General Motors Reviews in Detroit, MI Area

Pros

Good opportunity to see a large company function and get along in a highly competitive environment. Can learn the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to a large automotive company facing a future of cut throat competition for market share.

Cons

Lack of job security and a very limited culture that hinders one's ability to get approval to get things done. Need to change culture to survive--a long term goal not easily attainable.

Advice to Senior Management

Find your own best vision and culture rather than following the vision and culture of Asian auto companies. Lead, and don't follow because if you follow you must be number 2 or lower....

Pros

Good product variety however, due to economy, its is extremely stressful. We went through bankruptcy and several stressful periods.

Cons

Cons include longs hours, mediocore salary, little room for advancement. Old boys club environment. Continual layoffs increase office stress. Litle diversity

Advice to Senior Management

Increase the amount of challenging work to be done.. Increase product design and variety. Invigorate environment. Keep hope alive for a better GM.

Pros

Being one of the largest companies in the world, GM has the resources to make any size project work properly. There are many layers of "check & balance" in place to validate new processes successful.

Cons

Being one of the largest companies in the world, many things get delayed due to communication issues and procedures that are not clearly defined. With all of the downsizing and lateral moves still going on, large amounts of undocumented knowlege is being lost.

Advice to Senior Management

Many of the systems in place to document projects, processes and production are collecting the right stuff, but not very many people at the plant level understand the tools available to them. My suggestion is to streamline the tools necessary to perform the job, then train everyone over and over on how to use those tools and how to use the data the posess.

Pros

Great products, challenging environment, interesting, always something new to learn, very supportive of family events, good feed back loop, established

Cons

Since General Motors is a multinational corporation, work schedules can be varied from very early meetings to very late meetings

Advice to Senior Management

Stay on track with the turn around plan. General Motors historically is an outstanding company and the company can make a come back!

Pros

Manager was helpful and involved. Everyone around the group was excited about work and interested in projects and new people.

Cons

Company as a whole is not building leaders, but rather good engineers. Leadership from high up often makes poor decisions or misinformed decisions.

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership needs to be making decisions based on information from customers and create an overall synergy between goals and the people performing the work to meet them. Requirements should inspire innovations and improvements and not propose unrealistic goals in some categories, while moving projects in a direction that does align with the goal of that particular technology. Management needs to take high risk, high reward projects on.

Pros

Competitive pay, a lot of vacation, ability to purchase vacation days, generally good work life balance depending on the group you work in

Cons

The culture is pretty rigid and bureaucratic
The opportunities for advancement and few and far between
Some groups are required to work very long hours (few groups)

Advice to Senior Management

Work to change the culture
Create opportunities for advancement
Cycle people through positions more often
Get rid of the frozen middle management

Pros

Large amount of positions worldwide. Latest technology for automotive engineering is available to you. Great benefits. Flexible when time off is needed.

Cons

Large amount of employees creates too much redundancy in decision making processes. Little to no feedback on career paths or advancement. Large amount of salary disparity between engineers doing the same job with the same responsibilities.

Advice to Senior Management

More emphasis should be placed on career planning and mentoring. This aspect is completely absent from the yearly review process.

Pros

If you're willing to put in the time and effort and learn from many experienced colleagues, GM can be a great place to work. The automotive industry is brutal. Be ready to be challenged with high expectations and expected results. But, having been a lead engineer on Camaro, I can attest to the satisfaction of being a part of creating a mangnificent, emotional product.

Cons

The bankruptcy has been demoralizing, but, GM is coming back. Expect long hours and sometimes inconvenient travel.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on stablity

Pros

Great employee relationships, good time off and benifits, Good 401K and stock options (even though the BK wiped out my common stock shares). Overall I like working here

Cons

The government taking over the company and management has really shaken things up and made things a lot more shakey. People dont buy american enough so Toyota and foreign automakers offer better pay and benifits.

Advice to Senior Management

Good job treating employees fairly and providing bonuses and EVP money for hard working employees, Time off at the Holidays is a great reason I keep working here.

Pros

Interesting job with an oportunity to work with a lot of experienced people. Get to work on interesting products that will have an impact in the market place.

Cons

Few opportunities for promotion due to a shrinking organization. This migh improve over time as there are a lot of manager with many years that are close tio retirement.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire more management from outside the company to get more fresh ideas.