General Motors Reviews

Pros

Large company with many opportunities to move to different areas of the business. Over my 10 year career, I had 5 different jobs in different functions like manufacturing, logistics, supply chain, and procurement.

Cons

You have to take ownership of your own career. The company is so large that if you want to move your career up, you have to take initiative.

Pros

Great people and facilities.
Program management is very knowledgeable

Cons

Senior management can make some devastating poor decisions that have major consequences
Government Motors tag is hard to shake

Advice to Senior Management

Hold senior management accoountable for poor product decisions.

Pros

Possible career advancement if in the correct department or job field, and management is willing to listen to suggestions to improve your job function or product.

Cons

Very easy to be overlooked in a department due to the size of the company, and still a lot of hesitation in regards to advancement in technology.

Pros

compensation is pretty good compared with aerospace

Cons

management is terrible there unfortunately, especailly at group level.

Advice to Senior Management

pay attention to people's career growth, an dbe more open minded with technology development.

Pros

It is a global automotive manufacturer which provides great exposure to different technical and business requirements for different regions along with in-depth knowledge of the technical aspects.

Cons

Because of size of the company, knowledge sharing and acceptance of new technology into the mainstream is relatively slow paced.

Pros

Good work life balance if raising a family

Cons

Still too much hierachy and politics

Advice to Senior Management

Take advice from Workplace of Choice employee feedback

Pros

challenge experience
leadership development programs

Cons

less training
teamwork is not supported

Advice to Senior Management

please concentrate on training

Pros

Great opportunities in a dynamic industry, they have a strong focus on what needs to be done and are now free from a lot of the weight of other non-productive liabilities

Cons

It is still a very silo'ed atmosphere and there are still a lot of people at the functional level that are a bit too old fashioned

Pros

Decent work life balance
People not at the executive level work hard

Cons

They just got slammed in employee satisfaction survey for very poor growth and promotional opportunities
Employees are classified by a military style mid 1900's leveling system
Employees ready to be promoted cannot be unless one of the old guard dies or retires
GM would rather fill a vacant opportunity will a less qualified executive rather than promote the best person for the job because of quotas
Since bankruptcy he new executives are starting to behave like the older ones
Managers could do executive jobs but executives are out of touch and couldn't do the managers or workers jobs
In order to get promoted you need to be a friend or relative of an executive
Management of people by quotas rather than ROI
GM employees thousands of very highly paid contract workers that have all been with he company for decades. They do this to get around head count quotas regardless of the cost

Advice to Senior Management

More people need to be hired at junior level to create bench strength and allow movement of loyal knowledgable workers into executive positions. Eliminate classifying people as numbers, fire the vast majority of executives and allow a new culture of executives who know and love the company to move up. Don't just analyze the employee survey, act on it. We are not moving fast enough!

Pros

If you're an engineer, I imagine it would be great. They are also very gracious with holidays and vacation. Finally, I found the employee discounts on products to be nice.

Cons

If you're in design or research, you'll be continually battling for acceptance of your ideas. It's a "no" organization to the nth degree.

Advice to Senior Management

The middle layer needs to go to bat for their employees more. Stop acting as if you have tenure, and re-discover that passion you had when you first started at the company.