

Ask HN: How is it to work at General Electric? - lettergram

I am currently looking into GE for a possible internship (I am a junior in CS from UIUC). The pay is moderate to low for the usual internship offer, and I have other offers that pay significantly more.<p>However, I am curious if anyone has experience in software engineering in GE, more specifically GE Energy Management? If so, how would the experience compare to say working at Facebook, a financial firm, or else where. GE seems to offer a significant amount of benefits, learning opportunities and is growing out its software side rapidly, but I have no insight as to the working environment.
======
caw
I know 2 people in GE manufacturing, and they enjoy working there. The
benefits are good (vacation, healthcare, GE discounts), as well as learning
and advancement (one has gotten some good raises and promotions).

As far as the software goes I'm not sure, but I've had a few friends who
interned with "big" names - FB, Google, Microsoft, while I went with kind of a
no-name. The experience is what you make of it, and what you want your career
to be. Do you want to be in the Energy sector? Do you want to work for large
software projects? Enterprise companies have one thing startups do not have --
cash to buy the latest, greatest, and coolest IT equipment, and the scale to
have lines on your resume like "Saved $X million by implementing solution XYZ"
while you learn the industry standard equipment. On the flip side, they're
more bureaucratic, slow moving, and you won't get to work with the latest
shiny. For example, my company is just getting in to "Big Data", and we don't
have any internal NoSQL solutions. There's about a 5+ year time lag before new
tech goes from tech companies into enterprise from my estimates.

You have to consider what you want to do after school, and if these
internships are helping you get there. If you're not sure what you're
intending to do, have you had another internship, or do you plan to have
another before you graduate? If so, consider doing something radically
different to gain exposure to different things.

You can always negotiate salary.

~~~
lettergram
Thank you for the response. I'm pretty much 100% sure I will work until I have
enough money to start my own company. I already have it pretty much fully
worked out with a friend, we are just working on building up capital and
getting experience.

That being said, GE sounds like a place where I could gain some experience and
pay off my student debt (which is really all I am interested in at the
moment).

Thank you for your insight.

------
logn
I have a friend who works in another subsidiary there, on hardware not
software though. He likes it and has advanced in his career there. Like most
companies that size there's lots of bureaucracy. In my own experience though,
there's no bureaucracy like anything you'll see in the financial world (due to
all the government regulation and liability on banks thus total aversion to
risk, at least in their IT departments). For an internship I would steer clear
of finance and only take up such a job once you're experienced, know good
engineering practices, and want job stability and good pay.

Like the Paul Graham advice, early in your career simply ignore the pay (if
you can) and take the hardest jobs. I think whichever company where you can
work on the most challenging projects is where you should work. Eventually
that will pay off however you want.

------
jtchang
I worked for GE out of college when joining a program called IMLP. Feel free
to reach out if you want to know my thoughts. Overall very positive. Got to
move around 4 different places in 2 years.

------
samfisher83
If you want to be a leader GE is the no.1 company you want to work for. Many
CEOs come out of that company, but of course they could have 300000 people so
they have a large pool as well.

