Pros
The product couldn't be more challenging and exciting, and the singular industry goal of relentlessly improving fuel economy adds a feel-good factor for someone with a disposition toward environmental stewardship (if we're all gonna fly and burn up all this fuel, lets optimize the machine). I've never worked with so many people who are uninterruptedly driven and goal-focused. The people I've worked with have broad technical aptitude (but my impression is that this has come at the expense of depth in the last decade or two). My work has been interesting, and my direct management has allowed me the space to really learn something, and work toward the basic understanding necessary to build the path from technical problem identification, to physical understanding, to prediction and solution. It's been fun.
Cons
There is a buzzword and initialism culture, which makes it difficult to understand one another. At first, I thought that I was the only one who couldn't understand what most people here mean half the time, but I've come to realize that this is pervasive. Imprecise language plagues this place and makes technical misunderstandings common. For someone whose work requires a lab bench and some lab equipment, the facilities can be painfully lacking and often so poorly maintained that its not feasible to do routine lab work (at least not well). There is a culture among many important people (i.e. not my immediate management, but those who hold the purse strings) that, through their attitude and through funding decisions, disrespects science and physical understanding, but wishfully wants the technical progress that enables anyhow. This sets the conditions for a sometimes slow, painful, and expensive learning process through trial and error, while deeper more broadly-applicable lessons could have been learned with a more deliberate front-end program aimed at understanding. Finally, don't assume management will necessarily allow you to pursue another opportunity within GE, even if that advances your career in the direction you want, and even if that other organization is inviting you to apply. The business can be greedy.
