By Stephen Harber, content strategist, talent marketing
By Stepher Harber, content strategist, talent marketing
Exactly how does an experienced video game developer and infrastructure engineer land at General Motors? That’s the obvious question we had for Fraser Graham, who joined GM from Apple in late 2023 to be director of infrastructure engineering. Fraser, whose career also includes stretches at Disney and Take-Two Interactive, explains why he joined GM in the interview below.
The landscape of the auto industry is shifting – and so is its perception. As General Motors continues on our journey toward an all-electric future, we’re combining tech and manufacturing work cultures on a global scale.
Fraser, you've had quite a career journey.
You know, I’m originally from Scotland, but I just realized that my resume consists almost exclusively of classic American companies: Motorola, Microsoft, Disney, Apple and now General Motors. I’ve covered several different industries as a software engineer, it’s been fascinating.
How did you get started?
I've been an engineer for over 25 years. I started off my career out of college working on operating systems for cellular infrastructure at Motorola, near London. I had always wanted to make video games, but the opportunity never really presented itself. Britain has a strong video game industry, but it was very hard to get a job there without prior game experience.
That’s why you made the jump to Microsoft?
Actually, Microsoft first contacted me when I was in college. I didn’t want to move to the U.S. at the time, but they kept reaching out. One day while I was still at Motorola, I said, okay sure - I'll go to an interview.
I was offered three positions: I could work on Windows Messenger, or the Windows OS team, or go to a Microsoft Game Studios office in Salt Lake City and work on Xbox. It was an easy decision - I accepted the offer before I even looked up where Salt Lake City was on the map.
How was your time at Microsoft?
Great. We made several games for the Xbox and Xbox 360 in my time there. Several years later, I ended up working for Disney, who also had a video game studio in Salt Lake City.
That’s convenient! Tell us about your experience at Disney.
Disney was a great place to work. We made a lot of fun kids’ games and I was lucky enough to work with Pixar and Disney Feature Animation on several projects. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of work-life balance in the video game industry. When my daughter was born, I began looking for an industry offering better balance and a new set of challenges.
It was the early days of the iPhone, and I was a bit of an Apple fanatic, so I applied to Apple on a whim. They liked me and offered me a job working on build-and-test infrastructure for their core operating systems components. That’s how I ended up in California in 2012.
Fraser’s captivating career background includes game development and infrastructure roles at Microsoft, Disney, and Apple.
And you met your future boss Dave Richardson at Apple, correct?
Yes! About three years into my 11 years at Apple, I started working for Dave Richardson, the current Senior VP of Software and Services Engineering here at GM. When Dave told me he was leaving Apple to go to General Motors, I said, “save a spot for me.” And he did. I joined GM just two months later.
Besides your working relationship with Dave, what interested you about being at GM?
Vehicles are one of, if not the most, complicated consumer products that exist, and I love that. I’m excited by the challenge of taking a historic American company and transforming it into a software powerhouse. If you combine this innovation with our incredible strengths in manufacturing and mechanical engineering, GM is very well-positioned for the future.
And what’s exciting about working in the automotive industry?
From an engineer’s perspective, the depth and breadth of the automotive space is incredible.
Building cars is complicated and challenging. You can’t know it all, you need to build strong teams and trust the experts to know their space.
You've got chemists building batteries. You've got mechanical engineers and electrical engineers collaborating on so many moving parts. Then you've got software teams that help glue it all together and help refine the experience. Name an engineering discipline, it's probably involved somewhere.
What are your goals for the next few years at GM?
Right now, the big goal is stepping up our in-house software development. Doing so means reimagining core developer workflows like automated testing, test-driven development, proper development and build workflows, code reviews, a collaborative culture of technical design, and technical decision making.
So that's my big goal over the next year. I want my organization to lead by example
in building software at a high-quality level and with a high degree of confidence in their work. Then if you give them a problem, they're going to solve it the right way, not just the quickest way.
[PHOTO 3]
Fraser (left) chats with engineers Vivek Dhankar (center) and Liangyi Zhao (right) at the Mountain View Tech Center as they work on vehicle software platforms.
On that point, how do you encourage innovation on your team?
I'm a big believer in technical discussion and true collaboration. I know where my own knowledge limits are, and I know the right way to make good decisions is by building trust in the technical leaders on the team.
And I mean mutual trust. I need to trust their decisions. They need to trust that I'll act on their decisions and prioritize the right things. If people feel trusted – if people feel empowered – they'll do great work.
Earlier you mentioned that there’s hardly any work-life balance in the gaming industry. So how do you balance work and personal life here at GM?
Compared to gaming, it's more relaxed - but it’s still a constant challenge. I have three kids: one in high school, one in middle school, and one in elementary school – plus a golden retriever. I try every night to be home at a sensible time. I put my work phone to the side so I can focus on my family.
I believe we do our best work when we have a healthy balance. Burnout is all too real in our industry. I've been there, and I know the quality of our work suffers if we don't give our brains a rest. It has to be a conscious effort.
What’s the biggest challenge you currently face in your position?
It comes back to the complexity of the automotive space. We have hundreds of teams working on thousands of different components - understanding what impacts what is critical.
We want to simplify - but before you can simplify something, you have to understand it. If you don't understand it, you risk breaking it, and I don't want to break anything. So, depth of understanding needs to come first.
How do you think General Motors stays ahead in the automotive tech space?
We have incredibly talented engineers across the whole company, and we're hiring more every day. GM is attracting a lot of talent in Silicon Valley right now. West Coast tech people are starting to see the auto industry as a viable career path for them, as a new and interesting challenge.
With that in mind, the perception of the auto industry is shifting. By hiring some of these great people and leveraging the existing talent we have across the corporation in Michigan, in Texas and all across the world, we’re helping this mindset shift in the industry as a whole.
[PHOTO 4]
Fraser (left) talks shop with software engineering quality director Dan Segall (right).
How do you think GM reconciles the views of these two work cultures – tech and automotive?
The automotive industry technical experts have a lot of history. Marrying that experience with the new mindset from Silicon Valley is a powerful combination. You need both: you can't just do the Silicon Valley approach - you need the people with the automotive background and the depth of experience there. I think what sets General Motors apart in our approach to modernization has been marrying these two elements together as opposed to trying to replace one with the other.
What role do you think GM will play in the future of mobility?
GM knows how to make great vehicles, and we're rapidly advancing on how to make great software. Very few of the traditional OEMs have solved that transformation problem. That marriage of the traditional automotive – the history, the ability to iterate at scale, the ability to manufacture at scale, combined with the software quality bar that we're setting – it all secures GM to be in an incredibly strong position.
General Motors has depth of automotive expertise that the modern car companies don't have and we're rapidly catching up on the things that they do have.
What’s your message to any potential talent out there who wants to join GM?
That GM is a company that wants to transform. The people coming here from Silicon Valley are not fighting against the tide – they are working with an organization that is eager to move forward. The future is very bright for GM.
If you’re interested in working with engineers like Fraser, visit our GM Careers site.
Check out these stories to learn more about technology and innovation at GM:
Exactly how does an experienced video game developer and infrastructure engineer land at General Motors? That’s the obvious question we had for Fraser Graham, who joined GM from Apple in late 2023 to be director of infrastructure engineering. Graham, whose career also includes stretches at Disney and Take-Two Interactive, explains why he joined GM in the interview below.
The landscape of the auto industry is shifting – and so is its perception. As General Motors continues on our journey toward an all-electric future, we’re combining tech and manufacturing work cultures on a global scale.
Fraser, you've had quite a career journey.
You know, I’m originally from Scotland, but I just realized that my resume consists almost exclusively of classic American companies: Motorola, Microsoft, Disney, Apple and now General Motors. I’ve covered several different industries as a software engineer, it’s been fascinating.
How did you get started?
I've been an engineer for over 25 years. I started off my career out of college working on operating systems for cellular infrastructure at Motorola, near London. I had always wanted to make video games, but the opportunity never really presented itself. Britain has a strong video game industry, but it was very hard to get a job there without prior game experience.
That’s why you made the jump to Microsoft?
Actually, Microsoft first contacted me when I was in college. I didn’t want to move to the U.S. at the time, but they kept reaching out. One day while I was still at Motorola, I said, okay sure - I'll go to an interview.
I was offered three positions: I could work on Windows Messenger, or the Windows OS team, or go to a Microsoft Game Studios office in Salt Lake City and work on Xbox. It was an easy decision - I accepted the offer before I even looked up where Salt Lake City was on the map.
How was your time at Microsoft?
Great. We made several games for the Xbox and Xbox 360 in my time there. Several years later, I ended up working for Disney, who also had a video game studio in Salt Lake City.
That’s convenient! Tell us about your experience at Disney.
Disney was a great place to work. We made a lot of fun kids’ games and I was lucky enough to work with Pixar and Disney Feature Animation on several projects. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of work-life balance in the video game industry. When my daughter was born, I began looking for an industry offering better balance and a new set of challenges.
It was the early days of the iPhone, and I was a bit of an Apple fanatic, so I applied to Apple on a whim. They liked me and offered me a job working on build-and-test infrastructure for their core operating systems components. That’s how I ended up in California in 2012.
And you met your future boss Dave Richardson at Apple, correct?
Yes! About three years into my 11 years at Apple, I started working for Dave Richardson, the current Senior VP of Software and Services Engineering here at GM. When Dave told me he was leaving Apple to go to General Motors, I said, “save a spot for me.” And he did. I joined GM just two months later.
Besides your working relationship with Dave, what interested you about being at GM?
Vehicles are one of, if not the most, complicated consumer products that exist, and I love that. I’m excited by the challenge of taking a historic American company and transforming it into a software powerhouse. If you combine this innovation with our incredible strengths in manufacturing and mechanical engineering, GM is very well-positioned for the future.
And what’s exciting about working in the automotive industry?
From an engineer’s perspective, the depth and breadth of the automotive space is incredible.
Building cars is complicated and challenging. You can’t know it all, you need to build strong teams and trust the experts to know their space.
You've got chemists building batteries. You've got mechanical engineers and electrical engineers collaborating on so many moving parts. Then you've got software teams that help glue it all together and help refine the experience. Name an engineering discipline, it's probably involved somewhere.
What are your goals for the next few years at GM?
Right now, the big goal is stepping up our in-house software development. Doing so means reimagining core developer workflows like automated testing, test-driven development, proper development and build workflows, code reviews, a collaborative culture of technical design, and technical decision making.
So that's my big goal over the next year. I want my organization to lead by example
in building software at a high-quality level and with a high degree of confidence in their work. Then if you give them a problem, they're going to solve it the right way, not just the quickest way.
On that point, how do you encourage innovation on your team?
I'm a big believer in technical discussion and true collaboration. I know where my own knowledge limits are, and I know the right way to make good decisions is by building trust in the technical leaders on the team.
And I mean mutual trust. I need to trust their decisions. They need to trust that I'll act on their decisions and prioritize the right things. If people feel trusted – if people feel empowered – they'll do great work.
Earlier you mentioned that there’s hardly any work-life balance in the gaming industry. So how do you balance work and personal life here at GM?
Compared to gaming, it's more relaxed - but it’s still a constant challenge. I have three kids: one in high school, one in middle school, and one in elementary school – plus a golden retriever. I try every night to be home at a sensible time. I put my work phone to the side so I can focus on my family.
I believe we do our best work when we have a healthy balance. Burnout is all too real in our industry. I've been there, and I know the quality of our work suffers if we don't give our brains a rest. It has to be a conscious effort.
What’s the biggest challenge you currently face in your position?
It comes back to the complexity of the automotive space. We have hundreds of teams working on thousands of different components - understanding what impacts what is critical.
We want to simplify - but before you can simplify something, you have to understand it. If you don't understand it, you risk breaking it, and I don't want to break anything. So, depth of understanding needs to come first.
How do you think General Motors stays ahead in the automotive tech space?
The automotive industry is the next big space for innovation, and more tech professionals are recognizing it as an exciting and viable career path. By bringing in great new talent and leveraging the deep expertise of our teams across Michigan, California, Texas, and around the world, we’re driving this transformation and shaping the future of mobility.
How do you think GM reconciles the views of these two work cultures – tech and automotive?
The automotive industry technical experts have a lot of history. Marrying that experience with the new mindset from Silicon Valley is a powerful combination. You need both: you can't just do the Silicon Valley approach - you need the people with the automotive background and the depth of experience there. I think what sets General Motors apart in our approach to modernization has been marrying these two elements together as opposed to trying to replace one with the other.
What role do you think GM will play in the future of mobility?
GM knows how to make great vehicles, and we're rapidly advancing on how to make great software. Very few of the traditional OEMs have solved that transformation problem. That marriage of the traditional automotive – the history, the ability to iterate at scale, the ability to manufacture at scale, combined with the software quality bar that we're setting – it all secures GM to be in an incredibly strong position.
General Motors has depth of automotive expertise that the modern car companies don't have and we're rapidly catching up on the things that they do have.
What’s your message to any potential talent out there who wants to join GM?
That GM is a company that wants to transform. The people coming here from Silicon Valley are not fighting against the tide – they are working with an organization that is eager to move forward. The future is very bright for GM.
If you’re interested in working with engineers like Fraser, visit our GM Careers site.
Check out these stories to learn more about technology and innovation at GM:
- How GM uses AI to improve vehicle software – and safety
- Driving innovation: Software engineering at GM