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I'm formerly with a large non-offshore contractor for GE recently and you may even be familiar with me given I was in the middle of a number of outages related

I'm formerly with a large non-offshore contractor for GE recently and you may even be familiar with me given I was in the middle of a number of outages related to AWS that impacted San Ramon and the rest of GE. There were other reasons for Predix outages than just network and compute infrastructure but I felt unable to prevent most of these outages with the limitations given to me structurally and architecturally. The problem I see with an acquisition growth approach IMO is that I would only expect GE to retain maybe 20% of the engineers after 3 years due to the lack of adequate supporting infrastructure and cultural foundation to help long term engagement. None of the talks I watched from management at GE Digital sounded focused at all either - the vision is all over the place and sounded like children wishing for ponies and candy without explaining how to get there and what to prioritize. That lack of management focus is what start-up folks recognize as a recipe for failure regardless of funding level.

predix_worker 10y ago
I agree 100%. Like all large companies there are some really sharp people at GE Digital. Here is my insider issues with GE 1) Sales/Execs push product. Predix is so beyond fucked its not funny. I don't think anyone can come in and fix all the tech debt. Sales will push new customers and force engineers to meet their deadlines. Execs won't allow engineers time to fix anything. Its just keep pushing out awful hacks and 70% working products. 2) Anything you say your manager might listen but it nothing will happen. In order to get anything done you have 10 meetings about it during the week.
- devonkim 10y ago
  This gets at the crux of the problem that I have with the GE recruiting commercials more than anything else - it's not as engineering-focused of a culture as it would lead you to believe. It's certainly a lot more hands-on "get things done" than many big companies I've seen (perhaps too much!), but it's still a big, boring company whose primary advantages are fundamentally "it's large" rather than based upon engineering innovations, and sales people have more power fundamentally than engineers. A great deal of people work really hard and people tend to be polite, but working smarter is far, far more important in technology than just effort, and appointing all your fresh, brightest college grads into management tracks as priority is furthering the brain drain problem.
  - predix_worker 10y ago
    pretty much describes GE. The San Ramon office is like a h1b1 warehouse. I think they know they have these people almost locked in and take advantage of it. I've been here over a year and have yet to see a single person fired. You could honestly fire 40% of the people in GE Digital and it'll function the same if not better then it did before

predix_worker 10y ago

I agree 100%. Like all large companies there are some really sharp people at GE Digital. Here is my insider issues with GE 1) Sales/Execs push product. Predix is so beyond fucked its not funny. I don't think anyone can come in and fix all the tech debt. Sales will push new customers and force engineers to meet their deadlines. Execs won't allow engineers time to fix anything. Its just keep pushing out awful hacks and 70% working products. 2) Anything you say your manager might listen but it nothing will happen. In order to get anything done you have 10 meetings about it during the week.

devonkim 10y ago
This gets at the crux of the problem that I have with the GE recruiting commercials more than anything else - it's not as engineering-focused of a culture as it would lead you to believe. It's certainly a lot more hands-on "get things done" than many big companies I've seen (perhaps too much!), but it's still a big, boring company whose primary advantages are fundamentally "it's large" rather than based upon engineering innovations, and sales people have more power fundamentally than engineers. A great deal of people work really hard and people tend to be polite, but working smarter is far, far more important in technology than just effort, and appointing all your fresh, brightest college grads into management tracks as priority is furthering the brain drain problem.
- predix_worker 10y ago
  pretty much describes GE. The San Ramon office is like a h1b1 warehouse. I think they know they have these people almost locked in and take advantage of it. I've been here over a year and have yet to see a single person fired. You could honestly fire 40% of the people in GE Digital and it'll function the same if not better then it did before