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Why GM Hired 8,000 Programmers
- nugget 12y agoNon paywall link: http://www.wsj.com/articles/gm-built-internal-skills-to-manage-internet-sales-push-1424200731 http://www.wsj.com/articles/gm-built-internal-skills-to-mana...
- ars 12y agoSorry, that's still a paywall. That's the exact same link! Did you typo, or did they change the article link?
- nicolethenerd 12y agoThat's exactly the same link.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- arboroia 12y agoI think this should work: https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCEQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fgm-built-internal-skills-to-manage-internet-sales-push-1424200731&ei=H_zkVMG4KcjX7Qa83IBY&usg=AFQjCNFsgf0pP-5TtbUD4wIHhJoHt9fbfQ&sig2=BnAchdy17fnWBJ_cPYeQfg&bvm=bv.85970519,d.ZGU https://www.google.ie/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...
- wyclif 12y agoOP here. I don't understand why some HN users post the exact same link as the OP in the thread.
- treve 12y agoThe posted link has a paywall.
- zedpm 12y agoJust copy the URL and paste it into Google. Click the link from the Google search results and there should be no paywall.
- ars 12y agoThat doesn't work anymore. Not sure if it doesn't work at all, or just if you've seen the article first, and then try it.
- yurymik 12y agoIt does. Try https://www.google.ca/?#q=http:%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fgm-built-internal-skills-to-manage-internet-sales-push-1424200731 https://www.google.ca/?#q=http:%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%... -- click on the first link under "In the news" headline. Just make sure that request header has proper referer: "Referer:https://www.google.ca/" https://www.google.ca/"
- zedpm 12y agoIt worked for me just before I posted that comment.
- perlgeek 12y agoIt seems you must have referrers enabled in the browser.
- mturmon 12y agoPersonally, I paste the text of the headline into google, not the URL.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- zallarak 12y ago8,000 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 12y agoLooks like the sale ultimately goes through the dealership.
- mattdclemens 12y agoI 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 12y agothe real answer here
- johnward 12y agoI think that is for all internal software and support not just the consumer web part. Still seem high but they are a big company.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- rational-future 12y agoNot 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 12y ago
- bio4m 12y ago8000 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_ 12y agoI 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.
- csours 12y ago8k 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.
- free2rhyme214 12y agohttps://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fgm-built-internal-skills-to-manage-internet-sales-push-1424200731&ei=KPzkVL3MMMj0oAS8-YD4Bg&usg=AFQjCNFsgf0pP-5TtbUD4wIHhJoHt9fbfQ&sig2=UyyAgzgbQJ8afu8_rBo0PA&bvm=bv.86475890,d.cGU https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c... Non pay wall link.
- Rexxar 12y agoOr change automatically the referrer to "http://www.google.com" http://www.google.com" for wsj.com with your favourite extension (I personally use "RefControl" for firefox).
- vmarsy 12y agoFor 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+Programmers&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=Why+GM+Hired+8%2C000+Program...
- free2rhyme214 12y agoAs 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.
- wyclif 12y agoUnfortunately, it's not that simple. Have you ever tried posting a redirect for a story? Then another user posts the direct paywall link, which promptly rises to the front page while your submission gets buried. This is an issue that needs a solution.
- slacka 12y agoYes, your parent link doesn't work, however the copy and paste the link into Google technique does. Refreshing the page activates the paywall.
- zedpm 12y agoI 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.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- damm 12y agoI wish HN detected Paywall links and would reject them. Sifting through comments to find a link that works is :(
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- coralreef 12y agoOne trick is to paste the url into google
- eyeareque 12y agoPaywalled links should be banned
- wyclif 12y agoOP here. Unfortunately, it's not that simple: you can't post a redirected link and expect the story to make the front page.
- thorntonbf 12y agoIt 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.
- wvenable 12y agoWhat's the story with GM creating dealer protection laws? Don't those laws exist to protect dealers from the manufacturers.
- thorntonbf 12y agoYou're correct. Edited above. Made a mental association equating NADA with the manufacturers and that's inaccurate.
- deeviant 12y agoThat'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 12y ago
- jrochkind1 12y agoGoogling 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-future 12y agoAt 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 12y 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?
- walshemj 12y agoThat 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 12y agoGoogle'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 12y agoi'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.
- frankydp 12y agoGE 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 12y agoI'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 12y agoI'd say that's a good thing. Companies outside of the Bay Area are realizing the value of technical talent.
- walshemj 12y agoThat's how supply and demand works in a capitalist society
- maverick2 12y agoI 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 12y agoI 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.
- matt_s 12y agoWe 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.
- maverick2 12y agoYep 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.
- NickSharp 12y agoAre 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.
- c0nsumer 12y agoMany 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 12y 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.
- csours 12y agoSimple for the employees changing employers; whatever GM did to facilitate the transfer has not been made public.
- domdip 12y agoProbably preferable to layoffs (cheaper, no bad press) if a major project is shutting down and they have nowhere to put them. Also, could have been wrapped up in all sorts of other agreements about termination of contract. This was probably a major deal for both companies.
- 12y ago
- sixQuarks 12y ago8,000 programmers working for 3 years for this? jesus christ! The site looks like something from the late 90s. What a waste
- csours 12y ago8k 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]
- mathattack 12y agoWhat'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 12y 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.