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GM just laid off IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills

techcrunch.com

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Re: GM just laid off IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills

#41

Post by pixl97 »

WarmWash wrote: post #29

Probably should just replace their software engineers too. I don't mean to throw shade, but automotive software is so bad I'd bet my life that Claude could do better. Nevermind that the update cycle seems to be 6-10 months for changes like "You can now reset your radio presets directly from the radio settings menu", while bugs like temperature control resetting to max cool every start-up never get fixed.

US car software, ya, I've never seen such trash in my life. This said I don't really have any complaints about my Hyundai software. It works, doesn't crash, and does what I want it too.

Re: GM just laid off IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills

#42

Post by afgrant »

cosmotic wrote: post #3

They couldn't be bothered to train their staff?

I haven’t heard of a single software job in the last decade that offers anything resembling “training”. You sink or swim based on your previous knowledge, what you can glean from the codebase and coworkers, and how skilled you are at self-teaching.

Re: GM just laid off IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills

#43

Post by scorpioxy »

johanneskanybal wrote: post #22
scorpioxy wrote: post #4

> agent development, model engineering, AI-native workflows -- point directly at where large-enterprise demand is heading. I don't understand these words. Does "AI-native workflow" mean vibe coding? I am now seeing a lot of roles asking for "AI-enabled engineers". And I am not sure what that means either. I am sort of afraid to ask because the answer will probably confuse me even more. Maybe it's my understanding of…

I mean agentic coding is a thing but anyone could learn that in a day or week. So the idea of throwing away people that could be the most productive with ai of course make no sense. But it's big corporations, not everything has to make sense. It's most likely a dressed up pure cost saving framed in 2026-lingo.

I was going to say that sounds like short term gain for long term pain. But I'm guessing if there are any issues in the future, the government would just bail them out.

Re: GM just laid off IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills

#44

Post by pixl97 »

AngryData wrote: post #32
cosmotic wrote: post #3

They couldn't be bothered to train their staff?

Their tech positions were really the only common path to get continued raises and promotions starting from the bottom in GM for the past few decades. Most other positions only ever got hired from outside the company because internal hires expected raises for it, so to me this just looks like gm putting their tech department under the same self destructive hiring policies as the rest of the company.

It really is time for them to die as a company.

Re: GM just laid off IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills

#45

Post by kami23 »

WarmWash wrote: post #29

Probably should just replace their software engineers too. I don't mean to throw shade, but automotive software is so bad I'd bet my life that Claude could do better. Nevermind that the update cycle seems to be 6-10 months for changes like "You can now reset your radio presets directly from the radio settings menu", while bugs like temperature control resetting to max cool every start-up never get fixed.

I kept reading about how bad Android Auto was for years but we finally bought a more modern used car and I can't believe they would ship that experience to customers. I had a week where I just had to unpair and re-pair Everytime I got in the car.

I would love to read about why that stuff is the way it is from the engineers, hmm that might be a good spelunking. I really must be missing something that makes it harder than I think it really should be.

Re: GM just laid off IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills

#46

Post by scorpioxy »

AIorNot wrote: post #9
scorpioxy wrote: post #4

> agent development, model engineering, AI-native workflows -- point directly at where large-enterprise demand is heading. I don't understand these words. Does "AI-native workflow" mean vibe coding? I am now seeing a lot of roles asking for "AI-enabled engineers". And I am not sure what that means either. I am sort of afraid to ask because the answer will probably confuse me even more. Maybe it's my understanding of…

Yup thats exactly what they want Cheaper younger people who dont think vibe coding is bad Is this a good idea - probably not

Vibe coded self driving cars sounds very interesting.

Re: GM just laid off IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills

#47

Post by pixl97 »

asdfman123 wrote: post #20
jagged-chisel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They hire anew to lower salaries, while also gaining staff with "stronger AI skills."

Then they hire people with even higher salaries than the original devs to clean up the God awful mess.

That's the neat part, they don't. Maybe they'll contract some group at some point, maybe not. Then later they'll ask the .gov for a big Ole bailout.

Re: GM just laid off IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills

#48

Post by legostormtroopr »

anonym29 wrote: post #31
thot_experiment wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not, but it seems insane to let the AI write the tests. AI can't be held accountable, it shouldn't be writing the tests that determine whether car systems function correctly.

>AI can't be held accountable I hear this all the time. Why does it matter? Punishing a human for making a mistake does not prevent mistakes, nor does it undo the harm of the mistake. A human saying "my bad, I messed up" and an AI saying "my bad, I messed up" are equally worthless, in a functional sense.

If a human messes up enough eventually they well get fired, fined or jailed. An AI will not.

A human also knows they might get punished if it messes up bad enough, which might cause it to think twice before doing something bad. For an AI there is a reward, but there is no risk.

So while both might lie, only the human will be worried that it will be found out. That makes a difference.

Re: GM just laid off IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills

#49

Post by pixl97 »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #37
skywhopper wrote: post #2

This will never stop being the stupid approach. Destroy morale, lose institutional knowledge, waste months or years getting new folks up to speed, all for skills that could be developed in house and with targeted hiring by a functioning organization.

This is only stupid if you value quality of outcome. If your sole metric is make stock price go up long enough to cash out this shit is brilliant.

Ya, we burned the planet to the ground, but for a few short moments we created a lot of shareholder value.

Re: GM just laid off IT workers to hire those with stronger AI skills

#50

Post by derbOac »

scorpioxy wrote: post #4

> agent development, model engineering, AI-native workflows -- point directly at where large-enterprise demand is heading. I don't understand these words. Does "AI-native workflow" mean vibe coding? I am now seeing a lot of roles asking for "AI-enabled engineers". And I am not sure what that means either. I am sort of afraid to ask because the answer will probably confuse me even more. Maybe it's my understanding of…

FWIW, I interpreted the article as saying they're not looking for vibe coding, but AI model development per se:

"...In practical terms, GM is looking for people who know how to build with AI from the ground up — designing the systems, training the models, and engineering the pipelines — not just use AI as a productivity tool."

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