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Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

handelsblatt.com

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Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#11

Post by adrianN »

ahartmetz wrote: post #10
l4u532 wrote: post #8

As a German, I am quite happy about this. What you must know is that German organisations are extremely hierarchical, with little information flowing from frontline management to to top management. Hence, change only happens top down and only if the top managers in their ivory towers deem it necessary. But it’s incredibly important that our automakers reinvent themselves. And here we have the necessary angst to drive…

Not all German organizations are like that. The car industry is especially dysfunctional. I've been watching them fail at software for years now. The problem, as far as I can tell, is as follows: top management is able and motivated to increase the size of the money bag. Developers just want to do a good job for a good salary. Middle management can't change the size of the money bag too much, so it just wants to grab…

Academic CS in Germany is world-class.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#12

Post by timmyla »

ahartmetz wrote: post #10
l4u532 wrote: post #8

As a German, I am quite happy about this. What you must know is that German organisations are extremely hierarchical, with little information flowing from frontline management to to top management. Hence, change only happens top down and only if the top managers in their ivory towers deem it necessary. But it’s incredibly important that our automakers reinvent themselves. And here we have the necessary angst to drive…

Not all German organizations are like that. The car industry is especially dysfunctional. I've been watching them fail at software for years now. The problem, as far as I can tell, is as follows: top management is able and motivated to increase the size of the money bag. Developers just want to do a good job for a good salary. Middle management can't change the size of the money bag too much, so it just wants to grab…

as someone who worked at a German car company, I agree with this. There's a lot of middle managers who don't really understand what problem needs to be solved first in order to ship high-quality software. There has been a lot of movement internally, though. I sure hope they move fast enough to stay relevant in the next 10 years.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#13

Post by matt4077 »

RickJWagner wrote: post #2

I don't like how the subtitle reads "American tariffs, a Chinese slowdown..." but the article text says "possible US tariffs". It seems misleading to lead with 'tariffs' when they are only 'possible tariffs'. Makes it seem click-baity.

When you're "facing" a storm, it is one visible on the horizon. The term implies forward-looking (and therefore uncertain) predictions.

Subheads also work rather bad as click-bait, considering you only get to read them after clicking the link.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#14

Post by ivan_gammel »

ahartmetz wrote: post #10
l4u532 wrote: post #8

As a German, I am quite happy about this. What you must know is that German organisations are extremely hierarchical, with little information flowing from frontline management to to top management. Hence, change only happens top down and only if the top managers in their ivory towers deem it necessary. But it’s incredibly important that our automakers reinvent themselves. And here we have the necessary angst to drive…

Not all German organizations are like that. The car industry is especially dysfunctional. I've been watching them fail at software for years now. The problem, as far as I can tell, is as follows: top management is able and motivated to increase the size of the money bag. Developers just want to do a good job for a good salary. Middle management can't change the size of the money bag too much, so it just wants to grab…

The main reason middle managers hire ineffective developers in Germany and elsewhere is that the job market is in a state of permanent crisis: the demand is so high that now everyone calls "senior" the people who cannot even estimate the performance of an algorithm or didn't bother to learn something new in the last 5 years. This applies both to developers and to managers and is complicated by the fact, that large and medium corporations usually don't speak English (so cannot benefit from European open labor market) and thus cannot easily import talent from abroad.

Another part of the problem is that in many industries there's a strong lobby of local companies which like medieval guilds block any new competitors from entering the markets. APIs and open standards still barely exist - you cannot simply plug in your new fancy service into an enterprise environment, but you have to pay plenty of money to some Verband to get some crazy XML specification for file exchange. After all I've seen in IT in Eastern Europe (most of all in Russia) and USA, I'm feeling like I'm still in XX century.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#15

Post by ahartmetz »

adrianN wrote: post #11
ahartmetz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all German organizations are like that. The car industry is especially dysfunctional. I've been watching them fail at software for years now. The problem, as far as I can tell, is as follows: top management is able and motivated to increase the size of the money bag. Developers just want to do a good job for a good salary. Middle management can't change the size of the money bag too much, so it just wants to grab…

Academic CS in Germany is world-class.

Yeah, which areas?

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#16

Post by ahartmetz »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #14
ahartmetz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all German organizations are like that. The car industry is especially dysfunctional. I've been watching them fail at software for years now. The problem, as far as I can tell, is as follows: top management is able and motivated to increase the size of the money bag. Developers just want to do a good job for a good salary. Middle management can't change the size of the money bag too much, so it just wants to grab…

The main reason middle managers hire ineffective developers in Germany and elsewhere is that the job market is in a state of permanent crisis: the demand is so high that now everyone calls "senior" the people who cannot even estimate the performance of an algorithm or didn't bother to learn something new in the last 5 years. This applies both to developers and to managers and is complicated by the fact, that large an…

There are quite a few good German developers who know enough about the car industry to stay far away from it because it's so broken. As a lowly developer, you can't fix it - you'll just get chewed up.

Re: Germany's car industry faces a perfect storm

#18

Post by FullyFunctional »

clouddrover wrote: post #3

Perfect storms aside, I think Volkswagen will be the biggest producer of EVs within 3 years. They're targeting the high end with the Porsche Taycan, the Porsche Macan EV, and the future Audi e-tron GT which will be based on the Taycan's platform: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/porsche-double-taycan-ev-... https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/porsche-macan-electric-on... Volkswagen's MEB platform targets mid-range v…

All these Tesla competitors ... they are not really competitors unless they offer access to the Super Charger Network or provide something similar. More than anything the Super Charger is a game changer. Even though I very very rarely uses it, it enables the occasional long distance trip, making it practical to own just an EV and not need a 2nd car (or rent one)
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