General Electric

Great health benefits... until 2010 when they changed plans. 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.

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 BOMs. You will become an expert in PowerPoint, and quite frankly, that is all you truly need to know to do my job. None of the "engineering" software programs communicate with 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.

Fix the relationship between manufacturing and engineering.

Decrease the frequency of reorganizations; this will create a better knowledge base.