Those commercials seem pretty tone deaf to me. I mean the one where his friends don't think he'll still be a programmer because he's working for GE, or the one where his dad doesn't think he can lift a sledgehammer. I get that they're trying to be funny and poke fun at themselves, but there's an undercurrent of condescension and patting this kid on the head that is very off-putting to me as a software engineer. After reading bradrydzewski's comment about the culture at GE it's making a lot more sense. GE just doesn't get software engineers.

I thought the ads were quite effective.

They were saying, yes "apps" for your phone are topical. The point of their commercial was "we work on big crazy complex shit and you can be part of solving a huge challenge".

The photos in this article of their manufacture engineering plants amaze me. Now couple those projects with sensors that are starting to giving off TBs of information in an hour and you can start to realize the scale of problems you could be working on at GE.

In another 5-10 years, many of the folks grinding it out in silicon valley, or other startupy things will realize they have a desire to have a family and will want to apply their talents towards more meaningful projects than "apps" that do not require being part of silicon valley.

Their commercials and this article painted the perfect picture of what's possible at GE and outside of silicon valley in my mind.

They are trying to fake it till they make it. It's a strategy in itself.

The purpose of those ads is not to attract developers. The purpose of those ads is to invest in GE's brand by creating the impression that young smart developers want to work there.

If the ads do attract some developers, that's great too, but that is not enough return to justify the (huge, enormous) cost.

These ads seek to do for GE what the "Think Different" ads did for Apple in the 90s.

Those adds seemed weird to me. I program in the oil/gas space I couldn't imagine thinking working to built some app would be better that actually contributing to real world production. My den at my place is full of aerial shots of all the facilities I programmed. Every time I look at them I am filled with tons of pride.

i find those commercials really weird. "Digital and Industrial" i think speaks more to EEs (of which they have plenty) than to software developers, ML experts, and/or data scientists.

to my ear, D&I refers more to PLC guys, who are probably closer to being industrial engineers than either EEs or software guys. I've talked to PLC vendors before; they aren't familiar with what it would take to actually do ... more ambitious industrial control. Basic stuff like filters and modest machine learning is a bit beyond what they offer. It's ladder logic and cabling.

PLC inventories are measured in decades, not years.

It's honorable work, but it's not to be confused with software development.

Those commercials have been weird from the start. They make the parents / relatives / friends seem dumb to the point of parody and the "developer" very condescending.

You would think it would be cheaper to pay more or give better benefits.

These commercials are made to lure tech talent by letting them know they're more than the industrial mechanical company they used to be and need people with modern tech skill sets as opposed to knowing how to sling a hammer.

At a smaller scale, certainly. If you're talking thousands of developers, marketing yourself as a good place to work becomes cheaper than paying well (i.e., actually being a good place to work).

>paying well (i.e., actually being a good place to work).

I don't think good pay and good place to work are synonymous in any way. They happen to be correlated because both are methods to attract talent, but one does not cause the other.

You can bet they paid zillions to McKinsey or someone, to absolutely minimize their costs for doing it.