Current GE engineer here with getting close to 10 years on the job. After reading this book it explained so much of what I have witnessed. Cost reduction at every step, multiple project managers for a single engineer, and just the reluctance to spend money doing new things. Our team was once told to not give the customer anything free (a design feature), only what they had agreed to in the purchase order. Isn’t that how you attract customers and keep them happy. Wait, you could improve if the change did not require any extra time, money, or resources, ha.
My main takeaway from the book was GE really stopped caring about creating new things in the 60s or so. Now they cry that the market is unfair? You can only cost cut and buy/sell other companies for so long.
One last funny (sad) thing I would like to share. One of the first things a new GE person has to do is take their Greenbelt training. The first phrase out of the instructors mouth is that this class normally takes a month of solid effort, but we will do it in 1 week. Yeah, tick the box, what a waste of time and money (that we couldn’t have to actually improve a product).