Why GM Hired 8,000 Programmers

8,000 programmers for selling cars online? That sounds ridiculous. I also thought that dealers affiliated with GM lobbied to ban direct sales of cars.

l-jenkins• 11 years ago

Looks like the sale ultimately goes through the dealership.

mattdclemens• 11 years ago

I suspect that number is sum of all their IT support staff, e.g. QA, admins, etc. I would wager the core development was done with at most 5% of that.

therobot24• 11 years ago

the real answer here

johnward• 11 years ago

I think that is for all internal software and support not just the consumer web part. Still seem high but they are a big company.

rational-future2• 11 years ago

Not at all ridiculous. The company I consult with currently has 5K programmers, another 10K information technology staff and 48K sales people in branches. Their site moves more product and brings more profit than the branch network. Actually the sales staff interaction with customer is 99% scripted. Those humans are just another interface, that is not much different from the Web.

snowwrestler• 11 years ago

It sounds like the ban on direct-to-consumer sales is in part why they need so many developers.

They'd have one group of programmers developing the core products, but then another (maybe much larger) group of programmers who are the tech assets on teams standing up partnerships with dealers. Since most dealers are independent businesses, there's probably a wide diversity of software stacks and levels of tech competence.

marincounty• 11 years ago

I don't think upper management knows much about computers, or programming? I sometimes wonder just why they are putting so many computers and sensors in their automobiles? I understand they need they to get their autos past emmission standards, but it's gotten rediculous? When something goes wrong with these autos you can't just plug in and find the fault. It's an art to repair, and all too frequently, the mechanic just replaces a bunch of good sensors--praying he found the lazy one; even at the dealership.(Ask a dealership mechanic--it's a running joke.)

Personally, I wouldn't buy a new automobile until everyone has open access to these propriatiary automotive computer systems? I think that date is around 2018? If interested read this blog:

https://ifixit.org/blog/6305/you-gotta-fight-for-your-right-...

But then again, maybe no one cares? I know Saturn engineers tried to make a repair friendly car(you could get to failed components, but no one seemed to care?) This was before the Internet though? Times must have changed?

segmondy• 11 years ago

It's more than selling cars, I know folks that got hired who are working on their mobile apps or car entertainment system, etc. And selling cars is what they do, how many programmers does google have so they can sell ads online?

csours5• 11 years ago

We also make cars, so there's that.

bio4m• 11 years ago

8000 seems like an awfully high number for whats effectively an e-commerce website. Be nice to know some more details of whats happening behind the scenes.

online_reader_• 11 years ago

I agree it does seem high for what is described in the article, but it's a bit more than just your run of the mill ecommerce site.

csours5• 11 years ago

8k across all of the IT orgs. This project was highly visible to the consumer, which is probably why the author picked it to write about.

A lot of the other stuff is not sexy at all, like data center consolidations.

free2rhyme2142• 11 years ago

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

Non pay wall link.

vmarsy• 11 years ago

For some reason even that link doesn't work, I have to manually google "Why GM Hired 8,000 Programmers" and then it's fine

https://www.google.com/search?q=Why+GM+Hired+8%2C000+Program...

free2rhyme2142• 11 years ago

As mentioned by many others, please copy and paste the link into google. The first link that appears will work.

It would be helpful whoever posts to HN to not use paywalled links so this discussion isn't brought up every time.

Retr0spectrum• 11 years ago

Does this link work for anyone else?

http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&...

mathattack2• 11 years ago

You can always just search for the title in Google to get ungated WSJ articles.

Rexxar• 11 years ago

Or change automatically the referrer to "http://www.google.com" for wsj.com with your favourite extension (I personally use "RefControl" for firefox).

zedpm3• 11 years ago

I love to hear about companies insourcing development. There are still myriad ways that a project can fall to pieces, but paying for internal developers is a step in the right direction.

damm• 11 years ago

I wish HN detected Paywall links and would reject them. Sifting through comments to find a link that works is :(

coralreef• 11 years ago

One trick is to paste the url into google

eyeareque• 11 years ago

Paywalled links should be banned

wyclif3• 11 years ago

OP here. Unfortunately, it's not that simple: you can't post a redirected link and expect the story to make the front page.

thorntonbf2• 11 years ago

It strikes me as terribly inefficient to house the software on dealerships' servers - not to mention a change management nightmare given the different competency levels amongst dealer IT personnel.

I'm also curious about the size and scale of all of this. 8,000 developers/engineers isn't that many when you measure that cost against a $3B/year HP deal. But, it seems like it's way more than it needs to be. And, the costs associated with this bloat is going to be absorbed by consumers.

wvenable2• 11 years ago

What's the story with GM creating dealer protection laws? Don't those laws exist to protect dealers from the manufacturers.

thorntonbf2• 11 years ago

You're correct. Edited above. Made a mental association equating NADA with the manufacturers and that's inaccurate.

deeviant• 11 years ago

That's how they started(and with a heavy lobbying effort from dealers), but it's lately been used to attack Tesla's business model, which does not use in independent dealers.

pavel_lishin• 11 years ago

It sounds like it's done for legal and financial reasons, rather than technological ones.

jrochkind1• 11 years ago

Googling suggests that _Google_ employs approximately 18K software engineers, best as anyone can tell. And Microsoft maybe 40-60K. Amazon probably under 10K. (All of this is pretty much guesses and estimates, I googled around to see what people thought).

Hm.

rational-future2• 11 years ago

At a local AWS group meeting an Amazon IT guy mentioned in presentation they support around 15 000 internal software development machines in the cloud. Also surprisingly all their dev machines have a commercial Lisp IDE licensed and installed.

jimbokun• 11 years ago

"Also surprisingly all their dev machines have a commercial Lisp IDE licensed and installed."

That is surprising. Was anything said about what they do with it?

walshemj2• 11 years ago

That many :-) when I worked for BT the systems engineering division alone had over 50k that is not counting all the developers in other divisions Celnet, Syntegra plus contracted out staff at GCHQ

SE is/was the part of the company that is the heir to Tommy Flowers

mattzito• 11 years ago

Google's most recent quarterly report has the following info:

" As of December 31, 2014, we had 53,600 full-time employees: 20,832 in research and development, 17,621 in sales and marketing, 7,510 in general and administrative functions, and 7,637 in operations. "

So generally in line with what you said.

beachstartup• 11 years ago

i'm not sure... google is certainly a company i would expect to have any number of software engineers in all of those departments, and also plenty of non-software people (biologists, economists, psychologists etc.) in core R&D.

_wp3r• 11 years ago

GE and GM have really warped the developer employement market in Atlanta. GE snapped up a crazy amount(thousands reportedly) of devs for their new integrated dev shop. This drove salaries up across the board.

dorolow• 11 years ago

I'd really like to know more about this if you can offer any detail. Do you know about how many devs GE and GM have picked up in Atlanta?

shostack• 11 years ago

I'd say that's a good thing. Companies outside of the Bay Area are realizing the value of technical talent.

walshemj2• 11 years ago

That's how supply and demand works in a capitalist society

maverick22• 11 years ago

I am an h1b working in US from past 3 years.Worked in India for 3 as well. I've always felt that all big companies should be doing their own IT. The only agenda outsourcing companies have is to increase the headcount.

Technically, 95% people working in them are so challenged. I've seen Java programmers who don;t know that Android is a Google owned OS and the apps are written in Java, even when they use Android phones themselves. Culturally, 80% folks do not make an attempt to learn american way of life. They are high on nepotism.

The only basic diff is that they know basics of SDLC and some knowledge of coding. They are otherwise not technically inclined.

I feel more companies should be having homegrown IT. IT is not going to be a commodity any time soon, better tech will give an edge for some time to come. It will also improve the overall culture of companies in automobile, bank or other markets.

pm90• 11 years ago

I agree on principle. But I think that the future of IT will not be another IT department, but maybe a team of <5 DevOps engineers and IT architects who will are proficient in using cloud automation tools.

mattbrewsbytes• 11 years ago

We often joke that with the turnover rate we are essentially a University for people offshore to learn from when they are doing IT. It takes so much hand-holding and rote instruction to get things done, once they learn and are proficient they want to move up.

Generally speaking, are the vast majority of folks offshore just doing their time before moving up? I sense this is culturally what people want to do - you know move into ever increasing status job titles. Trying to find senior technical people that want to continue that is hard.

maverick22• 11 years ago

Yep all off-shore people want is an opportunity at on-site. Not to learn new tech or experience a different culture or have better management skills. But to earn some $$$. There are some good companies that do really quality work at off-shore(mostly India) - like ThoughtWorks, Nagaro etc.

Since I am one of those off-shore guys who's now at on-site. But not one day has been like when I feel I am in software business, its human resources business.

Also, I find American managers much better than Indians(I am Indian myself .. just speaking out honestly). Americans rewards talent better, are not racist and don't encourage nepotism.

emodendroket• 11 years ago

Frankly I think even for small companies it makes sense if they want to do a significant amount of custom development.

NickSharp• 11 years ago

Are these in the Detroit area? That's great for the region. Michigan has great schools and a lot of talent, but the lack of top software jobs causes a brain drain.

Who knows, in a few years small groups of these engineers may be founding their own startups.

c0nsumer2• 11 years ago

Many of these were transitions from other firms.

For example, I am part of this 8000, and I, along with many peers, were hired from HP to (at first) do the same job as before, but for GM. We had previously been contractors or part of HP Enterprise Services with GM as our customer. So, for a good number of these it wasn't a bunch of jobs being created but a simple insourcing shift.

It's been roughly two years since my transition over to a direct job and I've been happy with the choice to take the offer. There's nifty things happening here, way more flexibility and opportunity than before, and GM's a good company to work for.

ADDENDUM: I wouldn't consider myself a programmer; I'm more of a systems engineer / troubleshooter / sysadmin who writes small utility things as-needed.

smackfu• 11 years ago

"Insourcing" doesn't sound like it would be very simple since I don't see what incentive HP has to let the people go to GM.

csours5• 11 years ago

Detroit, MI; Atlanta, GA; Phoenix, AZ; Austin, TX

I work in the GMIT Austin Innovation Center.

http://gmauthority.com/blog/2013/03/why-did-gm-choose-arizon...

sixQuarks• 11 years ago

8,000 programmers working for 3 years for this? jesus christ! The site looks like something from the late 90s. What a waste

csours5• 11 years ago

8k across all of the IT orgs. This project was highly visible to the consumer, which is probably why the author picked it to write about.

A lot of the other stuff is not sexy at all, like data center consolidations.

[Pasted from another comment]

mathattack2• 11 years ago

What's interesting is that GM essentially sold off their IT to EDS in the 80s. You have to be a very well run company to do your own IT well. I'm not convinced that GM is very well run. I do see some of the points that others have made regarding offshore work. Yes, these problems do exist, but they also exist in unmotived onshore workers.

will_hughes• 11 years ago

"Until now, the closest that the market has come to online shopping for new vehicles has been third-party websites like TrueCar Inc.,"

Someone should tell that to Tesla Motors.

Why GM Hired 8,000 Programmers

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