Justin Flint, 27, has one big piece of advice for getting promoted after he went from the assembly line to software engineer at the same company.

With production stoppages and reports of a lower volume of cars rolling off the Corvette factory line in Bowling Green, Kentucky, it’s no surprise to learn that GM has laid off some assembly workers.

When I was a kid, my elementary school had a program that let students shadow adults at their job for a day. The idea was to show us what working as, say, an architect was like. “Japanese assembly ...