GE Global Research has laid off quite a number of folks, plus others are leaving on their own leaving many areas understaffed. Further some labs have been mothballed and there may be plans to close additional facilities in an effort to meet corporate cost cutting needs.
Bumped from an older thread (@LPWJHdo-2xmdf) for new info.
@On0g2Ft-Almu, Except for the part where you said I sounded like a manager, I think we pretty much agree on the state of things.
I'm not claiming that we have enlightened senior management, I'm not claiming that GRC is a fun place to work, and I'm not even claiming that we've been all that successful as a research center (although CMCs are a game changer). The issue is how we spend our time while waiting for our futures to arrive.
Let me restate the idea behind my original post from a different perspective using your observations: If we give away the role of "customer interface" to our chain of command, we risk suffering from oversold benefits, poor project definition, and science projects.
We need to control those things we can control. Most of us can recognize oversold projects. If that's true, why do we work on them? How often do we turn down funding? Kill a fruitless project? Issue a respectful minority report?
If a customer can see the truth, and we're not calling "BS", we're seen as part of the problem.
I did make one other point that you did not address, and I will restate that point as well.
It may be that in the next round of layoffs, managers have still not figured out who's providing value. I maintain this should not affect our current working behavior. When interviewing for our next jobs, I would like nothing better than for each of us to be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN when we say "GE really screwed up when they let me go".
@Almu, can we focus on sharing information and advice, and stop sniping at each other? As a fellow GRC employee, I think I know @1epa. If I'm right, he's not a manager or a former manager. He's a talented IC with a LONG track record of building, motivating, and leading project teams, delivering REAL (not exaggerated) results and value that almost always exceed expectations. And he's mentored more people than I can count. This poster tried to offer some constructive advice that's valuable whether you work at GE or elsewhere, and he even answered others' replies in a follow-up post (@4prk). For his trouble, his advice was called "ridiculous" and "bull sh__" (that after someone copied the post to start a new thread).
Look: we all know GRC is BADLY broken! I put most of the blame for that on our senior leader. And unfortunately, GE's current financial challenges increase the odds that senior leaders will take yet more destructive actions. However, I don't agree the Center has been a failure for a decade. If you heard David Joyce's last Steinmetz talk, it's clear he doesn't believe that, either.
The day may come when I give up on GRC, but it hasn't happened yet. There are so many outstanding people here. I want enough of those people to stay long enough that we can emerge from our current leadership and financial crisis and thrive again. Could that happen? Time will tell. For now, I want to help my co-workers and keep GRC as strong as it can be. Some of you have given up on GRC. After the past year, that's completely understandable, and it's fine to share that view. But please don't ridicule those who are trying to offer constructive advice to their co-workers.
@On0g2Ft-1epa - you sound like a manager. Ridiculous. Yes, we need to work for our businesses and not for 'science'. Most of us DO engage fully with business teams and work on critical programs. However, many of these programs are poorly directed. Most of the potential value for the company is OVERSOLD by management, and in the end we deliver minimal value. We are consistently pushed to make up targets and costs when we simply don't have all the information. The businesses don't even have this information half the time. So, we're all simply guessing about savings and value at the end of the day, and unfortunately the guesses get exaggerated and rolled up into 'savings' that our CEO advertises. It's no wonder we've failed as a center over the last decade. Our value is now simply contract work when the businesses need support. Long-term thinking has been reduced to 'next year', rather than taking bigger risks on 5-10 yr strategies. Here's a question for you: why would a business, squeezed beyond belief in the current environment and requiring rapid product improvements, utilize GRC, a slow, expensive, poorly directed facility? Expect 'research' to be returned to the individual businesses along with the closure of GRC. If GE needs fast iterations within a 1-2yr time frame, it doesn't need a global research center. The AT&T model has proven to work.
Guys, the lack of communication is intentional. Their goal is to attrit....to make you want to leave. Flannery was in Upstate and decides not to have a town hall. The writing is on the wall....major reductions, close overseas sites, hyperfocus the center and dump everything else. Go find another job before they lay you off!!
The never ending uncertainty around the funding and job security is unbecoming of the country's first, and once premier, industrial research lab. I wish our great leaders were upfront and truthful for once, as to where they see the center going.
Well when VA tells KL, who then tells his direct reports including TW....of course the news gets out fast! Yes major major cuts in NSK plus most GRC heads overseas being cut or transferred to a business (aka OKC). Very sad....GRC will now just be a showplace to trick the investors and customers into thinking GE is committed to technology!!!
GRC Saudi Arabia will be closing in August (with 2 months notice to employees) just within 2 years of its BIG BANG opening. This is ridiculous as some of the folks have just joined GE within the past 6-8 months leaving their previous jobs.
Where are you guys getting your information from? I am curious to see what Flannery will have to say about the center, when he takes office in a couple of days. Heard he was around recently, touring the place, not sure if true though.
Bottom line....fixed costs are too high. They are cutting the center in half over the next 6 months. Some international locations will get folded into the local businesses. Others....will be eliminated.
If you are at GRC and feel you have no choice in your work content, try working at a business. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
@On0g2Ft-2gmp and @On0g2Ft-2muo responded to my post with the well understood truth that there were too many talented folks laid off at GRC, and too many marginal folks retained. I worry, though, that this is the "last war", and the next lay-offs will have different CTQs.
The people you pass in the hall know that truth, and our managers are no exception. Ask them what they think, and you'll find many of them agree on the process failings of our last lay-off. Nobody wants to see that happen again. We may need to shed more people, and many of them will be talented, but I am certain that the management batting average will improve.
There's definetetly no team when you have coworkers nicknamed blister. They only show up when the work is done.
Of course, when they did away with individual rankings under the new PD system a year ago, it allowed the leadership to pretend not to know who contributes what. There's no "I" in team, after all...
I third on this. Leadership told me the previous layoff was not performance based. I was aggravated working with many engineers who showed up at 8:00 or later everyday. They took 2 hours + for lunch because they had to run/walk, play a sport, or visit the gym, then they would leave around 4:00. They constantly spoke of their work life balance entitlement. The names selected where either random or because someone well connected didn't like them. The leaders tasked with the layoffs didn't know the complete roles, sacrifices, and effectiveness of the layoff victims. The lazy non producing individuals seemed to all survive.
Second on this. A lot of the layoffs are the ones who do the actual work!
Unfortunately that advice may not be very helpful. In our group's last round of layoffs, neither our manager nor his manager had any say in deciding who was cut. (Or so he said at an informal gathering at Quaker Steak.) The level at which these decisions were made had no idea who contributed what to the overall team, and appeared to pick names at random. We lost a few of the best engineers in our group, and none of the bottom performers were affected. So whether you do your best, or just enough to not stick out, or spend the workday surfing Facebook/LinkedIn, it appears your career is just part of the next round of the company's Russian Roulette tournament.
Not many people can "choose", not to say "wisely".
To some extent our GRC futures are up to us. Each of us has some choice as to what we deliver back to the businesses, and we need to choose wisely. If everything we touch creates a return for a business, the businesses will fight to keep us, one person at a time. If we deliver products that can't be sold, or efficiencies that can't be realized, the businesses will let us fall away. One person at a time.
Take on some risk. Put your priorities on tasks that have line of sight to a paying non-GE customer, and hit the ball out of the park.
Push back on tasks that won't benefit our customers, or provide significant REAL cost savings. No more sub-optimization. No more science projects. Be very sceptical about any assessed tasks that don't have a real customer driving the work.
At GRC, we're lucky enough to have some choice in setting our work priorities. We can't afford to let that choice go to waste.
GRC managers have a mixed track record figuring out who is delivering value. On the other hand, our business customers pay close attention to the results of their funding. Make sure your business customers know where the value is coming from.
This is a bit like musical chairs... When the music stops, you want to be a key contributor to a critical business activity.
Good luck.
Wow. I thought our leaders laid off more than enough people in Jan, so as to not have to do this again, affecting the stability and employee morale. I guess the reorgs and new breakouts are nothing but another fad like the good old fastworks. Today's earnings were disappointing too :(
Heard that all international GRC sites might be eliminated. And total population in Niskayuna might be reduced to 500.
@OP:What do you mean by facilities-labs being eliminated? . Do you expect more layoffs in the coming months. I am hearing mixed things both ways. Sitting tight for now.