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General Motors (GM)

Engaged Employer

Typical large cooperation - Software Developer General Motors (GM) Employee Review

2.0
Jan 14, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people at General Motors are generally great to work with. There's a strong push to hire lots of college graduates, which can make the environment fun and filled with new ideas. The work/life balance is generally OK at General Motors. I don't find myself having to work too excessively most of the time, but it could be better. Some of the compensation are good. Vacation is lengthy even for those fresh out of school, 401k matching is excellent, and healthcare is about on par with other companies. Additionally, GM employees get discounts on new GM products. Great place to work if you are well established or at the end of your career.

Cons

Unfortunately, many of the pro's listed are also cons in their own way. Because the working environment is often very young, you're left with many inexperienced, college level employees, and the rest tend to be older managers far removed from the work they oversee. There seems to be a large gap in the middle, somewhere to turn to for advice or guidance with the everyday work. Recently the work/life balance has started to trend downwards. When I first started the idea was "Work as much as needed to get your work done." In IT, this works well. When we were busy, we would work as much as needed to complete the task, and then when things slowed down we might have only had to work 5 or 6 hours a day. Additionally, working from home was accepted. Over the past 6 months or so there has been a very strong push to ensure everyone is in the office 8-9 hours a day, regardless of workload. This can lead to sitting around on your hands or not getting your work done in a timely manner because everyone clocks out at 5 PM. Compensation in some areas is well below par for new hires. The salary for my field is roughly 25% lower than at a less successful company 2 miles down the road. GM tries to push the "benefits package" to avert your attention from this in the form of bonuses, but those are entirely company dependent and can easily fail to supplement the lack of a competitive salary. It seems they continue to attempt to lower this bonus each year as well. Credit is generally granted to the manager overseeing the work you did entirely on your own. General Motors is a very old company that tends to treat its executives significantly better than its underlings. Successes on projects and endeavours are usually seen as managerial successes and come with bonuses to the manager rather than rewarding the employee. There are plenty of internal programs set up to remedy this, none of which are utilized. Moving up in the company can take an eternity. When a position you seek opens up on your team, it's advisable to talk to your manager (or whoever is responsible) immediately about this opening you seek, but don't expect any resolution for possible years to come.

Explore other reviews about General Motors (GM)

5.0
Mar 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very Interesting Work Environment, and very complex machinery at play with employees possessing a wealth of information

Cons

Difficult to integrate yourself into the workflow. Meaningful work is often hard to take ownership of as it's high risk and siloed, or can not afford to be delayed.

2.0
Jul 16, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I was able to learn some interesting things in robotics, computer vision, etc. These jobs can be hard to come by, so it was a nice entry point. Plenty of chances to prove your worth, considering the incompetence of some of the managers and leads (but dont expect to be paid for the effort, you gotta show the effort first and you *might* get an early promotion)

Cons

Layoffs are frequent and nonsensical. Absolutely no warning that it will happen, you just wake up one day with the meeting on your calendar. Pay is OK. After being laid off late May, I found a job in a month or two that paid more (150k base -> 180k base) The things I learned were almost entirely self taught. Leads and management provided zero structure. They didnt use jira at all. They didnt write up business requirements for projects. Leads didnt create technical requirements. Milestones were vague. Everything was completely unorganized due to the inexperience of upper management and engineering leadership.

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