Life at GE : Careers : GE
My team is in the unique situation of building Digital Media, which Wikipedia defines as "creative convergence of digital arts, science, technology and business for human expression, communication, social interaction and education." There is always something new to try, and I am always challenged to either build or use a tool or code to create a specific user experience. What I enjoy most, beyond the complexity of any particular system, is being able to quickly produce the wants of our marketing and communication clients. My current role challenges me every day and provides me with opportunities to learn about new technologies.
I was initially attracted to GE through the ITLP program, because it was going to be an extension of my college career and would help me to take the next step in shaping my technical career as well as provide me with an opportunity to learn about GE. As an employee, GE continuously gives me an opportunity to learn by not only providing interesting and inspiring projects, but also by offering a training plan that allows me to challenge myself. A large company like GE gives their employees the ability to create their career path and allows them to move between businesses or even functions, which allows for personal organic growth.
Before I became the team lead of External Digital Technologies, I was a project manager for the group. After ITLP, I had been working within end-user computing, primarily on process improvement, and I felt that I needed a much more technical role before becoming a lead. I felt that working for the Digital Media team would allow me to gain more depth and stay up to date by working on a wide variety of technologies. Since I worked for this group previously, I already strongly value my team members and have a clear understanding of the daily challenges presented to us.
The most challenging project that I have worked on at GE was a datacenter migration for all of our external websites (more than 200) to upgraded servers within a new datacenter. This was a very challenging project, because I did not consider myself to be an infrastructure expert at the time. This project not only required that I manage stakeholder expectations, a timeline, budget and project team but also that I train myself to answer the tough questions. Pushing myself, along with my team, to learn the technical details allowed us to make key timeline decisions and keep us within scope on a schedule that changed daily. Because of our clear planning and testing, we had few issues, and now our current team depends daily on our ability to quickly and efficiently use our newly organized environment.
My college curriculum was centered on problem-based learning, and that instilled in me the importance of problem solving. I feel that I have carried that skill throughout my career, because technology will always grow and change, and our job is to quickly apply our knowledge base to make decisions or solve issues. Each day, I feel that my team and I are challenged with new requirements and deadlines, and our ability to break down those requirements and quickly provide solutions makes us a stronger team for our clients.
Make sure that you take the time to become an expert on the technical areas that apply to your role. Not only does this make you a better project manager, but it helps to give you the confidence to grow into a technical leader. Your team will look to you for answers to the tough questions and by understanding potential underlying IT glitches, it will help you to more easily problem solve any issue.
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