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German carmakers flood jobs market with managers after wielding axe

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Re: German carmakers flood jobs market with managers after wielding axe

#61

Post by freefaler »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #60
freefaler wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the market that delivered BYD and Xiaomi. The government did his part with industrial policy and inviting Tesla to China to help start the ecosystem, but the brutal competition between Chinese auto makers following the rules of capitalism and free-market made those who survive the ones that can compete with other global companies. Before that they just subsidised and all they got were regional "champions" that…

This narrative overweights free market competition in China and any influence Tesla or Musk might have had versus the $230B in subsides provided to the Chinese EV industry over 14 years (2009-2023), with over ~$1.5B provided to CATL alone (although Tesla did receive ~$17B in total government subsidies in the US). Tesla did not begin production in China until October 2019. If there’s any hero story here, its the will…

Yes, there was investment, but investment without free markets and capitalism doesn't work usually for end products like cars. It's not a linear function of the capital invested, it's not possible to spend your way into good consumer products. That's not infrastructure. That's why I was mentioning that before Tesla came that investment didn't lead to any strong EV automotive players. In 2016 there was a big scandal on widespread EV fraud, where manufacturers just built to get the subsidy(骗补).

The policy shift came around 2017 when the government understood that subsidies and closed market created lazy automakers (e.g. check the US market for the same dynamic in trucks). In 2018 they removed subsidies for cars less than 150km of range and changed the requirements to receive them tying them to battery density.

After Tesla came and subsidies were reduced, most of the inefficient companies went bankrupt. It was the free-market competition that killed them. The reason why it changes was the competition not the subsidy. The subsidy was somewhat important, but as many of us knows, nothing government run produces good consumer products, you need market and free choice to get productivity. So it was the free-market and subsidy cutting that created the BYD, Li Auto, Xpeng and Nio. That's the proof that without free market it's impossible to have strong companies. And without subsidies you can have strong companies, even if it takes more time.

In EU and USA subsidies didn't create a lot (Northvolt?), because there were not enough free-market driven demand and too much regulation to jumpstart the free-market forces that will start the engine of innovation.

So the answer is not "capitalism and free-market doesn't work and governmental industrial policy is the answer", but it's the market that creates the strong companies. You can speed it up with venture/government capital, but without the brutal competition in the marketplace where people vote with their wallets you won't make it work.

Re: German carmakers flood jobs market with managers after wielding axe

#62

Post by com »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #42
sajithdilshan wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstood my comment, I was talking about different layers of management. Not different roles like accounting or sales etc. but there is absolutely no reason to have 10 different layers of management.

for someone like VAG or UPS why not? You can only remember/cram so much context into a single persons head, at some point you gotta split it up. In IT, you rarely see companies having managers with more than 6 direct reports. Of course in retail that number can bump up. But if you have a 4 or 5 thousand employees - you'll have 6 layers. Of course there are ways around it (I worked at F500 where i only talked to my bo…

We’re now 50 years in on a personal computer revolution, and people on HN and elsewhere haven’t managed to escape industrial-style management thinking.

If we can have billions of people organised - in their time away from formal work - into small working groups (“families”) generating a crazy amount of value for themselves and their communities, with no overarching management structure, what is possible today?

Franchises are often very light on layers of management yet have hundreds of thousands of workers.

The larger the enterprise, the less it has to look like an industrial firm.

Information flow, coordination and oversight don’t require layers and layers of managers, it’s just that those managers prefer it, since they’ve never seen anything else, they get paid more for “their important work” and have status for managing managers.

Change that and we might be in quite a different, probably better world?

Re: German carmakers flood jobs market with managers after wielding axe

#63

Post by chewz »

illiac786 wrote: post #58
chewz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by heavy subsidies you mean - encouraging internal competition, securing cheap energy and educating thousands of engineers then yes, Chinese cars are subsidized. If by heavy subsidies you mean pocketing 150 billions of dollars from EU R&D budget for innovation that have never happened then no, Chinese cars manufacturers are not subsidized.

I‘m interested in reading about the 150 billions. Do you have a good source?

https://www.mckinsey.com.br/features/mckinsey-center-for-fut...

Re: German carmakers flood jobs market with managers after wielding axe

#64

Post by illiac786 »

chewz wrote: post #63
illiac786 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I‘m interested in reading about the 150 billions. Do you have a good source?

https://www.mckinsey.com.br/features/mckinsey-center-for-fut...

> European OEMs and major suppliers have spent nearly €150 billion annually,12 split roughly equally between R&D and capital investments.

Really not what the previous comment said.

Re: German carmakers flood jobs market with managers after wielding axe

#65

Post by calvinmorrison »

nradov wrote: post #55
calvinmorrison wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for someone like VAG or UPS why not? You can only remember/cram so much context into a single persons head, at some point you gotta split it up. In IT, you rarely see companies having managers with more than 6 direct reports. Of course in retail that number can bump up. But if you have a 4 or 5 thousand employees - you'll have 6 layers. Of course there are ways around it (I worked at F500 where i only talked to my bo…

Sure, but as a point of comparison the Roman Catholic Church has even more people worldwide and manages to make do with only 4 management layers. (I'm referring to those in religious orders only, not secular employees of various Catholic businesses and charities.)

Yes the Catholic Church still employs people besides priests but that's a good one!

Re: German carmakers flood jobs market with managers after wielding axe

#66

Post by rwmj »

leonidasrup wrote: post #22
est31 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah with China pumping state subventions into car manufacturing, they can outcompete any car manufacturer anywhere in the world. The leading battery technology is in Asia anyways. The German car industry will not die completely, as the EU can protect its market from chinese manufacturers through regulation. But it will shrink and transform. Probably also back to fossil fuels (yuck), because there the Germans still h…

German car industry can produce state of art ICE, because they can manufacture the heart of ICE - the engine. German car industry is trailing with EVs, because they can not manufacture the heart of EV - the battery.

> German car industry is trailing with EVs, because they can not manufacture the heart of EV - the battery.

"We tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!" ... The German car industry could have seen the EV revolution coming a mile off, but instead of embracing it, it did nothing. Well, it faked some diesel tests, so I suppose not nothing, but not useful.

Re: German carmakers flood jobs market with managers after wielding axe

#67

Post by 627467 »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #26
warkdarrior wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what is the right amount of management, and I'm sure there are some management roles that add no value, but it seems to me that you cannot have UPS function with just a CEO and, say, 10000 delivery drivers and no middle managers.

its just people underestimating what people do in their actual jobs. Every thing has a huge long tail of work. things like 'accounting' is obvious but there are entire jobs around just buying stuff, around logistics, around fleet management, around managing your staff (HR), there are LOTs of specialized roles and they're not all dumb because you think they don't do anything. Even in accounting there are many roles an…

There's alot of overestimating on the need and value of "services". There's decades of teaching that service economy is the pinacle of advanced economies. Middle management bloat is "advanced service economy". And what is happening is an end of a myth

Re: German carmakers flood jobs market with managers after wielding axe

#68

Post by seabird »

rwmj wrote: post #15
est31 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah with China pumping state subventions into car manufacturing, they can outcompete any car manufacturer anywhere in the world. The leading battery technology is in Asia anyways. The German car industry will not die completely, as the EU can protect its market from chinese manufacturers through regulation. But it will shrink and transform. Probably also back to fossil fuels (yuck), because there the Germans still h…

They're also making cars that people want to buy for a price they can afford. Toyota aren't making any cars I want to buy (at any price).

At least in the US, Toyota is wildly successful across every segment. The RAV4, Camry, Corolla, and Tacoma do massive numbers, even though the compact and midsize sedan market is collapsing. Even niche offerings like the GR Corolla can be challenging to procure from a dealer. The Toyota Tax in the used market is unbelievable. For a huge number of people, there is no manufacturer that gets even close to the same amount of respect that Toyota does. Their victory was so overwhelming that it permanently changed how manufacturing is done and an entire generation of prideful Americans will readily admit that the Big Three were on the back foot in the 80s and 90s. Not to say that China isn’t capable of something similar, but you do have to understand that your tastes/value assessments are very much not representative of the sizable US market on the whole if you would seriously take a Sentra over a Corolla, or an Equinox over a RAV4. The calculus may be a bit different in the European market, of course.

Re: German carmakers flood jobs market with managers after wielding axe

#69

Post by leonidasrup »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #25
leonidasrup wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German car industry can produce state of art ICE, because they can manufacture the heart of ICE - the engine. German car industry is trailing with EVs, because they can not manufacture the heart of EV - the battery.

I think the biggest problem with German EVs are not the battery but the software. EVs are practically computers on a wheel and compared to the competitors the software and features it offers are still terrible. I remember VW even had a huge joint venture with Rivian to get things back on track. But seems like it didn’t work out

The biggest problem with German EVs are not the software but the battery. The battery is the most expensive component in an EV:

https://thundersaidenergy.com/downloads/electric-vehicle-cos...

As EVs are computers on a wheel, there is no reason why the same computer can not be installed into an ICE car.

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