General Motors Reviews in Detroit, MI Area

Pros

Good salary with real learning experience at the job if you want to learn

Cons

Hard to move around from job to job and move forward. Very political and beuracratic.

Advice to Senior Management

Respect the people who work for you and need to make decisions on fairness rather than political reasons.

Pros

Incredible resources and benefits. A group of very talented and smart people. Consistent push to be "the best" at what they do.

Cons

As a global company, there is no "close of business". Work life balance looks great on a HR presentation but does not seem to exist in real world expectations. Expect to be "always" working.

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

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

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

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.

Pros

A lot of interesting work with Hybrid vehicles.
Updating the software process with latest tools for software engineers are in the works.

Cons

Present software process is burdensome.
More training would help new employees on present process.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on new software tools and training for employees.

Pros

Learn a lot
well paid
I had a great assignment, some people didnt have much to do (other interns)
got to drive a lot of fun cars

Cons

No Full-time offer
no more cons

Pros

Constant updating so also improving employees skills and knowledge. Progressive. Many functional areas to work. Good pay.

Cons

High pay expects intense work and hours, but worth it.

Advice to Senior Management

Although our employees will find a way to get it done, some requests are time intensive and could be avoided from a time cost/benefit perspective. Nice to have information could sometimes be avoided.