General Electric

Diversified in multiple industries. Limited opportunities to move between different GE businesses. Pay is decent. Company culture used to be very positive and performance-based. Renewed focus on lean and operations seems to be paying off. Strong (though selective) focus on integrity and compliance. Generally strong in engineering and operations.

GE is currently heavily white male, and senior leadership and HR seem to be pursuing a "purge" of white males using several tactics:

• Have established racial and gender quotas for hiring and promotions.
• Have regular Problem Solving Reports (PSR's) and Action Plans explicitly intended to reduce the proportion of white male employees in the company.
• The standard annual performance review includes a "9-blocker" where all employees are ranked against one another; in this 9-blocker, all employees are highlighted in a special color for extra consideration, except for white US males (females highlighted in pink, US non-white highlighted in blue, international highlighted in green).
• Regularly promote "Affinity Groups" to celebrate all groups but Caucasians and males.
• Have cancelled all mid-career programs and tuition reimbursement.
• Have cancelled the pension and generally reduced benefits.
• Continue to focus resources on early career development, and hiring non-white-males to replace the ones they are scaring off.
• White males are generally not hired or promoted except as a last resort (which still happens often, simply due to the sheer number of qualified white male applicants).

This creates a fairly toxic culture, where white males feel they are viewed as "the problem" and non-white-males feel that they are viewed as "diversity hires" (an incredible disservice to all of our amazing, talented, hard-working employees).

Ironically, the company is largely led by white males at the executive level, and they wholeheartedly support the purge of other white males beneath them (presumably because it is a great PR move for them, and it keeps them safe).

The company preaches integrity and candor, but everyone knows that they are not allowed to question the company's new focus on discriminating against its own employees based on gender and skin color.

Not surprisingly, GE currently has a problem with attrition (including with "diverse" employees), as many subject matter experts flee the company.

We understand the societal issues you are trying to address, but pursuing a race-based and gender-based culture war within GE is doing a lot of damage to the company and is demoralizing for everyone involved.

It would be great if we could drop the recent obsession with skin color and gender and just focus on doing our best work.

Sexism and racism are always wrong, no matter which direction they are pointed in, no matter how popular they may be at a given time, and no matter what your intentions may be.