and many different people that work in GE, so your ability to work on different things is endless. GE has great benefits and great training programs,

Cons

I noticed there isn't really much room to move up in GE. Most of the managers and executives were brought in from other companies and were not promoted through the ranks. If you are happy with sitting in a cubicle all your life then GE is perfect for you.

Advice to Senior Management

try to target the younger employees and keep them interested. When working around a bunch of old engineers it makes it hard to be excited to go into work and enjoy who you are working with.

Pros

GE Energy goes out of its way to assure a fair and equitable work environment. Like most large organizations there is a big focus on fully complying with all laws and business best practices. The company is growing opening up many opportunites for career advancement and GE does appear to work hard to develop its own workforce and promote from within.

Cons

GE Energy is an organization chasing the "Smart Grid" brass ring and is growing too quickly to be truly effective. This is a very process-oriented organization and although some of the processes improve the overall success of the programs, there are many that don't. There is too much time required for inane training - a never ending cycle of "required" courses - most of which are not related to an individual's job function.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure you support innovative thinking and allow the creativity to flow freely.

Pros

Amazing resources available for you to learn and do your work.

Cons

No sense of family / belonging / team. A LOT of turnover and conflict.

Advice to Senior Management

HR at GE Energy is terrible, terrible, terrible!! GE Energy could be even stronger if it could keep its best talent.

Pros

GE pushes employees to continually improve - which is great when it comes to having exceptional peers to work with. If you like to constantly be challenged with hard work, changes, new ideas, and the political game, GE is the right place to be.

Cons

To much change. Change for the better is good - but this is not always the case. Management can also have unrealistic expectations, so be prepared to handle perception.

Advice to Senior Management

Partner with your employees - start motivating people. Often management is more about tracking, babysitting, and metrics at GE, and less about helping employees do the right thing.