General Electric

GE has a strong reputation for producing engineers capable of managing projects. Most of the work involved managing a project to some degree, which is useful experience. For their Edison engineers, they offered a strong training program that included leadership workshops through corporate. Most employees seemed to care about the job they did. That being said, most do the 8-5 routine.

Red tape and uncertainty about what the future will hold sums up the cons. Given that GE is a large company, it can be very challenging to get things done in a timely manner because of all the paperwork and approvals required to make a change to anything. I worked at GE Consumer and Industrial, and at the time, corporate announced C&I would be up for sale. When corporate couldn't get a good offer for the business, they decided to spin it off. After I left, I believe they decided to keep the company until the economy turned so they could sell it. Rumors of a sale of C&I have been around for years and won't be gone until a sale does happen.

It seemed like much of the engineering work was being outsourced to India. Almost all of the CAD work is done in India. They also have a program that brings engineers to India for rotations. I certainly got the feeling that the company was in the process of handing over much of the engineering work to India. Since there are a lot of engineers in India willing to work for a lot less than an American engineer, I would expect this trend to continue.

Management within the C&I business was fine. Most of the issues are a result of the actions by corporate. Management seems to care and is approachable.