General Electric

There are opportunities to gain experience in a vast sea of experiences, ranging from project planning to all aspects of component design, life analysis, FEA, sourcing, manufacturing, fleet issues, and customer resolution on multiple professional levels. You will not come away from this job with a narrow scope of expertise.

Also, energy is broad and deep in scope. From gas, wind, and steam turbines to nuclear, coal, and diesel generators, the possibilities for different careers are many.

Security is also a strong appeal. Energy demand may change forms but will never truly disappear. Few industries offer the same long-term job security.

The company's processes are many. They are often burdensome, blind, and out of touch with reality. However, this is not unlike other companies of this size. Red tape is a nuisance to deal with, but it also can be a strong guide to keep things moving when the way ahead isn't clear.

HR operates like a black box, perhaps a broken black box. Despite the heaps of fluffy, feel-good gibberish it spits out in your daily email, it is actually pretty clueless as to its own hypocrisy and functions as a propaganda machine.

Raises are suppressed through a convoluted system of ratings amongst peers, standing in view of the industry average, time with the company, background, and lastly, performance. It does not pay to perform.

A set pool of money is predetermined, and lower management is burdened with ranking their direct reports against each other to decide who gets 3% vs 4% or 5%. Naturally, it pays to be a favorite, like any other system governed by humans. However, it is very difficult for them to play favorites due to the way the system is set up.

In short, hire in at the highest rate you can negotiate, be prepared for raise cycles ranging from 14-18 months (and sometimes longer), and try to move to another role every 2 years to prevent your salary from losing in the race with inflation.

It is very difficult to ever actually get anything done due to the massive amount of people that have a say in any major decision. Some parts of the business (MPE) can hold a project up for over 6 months while it is waiting in their queue. Major changes happen very slowly, and individual contributors very seldom have any real communication or relationship with their managers.

Attrition will continue to be a huge problem for GE Energy unless the young talent base is nurtured in their skills, rewarded based on effort and performance without ridiculous processes, and given the ability to use their talents to do real work that coincides with real life.

Stop leaning on metrics that drive the wrong behavior and are completely out of touch with what is actually good for the customer, the product, and the business. This current culture is killing your business.