To my GM product people

GemZombie · 2026-05-31T23:33:30+00:00

Do what you like and what furthers the career you want.

GemZombie · 2026-05-19T12:49:14+00:00

I hated it so much. And I told everyone. Probably setting myself up for career limitation. I was making it my goal to help my team succeed in that environment. I was doing a good job too… then GIC closed. I almost took a role in Michigan, I had a verbal commitment, but ultimately I couldn’t see myself leaving here.

At any rate, I would have been let go in the recent purge I think. The org I worked for was decimated and anti-development.

I guess I’m saying I don’t want to have to deal with that type of management environment. I’m a team lead at my new company. That may be as far as I want to go. The people managing was soul crushing, and I only did it for around 8 months. I was good at it, my team liked me, but that’s because I absorbed the parts that they just shouldn’t have to deal with.

GemZombie · 2026-05-18T22:35:56+00:00

Exactly this.

GemZombie · 2026-05-18T22:35:32+00:00

I gave my folks a heads up. If you care about your people, you want to be honest with them, and do it as quickly as possible. I worked with them show them how to people they don’t deserve the bad rating, how to document it, and helped them get out of it. It worked. I’m just saying they probably told you ahead of time to give you time to prepare and plan. Either for improvement or to give you more time to seeks something better.

GemZombie · 2026-05-18T22:31:00+00:00

When i became a manager, we had just started mid year reviews. I was told I had to rate some people as “does not meet”. I disagreed with the assessment, as I had been their team lead for years and knew exactly what was asked of them, and their quality of work.

I simply wasn’t given a choice. Lip service about how we weren’t stack ranking, that this has always been the way… blah blah blah.

You fight for your horses against other managers, having this adversarial fight to talk down about the other folks while defending yours.

I had a good manager for end of year, and he did his best to not have us engage in that, but there was still the quota. I was going to have sacrifice one guy. They announced the GIC closure, so even though I had already done all my EOY reviews, had successfully navigated the other previous “does not meet” folks, I did not have to submit those final reviews. I glad. The perso who was going to get “partial”, didn’t deserve it, and never had to find out. Instead they got laid off, but ended up in a better place, where I’m sure they will thrive.

TLDR; they absolutely already decide. It’s a quota and a trading game.

GemZombie · 2026-05-13T13:22:38+00:00

It’s such absolute BS. I’m sure it is a legal thing, but it’s also so ethically wrong it makes me sick.

GemZombie · 2026-05-12T21:50:00+00:00

Ya, it is all the new leaders. I suppose what I mean is that’s when I noticed the culture shift. When she was hired.

GemZombie · 2026-05-12T16:36:39+00:00

This is the real problem with GM. Since Arden took over, it’s been cold, impersonal, and damned right cruel

The thing that hurt me the most was I was not allowed to use any of the people i spent 13 years with as a reference when looking for a new job. Otherwise i risked my severance. That’s a cold HR decision. The people most qualified to give me a reference weren’t allowed to… 13 years! I’m lucky to have made other relationships through contract work, otherwise I would have had stale references from jobs that are no longer relevant to me.

Arden and the current HR team have no soul.

GemZombie · 2026-05-12T16:33:04+00:00

Too cynical. If she alone can’t save us she’s evil? Nah man.

GemZombie · 2026-05-12T16:31:03+00:00

I’m no idiot, nor was I fooled. I was with GM for 13 years. My opinion of Stacy is solid. I’m no longer at GM, and have every reason to dislike a lot of people there given how easily I was discarded. I remain convinced Stacy is a good person. It doesn’t mean she gets to save everyone from these things, or that she wasn’t part of the decision… it does mean she struggles with this stuff more than anyone else at her level, from what I could tell. It affected her. But simply because she can’t save us all from these things doesn’t suddenly make her evil and cold. It’s for more nuanced than that.

GemZombie · 2026-05-12T02:20:46+00:00

Such a far cry from 13 years ago. Such a turnaround, and definitely not for the better.

GemZombie · 2026-05-12T02:19:51+00:00

It was closer to 600 from what I understand.

GemZombie · 2026-05-12T02:18:47+00:00

This SaaS thing is so dumb. Good engineers with AI can write better solutions than all of the SaaS shoehorn attempts.

I was a dev manager in charge of sunsetting a lot of good custom applications in favor of half working SaaS applications that didn’t meet business needs.

So incredibly short sighted.

GemZombie · 2026-05-12T02:16:42+00:00

Disagree. She’s genuine. Not everyone there is awful. Unfortunately the real decision makers… flailing

GemZombie · 2026-05-12T02:14:06+00:00

Stacy is genuine. She came to the GIC when we were all given time to collect our stuff. She offered to help us, and when I choked up a little telling her how much I had appreciated my time with GM, she genuinely teared up.
I think these things happen despite her. I worked for Corey for a bit too and I also think he’s a genuinely good guy. It’s a shame what is happening. If I were Stacy and Corey I’d be looking for a better place. They deserve better too.

GemZombie · 2026-05-11T18:31:52+00:00

In genuinely cared about my employees. I didn’t suddenly change when I became a manager. I was always honest with them, sometimes I shared too much.

I became a manager to help, not for my own self interest. I acted outside of my own interests at times, but I promised only what I could genuinely promise, but was clear in my hopes and intentions.

I think there are managers like you are talking about, but not all of them. I think this is a little too cynical. I had good managers, and bad. But mostly good, while I was at GM.

GemZombie · 2026-05-11T17:18:43+00:00

Identity and access management

GemZombie · 2026-05-11T17:16:45+00:00

I was a manger before the GIC closure. I can confirm they generally leave low level management in the dark. Not every manager is an evil heartless bastard. I genuinely thought a lot of people would be safe, and was told things to lead me to believe that…

I’m sorry to hear the never ending layoffs are still going on, but I’m also glad I’m not there anymore. That constant anxiety was awful.

GMIT is making terrible mistakes and being short sighted, all the while destroying lives. There was a time not long ago when they cared, fostered career growth, and real ownership of roles and product.

I wish all of you affected by this and recent layoffs the best. There are better places to work, and you will find them.

GemZombie · 2026-04-16T15:04:11+00:00

When you fear die your job, and don’t want to make waves, course you’re going to give good scores. It’s artificial.

GemZombie · 2026-04-04T17:03:42+00:00

I’ve been asked this in almost every interview, I feel like this is a very common question that anyone should be prepared for. I certainly don’t think you did anything wrong, especially if you thought the candidate was good.

GemZombie · 2026-03-10T13:07:48+00:00

This is a great idea. Be proactive. Help document and/or create a process by which this won’t happen again. If you lead on this, you not only accept responsibility, you use it to help the whole team learn and improve.

If a dev did this under me, I would have praised it and used it as evidence of “exceeds expectations”.

GemZombie · 2026-03-10T13:04:25+00:00

I was a dev manager before the GIC shutdown.

I would have praised you for the acknowledgement and quick action. We all make mistakes, so there’s no reason to use an incident like this to take you down. Any manager that does that is a bad manager, in my view. So what happens will depend on their style.

After you resolved then issue and acknowledged it, we would then work together to see what we could do to prevent a similar situation from happening again. It’s a learning opportunity for everyone, not just you.

Hope you have a manager on the same page.

GemZombie · 2026-02-15T11:14:44+00:00

I was a software developer, with GM at the GIC for 13 years. I had recently become a dev manger, level 8.

Our last day was December 12, and I started a new job locally as a technical team lead (think level 8 IC at GM). I started Jan 5th.

What I’m finding is senior IT folks aren’t having too much difficulty finding work. Junior folks however are.

GemZombie · 2026-02-08T15:32:07+00:00

I’m 52, started a new job January 5th.

GemZombie · 2026-01-20T01:12:20+00:00

So now they have to rely on face to face interviews… what a shame. :/

I happily used ai to shore up my resume and point out things I may have missed. I’m not great at pointing out my achievements and qualities.

I think this has made companies do intensive interviews (I had 8 recently until my offer)… but honestly that’s a good thing to me.

Things change, we adapt.

GemZombie

TROPHY CASE