The not good: (again, this is Schenectady). "Owen" from the TV commercials does not work here. The place is a time warp, culturally (again, this is the professional side, not the manufacturing plant) is known by other parts of GE as patently "toxic". Management style is characterized by fear & hierarchy; it is a culture of walking on eggshells. Don't email any of the "Officers" directly if you only rank in the professional bands. Don't take the executive elevator (no really..I'm not making this up!). The place takes itself incredibly seriously (and maybe in the days of "Mad Men" this was warranted) and the career employees who have never worked anywhere else still brandish the attitude you'd see portrayed in a bad 1980s movie about a cutthroat corporate America. GE believes it's doing YOU a favor by letting you work there. Sometimes it's even laughable...earlier this year I was in on a conference call where one of the newly-promoted-rising-star sales leaders was berating & threatening the entire audience "If i'm going to spend two and half hours of MY time a month on this, it better be good or else I have to ask myself why we even HAVE a marketing organization!!!". Guy in his 30s maybe, but as GE promotes from within, probably never worked anywhere besides Schenectady, so is completely professionally-socialized here, and knows no different. Apparently now that he made it to management, he thought it was now HIS time to yell. There's a subtle Stockholm-syndrome that makes even the smart & good people apologize for the place...behaviors even from executives, stories of Vice Presidents talking down demeaningly to subordinates (e.g. "Tell me why I should be paying you to work here!") would in other firms instantly be flagged as a hostile work environment. But in Schenectady, these anecdotes are passed on as a "heads up", as if it's just a feature of macho corporate culture to be aware of, maybe even appreciated. The sense of serving the hierarchy is palpable everywhere; executives are wildly impatient and you better not waste their time. The place even has developed its own bizarre communication norms and involuted internal language; in the name of urgency, there are style guides for writing presentations that try to condition you to use as few words as possible. Our people don't have time to waste on complete sentences! Don't stop senior people while they are walking in the hallways--if you say the wrong thing that could be a "career-limiting move". There are actually executives that will enter a conference room with 6 people in it, and not even acknowledge the junior people, even a "hello" or eye contact; instead they will reach over them to shake the other VP's hand. Recognizing the rank & file as other humans in the room would be beneath them. Are you kidding me...it's 2017! Good luck to these people when they ever leave GE/Schenectady and have to work somewhere else.
All these things make for an unpleasant work experience, but the culture actually also sets up a dangerous pitfall for business planning & strategy. In Schenectady, the message sent up the flagpole always has to be "positive!". The bias to confirm the positive skews true market assessments, because instead of objective planning, these get warped into more of an exercise in pleasing whatever executive you're in front of that day...indeed (and nobody even seems to see the irony here) presentations are usually referred to as "pitches". You're always pitching the IDEA of something that is always framed as "positive for GE!!!" perhaps at the expense of a truly agnostic market viewpoint. Getting everything crammed into a single powerpoint slide shows that you're clever, regardless of whether the revenue number that you're promising is realistic or your business idea has long-term viability.
Benefits are what they are; good health care, a good 401k match. BUT...and a big but.."unlimited vacation". This basically means "no vacation" and don't let anyone try to spin it differently. It means maybe you can eek out a Friday afternoon off last minute, but forget about booking a week-long family trip later in the year unless you're ready to cancel it last minute.
I might recommend time at GE to have it on one's resume, to understand both the good & bad of big, complicated companies. To be clear and fair, there ARE many good, smart people who you will learn a lot from and enjoy. But I can't imagine spending too long here, or being trapped in Schenectady (if you're going to have a pressure-cooker job, at least let it be in Northern California or somewhere nice). Before you join, ask questions about how it will be different in 2017 and beyond, under tremendous investor/Wall St pressure. So, yes we have fantastic television commercials and maybe you'll find that scene in San Ramon or in Boston, but GE Power has all the ethos Schenectady's own post-industrial, manufacturing-mindset, gray landscape, humorless and subtly oppressive, trying painfully to reinvent itself. The collective self-importance of the place--unaware of its own provincial limitations and hubris borne of insular thinking & behavior--might have served it well for last century, but if you're looking for a good workplace going forward, you are unlikely to find it in Schenectady.
