Upon starting with GM I was blown away they used a behavioral STAR interview with no technical questions for a technical job. I have noticed there is ton of bloat in IT. I'm no singling out old or young people, but some people simply don't deserve to keep their job as their work ethic/skill level is extremely poor. It is very frustrating to work with these people. As long as the layoffs are fairly based on performance I am all for it as I would prefer these type of people to be gone.
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@X4n30iF-3ejb Do you hear anything about Pontiac?
Amen. I have watched countless NCG's and Level 6 employees who hardly work 20 hours a week, and even then they have nothing to do. This was a necessary evil.
@X4n30iF-3nvg , When was Pontiac layoffs? Today ?
As far as performance based layoffs, if you are on a PIP (Personal Improvement Program), you've either already been walked out, or you will be.
This layoff has to be non-descriminant. Which means for those of us waiting, we know this has very little to do with having good CAP reviews.
Bottom line, whatever criteria they decide to use, it will be across the board. For example, I was told all 9th levels were let go at Pontiac. Furthermore, all GM IT Fellows were also let go (this I can personally verify in my department).
GM may keep their "top talent", but with so many seasoned senior SME's (Subject Matter Experts) gone, it's certainly going to be interesting, especially when you consider how Randy Mott's EDW was such a failure with millions wasted and he still can't deliver to the business. His model looks good on paper, but there is such a huge disconnect within that group and the business I'm surprised Mary hasn't canned him for poor performance.
Have yet to interact with a single competent GMTCI counterpart. The main work sticks internally, and the grade school work goes overseas, for reasons unneeded to be explained.
The problem is when the GMTCI counterparts are no longer working just overseas, but actually applying locally to take jobs away from the talented. The local GM management, in their diversity crusade, feel obligated to hire the less talented. This is the burden of the talented. A war on multiple fronts.
So in India you can hire IT professionals for about $10,000 per year. However you cannot hire just one, you have to hire 5 of them at a time to obtain the same productivity of a developer in the United States or Europe. Why? They hire one to do all of the work while the rest are brought in mainly to justify the price of the contact, ensuring maximum profit for the Indian firm. The Indian workers will be online during U.S. working hours and logoff around noon Eastern US Time (5-6 hour workday). While at work they will take breaks throughout the day to socialize with coworkers. This practice apparently continues even after migrating to the United States. It is a daily occurrence for Indian nationals to hang out in break rooms for a couple hours each afternoon. The Indian companies hire these individuals as contractors and treat them very poorly. As a result the employees tend to leave within 2 years of being hired.
Leave the IT to India. There is no need to hire locally. India is built on IT. GM can hire 5 engineers in India for price of one in USA. Any company who has developers here which is not a software company would lose out to competition. Focus on your core competency...
Performance may be only part of the equation, but it's going to be about age and cost primarily, and skill secondary. Why do you think they offered buyouts directed at 12 years of service or more? They intend to recycle the talent pool, unless you hold a critical talent. What GM didn't need to do is bloat it's ranks as much as it did since 2015 either. Some of the sh*t they let in the door, are nearly as bad as those you may consider dead weight, and I've seen both sides of that statement over a very long time.
The problem is when you bloat salary ranks, you can't easily remove salaried employees, without first decimating your contracting staff, which in turn creates chaos. To remove an individual salaried employee can take many months. To remove many, you have to have a mass plan that involves intended chaos. How else can you get rid of so many salary all at once? I find that this entire hire and fire plan may have been in the works for many years.
That makes less sense is the flip of a coin action that we see. With propulsion nearly decimated and betting the farm on EVs in the coming years, it does at least seem that the inmates have taken over the asylum. When NO one wants sedans today, as they only want trucks and SUVs, what will make the public want EVs in the next few years? They killed off the volt. The bolt barely sells. And now they want to bet the farm on 20 new EVs in the next few years, among a limited pool of interested buyers. That comes in the face of a recession that is coming much sooner than later.
So yes I will agree the layoffs are needed, because it was a bad move that led up to the numbers in which they hired. But there is so much more that GM needs now, like a reality check at the top, and I believe that will come in the next few short years - financially. People more intelligent than myself have always said that one of the big three would likely fold in the future. Which of the big three is acting unlike the others? With GM betting the farm on their actions, I find it very plausible. Time will tell that story.
Adding to the absurd interviews is the non-existent collaborative culture between the business analysts, developers, and management.
The entire organization is a cluster f&&k.
Managers who are not fit to be IT managers, let alone people managers. That's the biggest fail. The second is the culture of just doing what you are told. Not thinking or creativity. Take the safe route. Always take the same, lowest feature, lowest risk route for every development project.
GM IT is not a world class IT org. Far from it.
Good luck to everyone who gets the tap on the shoulder but look at this as a blessing in disguise if you have any interest in advancing your career. The shelf life of anyone in IT expires very fact before you become pegged into one job and useless to any other company but GM.
I was hiredas a college hire with a Master's degree in CS and was put in a tester role. Meanwhile other college hires who've never coded before going through the bootcamp were put in developer roles. It was a challenge getting switched to a Dev role. From my experience, it doesn't surprise me that layoffs are coming to IT since it doesn't seem like they managed the talent that they hired well.
We already have a bunch of "code monkeys" working and they are paid below market level. That's exactly why GM doesn't care about what you majored in at college as long as it's an IT degree. They threw everyone in a bootcamp and gave them a software developer title.
I always find it funny when the arrogant computer science and engineering majors talk down to those whom they perceive to have lower quality degrees. What your top school academics program failed to teach you is that the only thing that matters in the corporate world is money. It doesn't matter how well you can develop a solution to the Towers of Hanoi brain teaser. When the company can hire a dozen code monkeys for one tenth of your salary, you're out of a job. Just walk over to Randy Mott's office and give him a huge kiss for delaying that from happening.
Wow as a new college hire I was saying this during the learning tree "bootcamp" that they asked no technical questions during the interview. As I said this, the "computer information systems" majors looked annoyed and frustrated with me. Academics matter, hiring from top schools, technical interviews matter.
The article about "not over yet" was written before GM's announcement since it mentions GM is hosting an Investors and Capital day on Friday. So that economist's predictions is all shot down now: https://www.apnews.com/0916ce6bf4b54f3d84a1bf8a8a5c0730
I agree all the fault is on management. Managers need the ability to get rid of people. Hire fast, fire fast. We fired one person on our team a few years ago... Took 6 months of painful documentation.
Hiring to meet a metric still goes on. GM IT is still hiring new college grads. Quantity over quality. The money is better spent on the college grads hired several years back, that senior devs have been painstakingly training. Those high quality level 6 are paid much below market level. This silly hiring directive is coming from above.
Its not over....way too much fat
https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/general-motors/2019/01/09/gms-restructuring-plan-bring-more-jobs-cuts-and-marketshare-loss/2507689002/
The HR directive was that behavior is a better predictor of success. The hiring manager should ask more than the behavior questions to weed out the skill set. Better training on who to determine skills and competency as well as behavior is needed. Also management was told to make numbers and had to report on them weekly. Once again the wrong metrics drove poor results.
GM labor NA cost per hour: $74
Toyota labor NA cost per hour: $48