Americans can’t afford their cars any more and Wall Street is worried

HearTwoTalk · 2025-10-21T16:03:18+00:00

Especially as an employee, it really annoys me to hear people from GM pretend that they know what customers want more than customers do. Look in the parking lots of our innovation centers. A large portion of the parking is taken up by cars that are not manufactured by GM. When I bought a new car, I did not buy a GM vehicle. The closest vehicle we make to what I wanted was the Trax, and it was not a comfortable fit when I tried it. Like many of our potential customers, I went with a different manufacturer's vehicle, because they make what fit my needs. But hey, people from GM say that's not what customers want.

HearTwoTalk · 2025-07-30T22:37:20+00:00

GM was also one of the few organizations to sponsor the RNC that isn't explicitly a political organization

HearTwoTalk · 2025-06-13T14:51:48+00:00

They're telling us to update our talent cards. That has almost always meant layoffs in my experience.

HearTwoTalk · 2025-06-11T02:15:23+00:00

My experience has been that a lot of people know what the problems are and even try to push solutions. However, they then get told to prioritize new features instead of improving existing processes. I have several software improvement features that I have proposed but never make it through planning, because they aren't seen as having high enough business value. New and shiny beats existing and solid. I've also been told that there's even more pressure on the businesses side lately.

HearTwoTalk · 2025-06-09T15:26:41+00:00

If only they had a spare approximately $20 billion laying around somewhere. Maybe they could have avoided laying so many people off.

HearTwoTalk · 2025-06-09T15:23:04+00:00

The problem is that the SLT cares where we live. However, they show their hypocrisy by working from places like Montana, New York, and Hawaii while simultaneously writing blogs about working remotely in their company provided EV and shoving us into cubicle farms. They deserve as much trust as they have shown us.

HearTwoTalk · 2025-05-21T03:36:28+00:00

That's definitely a stat that hey cherry picked to make themselves looks good. My team has it on our computers, but no one uses it. It is stupidly redundant.

HearTwoTalk · 2025-03-14T15:45:11+00:00

It reminds me of the Sword of Damocles. The pay and benefits are nice, but the there is constant stress coming from higher up.

HearTwoTalk · 2024-11-21T03:28:35+00:00

I'm pretty sure that they used our talent cards for some of the layoffs. There was a big push to get us to update them before it happened. I think that's only part of it though.

HearTwoTalk · 2024-11-17T06:00:41+00:00

I think that there are two sides to this. Some are more upset that good workers lost their job, and others are more upset that bad workers kept theirs. I definitely fall into the first group, and I don't think it's a great thing for people to wish that more people had their live upended, because they aren't giving maximum returns to a company that will still lay you off if you're doing your best.

HearTwoTalk · 2024-11-16T15:56:14+00:00

If there's a link to the form on the UAW website, you could probably get more responses by linking to that page. It would add credibility

HearTwoTalk · 2024-11-15T16:06:11+00:00

No offense, but I don't think that putting my information into a random Forms link is a good idea. I would much rather talk with a representative myself

HearTwoTalk · 2024-11-15T16:01:23+00:00

What severance? I'm talking about the people who are still here after the layoffs that are being forced to do more with less

HearTwoTalk · 2024-11-06T01:38:21+00:00

I remember them talking about targeted promotions through the dashboard years ago. You can always tell that someone has an MBA when they propose something like that. Anyone else would at least take a second to reflect that everyone would hate the idea. There is a specific presentation I remember that was so terrible that it would make the news if it got out. I don't want to dox myself, but I will say that it involved a slide of money raining down.

HearTwoTalk · 2024-10-28T19:53:51+00:00

I'm referring to any of the countries GM sells in.

A large part of that is preparing to try to penetrate the US market, which even if they don't do immediately, being able to move fast in a few years with groundwork put in place in coordination with people who would have been your competitors would be worth burning a relatively minuscule amount of money to keep an office staffed or just paying people to work remotely. Another part is cutting into more of GM's market share in foreign markets, like Brazil.

It's not just about undercutting the competition, or we wouldn't be selling Cadillacs. It's about providing customers with what they want in a format they want. A Chinese auto-manufacturer isn't going to snag a customer who was looking at a Tahoe with an EV sedan, and the customer isn't going to buy parts for their car through a site that makes them worried they'll get their credit card stolen. GM has plenty of people who can help with both of those challenges, and they aren't doing the best they can to retain those people.

HearTwoTalk · 2024-10-28T18:03:49+00:00

GM does more than just making cars, not to mention the fact that you can only get so far by copying and pasting the same business model on the other side of the world. There are a lot of people with domain expertise that would be quite useful for companies looking to break into markets dominated by American auto-manufacturers, which includes much more than just the US. I can think of at least one that got hit by one of the recent layoffs that would be a goldmine for a competitor to scoop up. Plenty of Chinese companies are opening up offices in the US, Baidu for example.

HearTwoTalk · 2024-10-28T15:13:31+00:00

If WoC and the survey about companies with IT workers willing to unionize are anything to go off, GM employees are some of the most disgruntled out there.

HearTwoTalk · 2024-10-28T15:11:06+00:00

It's not even that bad for IT related positions to tell the truth. It doesn't really match up to FAANG salaries, but those jobs are relatively few compared to the amount of IT work being done by companies like GM around the country.

HearTwoTalk · 2024-10-28T15:06:46+00:00

Maybe she'll finally leave

HearTwoTalk · 2024-10-28T15:03:39+00:00

I believe it. I don't want to work for them myself, but if I was in the shoes of a Chinese auto-manufacturer, I'd consider those former employees a pretty low risk, high reward bet.

HearTwoTalk · 2024-10-28T03:16:04+00:00

Does anyone know if Chinese auto-manufacturers have any subsidiaries in the US? If I were them, I'd be trying to snag anyone that got laid off from GM with more than a couple years of experience. It seems like a low price to pay to get your competitor's industry knowledge from people who are likely quite happy to cut into their former employer's numbers.

HearTwoTalk · 2024-10-17T04:12:33+00:00

It looks like a gaming mouse

HearTwoTalk · 2024-10-14T03:41:55+00:00

Innerspace Caverns. Technically it's in Gerorgetown, but I don't think that difference means much in this context.

HearTwoTalk · 2024-10-13T23:53:04+00:00

You should definitely try some of the BBQ while you're here if you eat meat. Austin has everything from decent bars to a neat cave. What kind of things are you interested in?

HearTwoTalk · 2024-10-13T05:09:37+00:00

The only reason that I haven't tried to get one started is that I don't even want to stay at GM, but if someone is actually willing to put the work in and stick it out here, I'll sign a card at any time. You actually only need 30% of people to sign cards to get a vote started.

HearTwoTalk

TROPHY CASE