I agree completely, this business is now about jet engines, gas turbines, and wind turbines. I don’t think that’s a bad thing; those are pretty cool technologies. What s---s is that our leaders nearly sunk the GT business, and renewables will never dominate its market like the GT business dominated its market.
The deal with moving across businesses was only really ever true for finance and E-band and above. My experience with E-bands and even some finance people who move businesses is that they never get the domain expertise. You need domain expertise to work in the gas turbine services business, for instance.
The expat thing was still alive when I joined in ‘09, but died shortly after. Sure there are a few here and there, but even if you get a shot at it you risk getting stranded. Face it, if you go overseas to get a promotion you can’t expect people in your home country to make room for you when you come back.
The management schoolhouse thing may have been sort of true, but that narrative is dead I’m sorry to say. You need to go to an MBB firm to get that now. Few people are looking for ex-GE talent unless there is clear domain expertise, while everybody is looking for ex-McKinsey talent for just about anything. Or skip all that and go the FAANG route. Not GE though.
I hate it too. Bad leadership and bad decisions will kill you every time, and we had bad leadership after Jack left.