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Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

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Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#181

Post by gumby »

dmitriid wrote: post #159
geodel wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is why and how. There is no point is arguing "low" European salaries unless someone shows European companies are more profitable and they save a nice chunk of money by paying less to S/w engineers. Not very familiar with Australia. But thinking that high paying company like Atlassian which produces a very crappy software which I unfortunately deal daily. To me it shows high pay does not guarantee good qu…

> unless someone shows European companies are more profitable They are. Most US "innovative competitive startups" are losing hundreds of millions, and often billions of dollars a year, for decades. Europe (thankfully) doesn't want to do that. And "grossly underpaid software developers" enjoy a high quality of life on par with the rest of the population (universal healthcare, extended parental leave, vacations etc.)

> Most US "innovative competitive startups" are losing hundreds of millions, and often billions of dollars a year, for decades.

That isn’t actually true. A few certainly are, and they make great press fodder. But most don’t have that luxury. Actually it’s a burden: you suffer much more dilution.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#182

Post by gernb »

gumby wrote: post #15

I've been following this debacle in the German press and I think there's a structural problem that they will struggle to dig their way out of. And by "they" I don't mean just VW, but much of European industry. Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important Let's start with cars. Back before cars were just comput…

This is good insight. I does make me wonder if Tesla actually has a chance. Their software doesn't seem all that great. The UX in a Tesla got objectively worse on Christmas day, 2021 when they released a big change and gave us fart noises instead of a good UX. It now takes several more touches to do common tasks than it did December 24th, 2021.

For some inexplicable reason they have a web browser in the car. Every time I've tried it it crashes the Tesla's computer. Even viewing the Tesla manual reliably crashes the Tesla's computer.

If Apple really is working on a car, and if cars really are now just computers with wheels, then it's not at all clear that Tesla has the software skills to keep up with Apple (or whatever company actually has the skills).

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#184

Post by Arcanum-XIII »

lacker wrote: post #58
gumby wrote: post #15

I've been following this debacle in the German press and I think there's a structural problem that they will struggle to dig their way out of. And by "they" I don't mean just VW, but much of European industry. Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important Let's start with cars. Back before cars were just comput…

Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important In many ways this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. An organization thinks software engineers aren't very important. And it doesn't pay the sort of salaries you need to get the top talent. So it doesn't have any top-tier software engineers, and their software team stru…

I’ve seen big telco not having any internal dev - only bad management. When their partner do not deliver, or very slowly because they’re cheap, they make “escalation”…

So it’s even worse than not valuing the work. It’s destroying it.

(By the way, it’s not only telco, but also food distribution, small business…)

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#185

Post by AlotOfReading »

polishdude20 wrote: post #162
gumby wrote: post #15

I've been following this debacle in the German press and I think there's a structural problem that they will struggle to dig their way out of. And by "they" I don't mean just VW, but much of European industry. Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important Let's start with cars. Back before cars were just comput…

The part about the mechanical guy being the top dogs seems more to do with the fact that a car must mechanically be safe above all else right? Like, I should be able to drive a car if the software fails. But the mechanical parts and components are the things that cannot fail or have a much lower tolerance to fail. It stems from a culture of not relying on software too much no?

There are few (no?) modern consumer vehicles that don't have safety-critical software somewhere and you couldn't legally drive any modern vehicles that don't have working software besides.

It's literally just a cultural issue that they think of themselves as car companies first, and good software culture isn't in their corporate DNA. 5-10 years ago literally no one understood that, but most executives are starting to get onboard with the need for changes and flail their way through them.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#187

Post by halotrope »

gumby wrote: post #15

I've been following this debacle in the German press and I think there's a structural problem that they will struggle to dig their way out of. And by "they" I don't mean just VW, but much of European industry. Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important Let's start with cars. Back before cars were just comput…

Great post! I would like to add, that Diess seemingly understood at least the strategic importance of this and invested heavily. The execution is (until now) just very bad. The German brands don’t “get” software the way e.g Tesla does. Funny enough, Musk said that Tesla is not even all that great in Software (exclude FSD). It’s just everybody else is so much worse. There is a great divide between them who feel software on a visceral level and those who don’t

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#188

Post by notimetorelax »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #136

This is funny to me, in a perhaps sad way. I've interviewed quite a few Tesla software engineers and worked with several ex-Tesla software engineers in various capacities. The impression I have is that Tesla software is fucking terrible , generally. I'm sure there are some smart folks there and I don't mean to disparage anyone working there but, the stuff I've seen or heard is enough that I would never purchase one o…

> the closer to metal you are, the harder the problems are (mostly due to constraints) but the worse the job is -- pay, culture... it's all bad. Why?

Not saying it’s universal, but I’ve seen this being related to lacking economics of scale. You write software for a limited fleet of widgets and have to constrain your expenses.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#189

Post by leobg »

tsunamifury wrote: post #85
gregsadetsky wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the recall you’re referring to? [0] Is there a report somewhere / investigative details on the recall? Thanks! [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/porsch... —— EDIT I found https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2021/RCLRPT-21V486-3851.PDF “Due to a software issue that has since been corrected, the software designed to continuously monitor end-to-end communication between the safety-related EC…

Yes, but what they didn’t say in that statement is they were attempting to correct the issue post-incident to cover their tracks before the owners got together and gave testimony. They kept telling drivers it was a one off issue that no one had experienced, while in reality many had been affected. They even offered significant payoffs to some. It was well past negligence and into active harm. When advised cars were b…

Somebody else here in another thread said that the Germans seem to be a gullible people, and that if he was German, he would be running all kinds of scams. Well, this is exactly what seems to be happening in many places that, from the outside, look like German success stories. They scam, manipulate and take shortcuts. That’s the shadow of gullibility. On the one hand, you do what you are told and look up to authority. And on the other hand, when you make a mistake, you cover up. And you tell yourself the story that you are the victim, after all. And that, if you didn’t do it, somebody else would. There is an old book from the 1930s about how to raise a child. It is called “Mommy, tell me about Adolf Hitler“. Parents in Germany today obviously don’t read that anymore. But many of them still raise their kids in the same way they themselves were raised. And with just two or three generations distance, that mindset that made Nazi Germany possible is still very much alive.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#190

Post by Gordonjcp »

callalex wrote: post #24
Gordonjcp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been driving a 27-year-old Range Rover for a year. Sometimes I need to hold the ignition key close to the receiver in the rear window for it to lock. Sometimes I need to jiggle the steering lock a little for the flappy door to close and tell it the key is out, before it will lock. Sometimes I need to poke the "petrol flap" button a couple of times before the flap will open. Sometimes the radio doesn't really get…

The crash safety of a modern car is just not even in the same world as older cars. That’s why I put up with all the jankiness. You can drive perfectly and still end up in a bad collision that was someone else’s fault.

This is sufficiently new that it meets modern crash safety standards, but is much safer than modern cars because it doesn't have all the distracting crap in it.
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