Dive Brief:
- General Electric has been on a mission to reinvent itself as a software company, launching a major PR campaign and raising salaries to attract top tech talent, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
- A senior software engineer at GE Digital earns about $138,000, according to Glassdoor.com. That is on par with IBM and SAP, though Google and Facebook pay much more, the report found.
- GE Chief Executive Jeff Immelt has been working to pivot the 124-year old industrial company for the digital age. Its stand-alone software unit, established in 2015, now has more than 28,000 employees.
Dive Insight:
GE likely wants to shift to a more tech-based business model, particularly since industrial companies are seeing disruption from the Internet of Things.
In addition to raising salaries to compete with other tech companies, GE launched a PR campaign to frame it as a hip, new tech company. As technology becomes a bigger part of many businesses, old guard companies of all types may find advantages in rebranding for the digital age.
For many companies, the answer to remaining technologically relevant may lie in IoT and connected devices. But that shift can be costly, requiring software and networking talent that can work to ensure devices remain constantly connected. IoT is moving from proof of concept to reality, with 31.4% of organizations surveyed having launched IoT solutions and another 43% looking to deploy in the next year, according to recent data from IDC.