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GM Brings IT Dev Back In House; Self-Driving Caddy In the Works
dstates writes "Want a good job in IT? Detroit of all places may be the place to be. GM is bringing IT development back in house to speed innovation. Among other initiatives, a self driving Cadillac is planned by mid decade. Ford is also actively developing driver assist technology and is betting big on voice recognition. Ann Arbor has thousands of smart cars wirelessly connected on the road. Think about all those aging baby boomers with houses in the burbs and no desire to move as their vision and reflexes decline. The smart car is a huge market. Seriously, Detroit and SE Michigan have good jobs, great universities, cheap housing and easy access to great sports and outdoors activities."
I'm fond of Detroit, but it's worth mentioning that it could be a set from Blade Runner.
General Motors has some of the most backwards and misguided technology standards I have ever had the misfortune of being involved with. Anyone who decides to take the plunge and go work for them needs to understand that America's Automotive Companies haven't got a technological clue. Go check out the forums at DealerRefresh.com and see what incredible idiots are considered "Internet Experts". Sad, so sad.
Ford ... is betting big on voice recognition.
A driver gets cut off, yells "fucking asshole!"
Car: "Now fucking your asshole"
The great thing about Detroit is that it is *always* on the comeback but never actually back. They built the "Renaissance" how long ago?
But, really, we are at rock bottom. Even though housing prices are way up, they are still just 80 percent of what they were in 2000. I bought a mansion in 2011 and now it is worth about $70k more than I paid for it (which was a pittance).
As long as you stay in the nice places of the metro area, this is a nice place to live and the most affordable. Just get used to 8 months of winter followed by muggy summer.
The Cadillac still seems to be targeted at old people, and based on the way I see most driven, self driving Cadillacs will be a huge benefit to motorists everywhere. The last time I saw the interior of one, it looked like all navigation and controls had been made large enough to be operated by someone with extremely poor vision. I shuddered. Yes, I realize most of them have a lot of power, but it's exceedingly rare that one is driven like it has.
A caddy is a guy carrying golf clubs. How about giving us non-americans a break?
-- Make America hate again!
I love the idea of self-driving cars. I will talk about it with people and frequently, I will get the response "the idea of computers driving scares me". My response: "the idea of humans driving cars scares me more".
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
What is this, an advertisement for Detroit?
With turn signals that are always on? And will they remind the "driver" where he is going and why?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Michigan is a beautiful state. Once you clear Detroit you get a sportsman's paradise with fishing, camping, and hunting in some very scenic and well tended state and county parks. The summers are very temperate (rarely gets into the mid 90's) and the humidity is pretty comfortable.
The winters are...more interesting. Not horrible, but lots of snow and cold.
As someone with a bad enough sight problem that I'll never ever be allowed to drive, I yearn for the Self-driving car. For the love of almighty fuck, I just want to be able to get to work without having to deal with buses and trains. And yeah, fuck you, other commuters, fuck you all.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
WSJ recently reported average base salary for Google engineers as $128K. You can finance the same lifestyle in Ann Arbor with $79K.
http://www.bestplaces.net/col/?salary=128336&city2=52603000&city1=50668000
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Maybe you should actually see the Detroit metropolitan area before passing such judgement.
GM is just hiring all the HP (formerly EDS) contractors that already work for GM. It's not as if they creating thousands of new IT jobs.
As much as I enjoy career hopping for gain. Being involved in a project that has a good chance of failing prominently may not be rewarding on the resume. But then again if you make it work then good.
With the magic of the Internet! ;)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
It is Detroit. Highest rate of crime in the country.
But good luck with that. You destroy a local economy by outsourcing everything and then try to rebuild by insourcing, then you might have a hard time to get good engineers right off the bat.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
The tigers got swept
Anybody thinking of getting an IT job at GM should talk to somebody who worked under Randy Mott at one of his previous gigs (e.g. Wal-Mart, Dell, HP). You won't find many fans.
The key sequence to access my Slashdot bookmark in Firefox is Alt-B-S. I don't believe this is a coincidence.
You do realize you're doing acceptance testing of every driver around you all the time, right?
That's why I drive a dual-axle, 4 wheel drive, crew-cab Ford Super Duty F-450 pickup truck.
Nobody messes with me on the road, and they always get the heck out of my way promptly, especially with a blast of the Nathan P3L Airchime horn installed in the truck. :-D
This is exactly what's going on.
You'd be in detroit....
That... is not really worth any ammount of money. you'd have to spend it all on security, lojack, a gun, bodyguard, bulletproof items and cars...
Despite what the hipsters will tell you... detroit is a nasty shithole now. You couldnt pay me enough to live within 50 miles of it anymore.
Last week went fishing for perch on warm fall day, it was great, this is 20 minutes away and ate them the next day. You can do this year around.
http://www.lakestclair.net/index.php?/forum/5-fishing-reports/
In the summer you can go to :
http://www.detroitjazzfest.com/ or
https://www.google.com/search?q=bell+isle+images&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=TpR&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&spell=1&q=belle+isle+images&sa=X&ei=VC6ZUJvHJOiy0QHtlIGgDA&ved=0CB4QvwUoAA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=d1f3ab650e43904f&bpcl=37189454&biw=1138&bih=527
I seen deer at a park 20 minutes the other direction surrounded by suburbs.
So like watching tv news, googling will only get you a fraction of the story.
Get up!
This is total Michigan propaganda. the Big 3 have been dead for years. They know they are on a sinking ship. Before they hire all these on shore IT folks could they please pay double back the bailout monies from profits made by overseas branches only.
The website that advertises the GM jobs is http://careers.gm.com/
GM is bringing a lot of tech jobs back to the US, but not just in Detroit:
http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2012/09/07/general-motors-to-open-500-worker.html
Nathan P3L Airchime
Please please PLEASE tell me that play "la Cucaracha"!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I mean, really?
Wouldn't you rather work at Amundsen-Scott ? There's always Kabul or somewhere in Helmand if your just looking for money...
I grew up in Buffalo in the early 1980s. It was a real shame watching people who had safe, stable factory work all lose their jobs. In the late 70s, offshoring killed a lot of light and medium manufacturing jobs which was a huge hit. During the early 80s recession, Bethlehem Steel and a few other huge employers went bankrupt and pushed the local unemployment rate into the double digits for years. Drive along the lakefront south of the city, and you'll still see a huge steel plant that stretches for _miles_. Thousands and thousands of people worked there and pumped money into the local economy. It's typical of any Rust Belt city -- manufacturing gets gutted, middle class people go below the poverty line, and you see the same problems Detroit has now.
The city is coming back to some extent, but unfortunately the focus is now on "knowledge work." Most of the growth is outside the city and involves typical low-level call center, IT and other jobs that are there just because the cost of living is so low. So just like Detroit, Buffalo has the same problems -- reasonably well off suburbs surrounded by a bombed out shell of a city that never improves. Buffalo's compact enough that they're not considering leveling whole blocks like they're doing in Detroit, but some neighborhoods sure need that treatment nonetheless.
I think what really needs to happen for a true US comeback is the recognition that not everyone can be a knowledge worker. You need a bunch of mindless, clock punching factory jobs for the people who can't deal with education. Those people spend money too -- they buy houses, buy cars and support local merchants.
I'm happy GM is doing this, regardless of motivation. I live in the NYC area now, but still enjoy the winter weather in upstate NY, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc. (Yes, I'm strange, but I can't stand heat and humidity.) Many companies I've worked for over the years have been lured by tax breaks and grants to pick up and move to Texas, Florida, Georgia, etc. Every time, I've quit and found another job in a place with seasons and normal people. I just hope those don't run out until I retire. :-)
I know of many sub-50-yr-olds who hate driving and would welcome the chance to buy a self-driving car. Aside from the absolute fact that these cars will be statistically far safer than most or all human-driven cars (there have been a dozen flamefests on that topic in previous /. threads), being able to read the paper, text your BFF, or just plain nap on the way to work sounds great to me.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
even if it was perfect you still have the problem of the AI deciding to Kill You or Somebody Else or...
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Don't forget Jobbie Nooner! w00t!
"Hal, Turn left."
"Okay Dave, engaging emergency breaking maneuver."
"Hal, drive me to work."
"Okay Dave, I'll drive you to Newark."
My daughter will kill me in my sleep if I moved somewhere where it does not snow.
She is patiently awaiting the day when there is enough snow on the hills to sled.
Prior to modern sewage, mosquito abatement, and public health (and also air conditioning), Southern cities like New Orleans were deadly in Summer. You could easily die. From any number of diseases, summer-related migrations to cooler climes and higher altitudes were common. The growth rate in populations in say, Colonial New England was far greater (in reproduction) than say Tidewater Virginia because death rates from disease were far lower. Being in a colder clime was a health advantage because the six months of winter killed lots of infectious diseases, often by killing Mosquitos which were the primary vector for things like malaria and yellow fever.
Thus the historic advantage of cities like Detroit in the late 19th and early 20th Century, when public health was still poorly understood and public health technologies and hygenie evolving.
Detroit today is a poor bet for any world-class technology recruitment. The city is 90% Black, with 48% of Detroit adults illiterate. The former Mayor, Kwame Fitzpatrick, is in jail for corruption charges, and the make up of the city council and current mayor is unlikely to be a dramatic improvement. The worst thing about Detroit is the people, not the weather. Detroit when it was majority White (as recently as the mid 1960's) was known as the "Paris of America" with massive and beautiful investments in Art Deco buildings, and Craftsman style homes. What makes Detroit a non-starter for the most talented is the high cost of living associated with being nowhere near the ultra-violent and massively dysfunctional* Black population that has made the city uninhabitable. Its not just that the Silicon Valley has no snow in the Winter and you can switch jobs easily. It is that Detroit's urban area is at least as dangerous and menacing as Beirut. And the most talented people are not going to want to live in a city with the murder rate of Beirut.
*The dysfunction and violence is best seen in the appalling murder of 9 month old Delrick Miller IV, killed in a drive-by while sleeping on the couch in his own home. Two (Black of course) women were refused seating at a baby shower, for Miller's aunt IIRC, they got mad, fought, and called their male kin who followed Miller's mother to her house and shot up the place. Over seating at a baby shower. Functionally, Detroit is no different than Beirut or Kabul.
I'm fond of Detroit, but it's worth mentioning that it could be a set from Blade Runner.
The City of Detroit has a population of around 700,000 people. The Greater Detroit Metro area has about 4 million people in it. Most people who say they are "from Detroit" aren't actually from Detroit proper and the suburbs are actually pretty nice for the most part. Oakland County which is the county immediately to the north of the City of Detroit is located has a AAA credit rating and is among the wealthiest counties in the country. Furthermore Michigan is an absolutely beautiful state with lots to recommend it. The vast majority of work that is available in Detroit is no where near the run down areas that get most of the attention in the press.
Reports of the death of Detroit are greatly exaggerated.
Basically, its Wisconsin, but with a couple more feet of lake effect snow, and the eyesore / mindsore of Detroit.
Detroit proper has a population of just 700,000 people. Most people who say they are "from Detroit" don't actually live in the city itself. The Metro Detroit area is much larger (population 4 million) and actually is a nice place to live. Oakland County just to the north of Detroit has a AAA credit rating and is among the 10 wealthiest counties in the US. There is a huge amount of engineering talent in the state and the businesses that need it. (Hint, the auto industry uses a LOT of technology)
I believe Wisconsin has something like 10 lakes for every 1 lake in Michigan.
Wisconsin has about 15,000 while Michigan has over 11,000. The numbers are very similar. Please cease making up nonsense when two seconds on Google will prove you are making stuff up.
As a southern California resident, I like my snow way up on the mountains, far away from me. It's really pretty when it's way over there.
Wimp. Personally I prefer a bit of snow over living on a major fault line.
Back in the day, a lot of companies outsourced their IT to independent companies like EDS because it would theoretically be less expensive, management did not understand or appreciate IT, and frankly, IT people were a PITA. However, instead of being able to abuse the IT people to make endless, mindless changes with unpaid overtime, the vendors actually insisted on proper specifications and charged for the time, which then began to inhibit change that was valuable innovation. So the pendulum is swinging back to inhouse personnel that need to be "properly managed", which includes the ability to abuse them.
Most GM engineering is done at the Warren Tech Center or the GM Proving Grounds. WTC is outside the city of Detroit and an easy commute from many many fine areas. PG is out in the country and an easy drive from rural areas with actual farmland and also some of the finest cities in the area - Oakland county MI is among the richest (per capita) in the nation.
A lot of Cadillacs end up driving themselves, usually to disastrous results, considering the average age of a Cadillac driver is like 112.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.