General Motors

The people at General Motors are generally great to work with. There's a strong push to hire lots of college graduates, which can make the environment fun and filled with new ideas.

The work/life balance is generally OK at General Motors. I don't find myself having to work too excessively most of the time, but it could be better.

Some of the compensation is good. Vacation is lengthy even for those fresh out of school, 401k matching is excellent, and healthcare is about on par with other companies. Additionally, GM employees get discounts on new GM products.

Great place to work if you are well established or at the end of your career.

Unfortunately, many of the pros listed are also cons in their own way.

Because the working environment is often very young, you're left with many inexperienced, college-level employees, and the rest tend to be older managers far removed from the work they oversee. There seems to be a large gap in the middle, somewhere to turn to for advice or guidance with the everyday work.

Recently, the work/life balance has started to trend downwards. When I first started, the idea was "Work as much as needed to get your work done." In IT, this works well. When we were busy, we would work as much as needed to complete the task, and then when things slowed down, we might have only had to work 5 or 6 hours a day. Additionally, working from home was accepted. Over the past 6 months or so, there has been a very strong push to ensure everyone is in the office 8-9 hours a day, regardless of workload. This can lead to sitting around on your hands or not getting your work done in a timely manner because everyone clocks out at 5 PM.

Compensation in some areas is well below par for new hires. The salary for my field is roughly 25% lower than at a less successful company 2 miles down the road. GM tries to push the "benefits package" to avert your attention from this in the form of bonuses, but those are entirely company-dependent and can easily fail to supplement the lack of a competitive salary. It seems they continue to attempt to lower this bonus each year as well.

Credit is generally granted to the manager overseeing the work you did entirely on your own. General Motors is a very old company that tends to treat its executives significantly better than its underlings. Successes on projects and endeavors are usually seen as managerial successes and come with bonuses to the manager rather than rewarding the employee. There are plenty of internal programs set up to remedy this, none of which are utilized.

Moving up in the company can take an eternity. When a position you seek opens up on your team, it's advisable to talk to your manager (or whoever is responsible) immediately about this opening you seek, but don't expect any resolution for possible years to come.

Treat your non-executives, the ones saving General Motors from your old business habits, better.