GM announced this week that it is cutting 180 jobs in software validation and project management as part of “streamlining our processes and aligning resources toward innovation,” according to a statement from the automaker.
GM added that the move “impacts a small portion of our team in the short term,” but will help enable faster development of new software to customers by reconfiguring the teams working on it, per Automotive News.Â
Most of the affected jobs are located at GM’s Global Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, and will be officially terminated at the end of November. Some of the employees can apply to be moved to positions elsewhere in the company, while the remainder will be let go and given a severance package.
GM noted that the latest cuts are not considered part of its “Winning with Simplicity” strategy, which earlier led to 200 engineering jobs being dropped from the payroll. The strategy aims to eliminate approximately 50 percent of The General’s vehicle trim levels, leading to a product lineup with “fewer part numbers to simplify marketing, engineering, manufacturing, while maintaining the best features customers want.”
Earlier this year, GM set its sights on reducing its expenses no by its original target of $2 billion but by $3 billion instead. This March, the automaker offered a VSP or voluntary separation program encouraging executives with two years of service or more and salaried employees with five years or longer work experience to leave the company in exchange for bonuses based on their pay.
GM paid out roughly $1 billion in severance when 5,000 white-collar workers opted to exit the company by accepting the VSP buyout. Trimming the payroll aligns with the goal to “reduce design and engineering expense, supplier costs, order complexity, buildable combinations and manufacturing complexity” outlined by CEO Mary Barra during a recent earnings conference call.
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Comments
So GM will be releasing software that will not be tested ny professionals? Boeing did that and 737s began to crash.
I was thinking the same thing. Is this the cause of the Lyriq issues mostly software updates or the fix to it. Time will tell.
The trend over the past 20 years has been the move to continuous integration, continuous delivery and agile software development over the legacy waterfall project management and throwing half working code over to manual testers. I speculate they are getting on board finally. GM Financial started this mid last decade but it takes a long time to change culture. In any org, there are people who are unwilling or unable to transform or to keep up with the current skills-sets needed. Automated testing and incremental releases are far easier to manage than huge “big bang” software projects.
Even waterfall was broken down to smaller pieces to facilitate quicker turn around. The question is are these agile people just slapping things together and we will be the testers. Hopefully thats not what were seeing in the Lyriq issues.
GM’s customers will be the testers. And GM’s remaining, understaffed software teams will be so overloaded with bug reports that turn around time for fixes will be non-existent, leaving GM’s customers with bugged and/or bricked infotainment systems, and *cough* dead batteries.
Nice spin Tom. Baloney. You sound like a great yes girl.
Most likely had to add headcount to the social equity department.
Race to the bottom. Don’t let the GM fan boys and groupies spin it. It’s a brain drain. This is not the first time.
Of course, Mary the great will not lose a dime.
She can still chum around with her rich lib friends. All is well with Mary. Not so good if you lose your job or your vehicle has one of the many GM software problems. Maybe this can pay for some of the ota battery drain claims.
everything tom said was correct. agile is faster and delivers a better product if done correctly. Now can GM actually implement Agile Development is another question. It is not easy as leadership needs to give up control to the agile teams they have empowered to achieve the goals.
The simplicity will next. Ecemployed on the production plants where they will need fewer assembly jobs.
Idiots. Complete idiots. Technology drives your car sales, GM! You should be investing in those employees through better training. Or maybe that’s what you’re doing for those remaining. You can’t even get the infotainment system in the Colorado working properly. Great job ruining a great truck. At least we have batteries.