General Motors Dismisses 1,000 Software And IT Employees, Including Warren, Michigan Staff

General Motors announced Monday 19 août 2024 the dismissal of 1 000 employees working in software and IT services, confirming information previously disclosed by the press.

“The automotive industry is undergoing a quiet but profound workforce transformation”

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Le Journal de l'Automobile says more than half of these layoffs concern employees at the research center in Warren in the Michigan, and the group specified that "la moitié de ces mises à pied seront aux États-Unis".

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The same report notes that in January 2023 GM said it planned to achieve more than two milliards de dollars in savings over the next two years, and that the company reduced its administrative costs by nearly 8 % in 2023 compared with the prior year.

It also says GM’s headcount fell from 167 000 to 163 000 people between end 2022 and end 2023, and that GM had already reduced Cruise’s workforce by 900 people after losing 940 others in the summer of 2023 with the closure of its Arizona IT innovation center.

CIO-online frames the move as GM slimming down its software and services development unit, with more than 600 of the positions located at its technical center in Warren, Michigan.

TechCrunch Mobility says GM laid off more than 10% of its IT department, or about 600 salaried employees, as part of a "deliberate skills swap" that GM insists is paired with hiring.

It adds that the layoffs will not be a one-to-one exchange and that there will likely be a net-negative job loss, while GM recruits IT people with AI-focused backgrounds.

Le Journal de l'Automobile

The article lists the most sought-after capabilities as AI-native development, data engineering and analytics, cloud-based engineering, agent and model development, prompt engineering, and new AI workflows.

CIO-online reports that in an email sent Monday to employees, Baris Cetinok, the group vice president in charge of software and services products, program management, and design, said GM must realign resources toward priority areas and simplify team structures by "flattening hierarchies" to avoid duplication.

CIO-online also quotes a GM spokesman telling the Detroit Free Press, "We have taken a close look at the resources and what people were working on, and we realized that we needed to make an adjustment."

Beyond GM, TechCrunch Mobility says CNBC calculated that Ford, GM, and Stellantis have cut a combined total of more than 20,000 U.S. salaried jobs, or 19% of their combined workforces, from recent employment peaks this decade.

“General Motors coupe dans les effectifs de sa branche logicielle Mauvaise surprise en plein milieu de l'été”

Le Journal de l'Automobile

It links those cuts to technological changes, including AI, and says companies are leaning heavily into AI while anecdotes from some engineers and founders suggest not all of these businesses know quite what they’re doing with it yet.

TechCrunch Mobility points to Samsara as an example of a revenue-generating AI use case, saying the company trained its own model to detect potholes and determine how quickly they are deteriorating.

CIO-online adds that Sandeep Mukunda, Research Director at IDC, says GM’s decision reflects changes in the electric-vehicle market and that it is "very difficult to compete with low-priced electric-vehicle manufacturers" when GM standardized its electric vehicles on a SUV platform.

CIO-online also quotes Mukunda saying Tesla and Asian manufacturers such as BYD are far more advanced in vertical integration and the maturity of their software platforms, giving them a price advantage, and it notes the article’s discussion of a projected recession in 2025 and the looming threat of changes to subsidies, financing, and federal policies related to electric vehicles.