General Motors

Reviewer disclaimer: Experienced engineer that has worked for multiple tech companies in multiple industries.

• Decent co-workers in ADAS, not particularly passionate/knowledgeable about work, but tolerable.
• Avg. benefits for mid-west auto: 8% match after 3 yrs, $1500 annual HSA, 9-10% annual bonus, $8k tuition assistance with no pay-back clause, free EV charging, 3 weeks vacation (one week required to take during the 4th) + 1 week Christmas break.
• Easy work and decent work-life balance for new grads, people with young children or elderly parents, people with low-energy careers, or those going back to school part-time.
• Maybe you can network with Cruise and get a job there?
• Getting to hear the Super Cruise team bash Tesla Autopilot after selling 3 CT6s to a demographic that doesn't even use it, while creating very similar-sounding features several years later (so, like, what's a neural net?).
• If you sell your house and move your family across the country and get let go only months later, do you get to keep the relo and corp phone?
• The blue layoff bags can double as reusable grocery bags, lol.
• The Kool-Aid given to the Berkeley new grads is that owning a house is actually achievable (prime irony right now).

Hooboy, where to begin. Automated driving along with almost every other department was gutted via massive layoffs at the beginning of the year. This practically decimated an already sterile and lukewarm work culture. I joined GM for a slight pay bump and an additional week of vacation, ignoring several ex-GMers' warnings...and highly regret that decision.

• Software work is so siloed; few really know how features work completely.
• Pretty old-school software tools and methodologies.
• Code is "interesting", a lot of redundant, messy logic with limited documentation or commenting.
• Very hands-off/cubicle environment...opposite of a fast Tesla-like build/flash/test environment. Very few have even flashed a module or taken an in-vehicle data trace.
• Future AD features may or may not be developed in a different country.
• Sketchy, borderline age discrimination, where only younger employees were called back for their same jobs after layoffs.
• Milford is pretty out there, and the winter commute is even worse. Think twice before you buy a house out there in the current auto market - most other employer commutes are on the high-traffic side of 96 (for future layoffs).
• A weird lack of fundamental automotive knowledge in the department.

TL;DR: If you want a challenging, real AV developer job, I'd recommend the companies on the west coast or PA...and if you're constrained to SE MI, check out the Tier I's.

FYI, GM is in damage control - be very critical of any reviews since Jan 2019 (massive layoffs company-wide).

Be very grateful the highly non-technical EGM layer exists. At many flatter orgs, this would be the first to go.