General Electric

This company provides challenging work, the opportunity to work with talented colleagues, and the power industry is a great one to be involved in, with much growth potential in the future. The design side of this company is a great place to develop oneself as an engineer. Naturally, in such a large corporation, the benefits package is excellent.

There are limited promotion opportunities within the company. There is a recent "technical career path," but it has yet to be vetted, and the consensus has always been that management is the only way to make any money.

Compensation (salary) is also below average in general compared to other companies.

The rating system can cause a great amount of frustration for design engineers, as your raises are based on your performance versus your peers. You have the option of working in a challenging environment and being punished by having mediocre raises, or excelling at a boring job.

The rating system we use ignores the fact that some groups would be rated very highly on the whole if they competed across all of GE Energy instead of just across their group.

It is a hit to morale to see peers in less challenging groups receive promotions for doing the same job that would get you rated least effective in your more challenging group.

It leads to the widely held notion that the way to get ahead is to take a position that offers no challenge so you can easily excel.