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TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation

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Re: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation

#221

Post by scotty79 »

jollybean wrote: post #216
scotty79 wrote: post #85

I used to work for TomTom maybe 10 years ago. I was there when Google started offering turn by turn navigation for free. Other issue was live traffic information. As you might imagine all this caused some concern among employees because that was, I think, the main source of revenue for the company. They were already doing some other stuff like fitness wearables but they didn't seem to be leaning into it. Main idea fo…

I think this is a naive take, the glib view of a worker with no practical insight into company operations and decision making. It's doubtful that TomTom's foray into mobile was 'accidental' and it's also hard to understand how much money is being spent, and the risks involved in finding other revenue streams. When mega corps come in and suddenly make a major part of your business unworkable, yes, companies go into re…

> It's doubtful that TomTom's foray into mobile was 'accidental'

They started as a small company writing random software for palmtops. Until one day they made mapping software. They didn't expect it will be that popular with people. It was popular to a degree that people were buying palmtops just to use their app and didn't care about all other software their new palmtop could have.

It's as if today, small software shop released an app that bumps iPhone device sales by +20% just because people want to use that one app event though they don't care about all other things iPhone can do. Everybody can dream of that, but nobody can plan for that. It was purely accidental.

> When mega corps come in and suddenly make a major part of your business unworkable, yes, companies go into reactionary mode. That's normal.

What I describe as running like a headless chicken started many years before I came to TomTom. I've seen tonnes of internal wiki's that were once created for internal random, ultimately abandoned projects. I even seen two projects attempting the same thing, new one didn't have an idea that somebody, some time ago in that same corporation already tried to build that.

It's standard mode of operation. In corporation you have core business that's kept tight and professional and huge amount of side activity that's just bleeding money trying to discover next big pivot.

Re: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation

#222

Post by cgriswald »

chrisseaton wrote: post #209
cgriswald wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an older in-car system and my experience is the opposite. First, the car doesn't download map data. I'm stuck with what was on the car when I bought it unless I want to pay an unreasonable amount to update it. Second, it does download traffic data, but it's so slow that it's useless. I took its advice once and it cost me over an hour, because the alternate route had already filled up and had the disadvantage o…

> Third, it can't navigate a path without connecting to the satellite How else would it work? Just sense which way the wheels are pointing and track the speedometer?

I perhaps should have said find rather than navigate. I don't expect turn-by-turn navigation when it has no way of knowing where I am. I'm not talking about it directing me along a path; but about finding the path in the first place.

It should use the last known location and vector to find a route. It doesn't. My guess is that it loses the satellite, sees it again and starts recalculating, loses it, and repeats this cycle. Unless the satellite is visible for a long enough period, it never produces any path. Even an out-of-date path would be more useful than simply nothing.

Re: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation

#223

Post by 908B64B197 »

nradov wrote: post #193
serial_dev wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was reading the comment, I thought the same: why don't companies just accept that they have one good project, focus on it 100%, stay good at it, and when the market dies, the company could die with it. There is no shame in milking one product for 20 years, providing a living to hundreds/thousands, then just scale back to maintenance and eventually close things down. It doesn't really happen in practice, becaus…

That is exactly the business model for some private equity firms (corporate raiders). They identify undervalued companies with strong revenue and significant assets where incompetent management is wasting resources and buy the company. Then they stop investing in growth, cut expenses to the bone, borrow against the assets, issue huge dividends to shareholders, and allow the company to gradually die. There's nothing r…

> But it can be a rough ride for employees caught in the process.

Or an opportunity. They should see the private equity firms coming in as a signal it's time to jump ship and not liquidate their stocks (actually, renegotiate your ESPP while you look out for the next thing!).

Re: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation

#224

Post by cgriswald »

krisoft wrote: post #182
cgriswald wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an older in-car system and my experience is the opposite. First, the car doesn't download map data. I'm stuck with what was on the car when I bought it unless I want to pay an unreasonable amount to update it. Second, it does download traffic data, but it's so slow that it's useless. I took its advice once and it cost me over an hour, because the alternate route had already filled up and had the disadvantage o…

> Third, it can't navigate a path without connecting to the satellite (seemingly for traffic data, but possibly it isn't even calculating the path locally). I’m confused by what you are saying here. In-car navigation use satelites to know where the car is. If it can’t path plan without satelite connection then that is most likely because it is waiting for a localisation fix. Trafic information could be coming through…

See my response to the sibling poster: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31587520

Re: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation

#225

Post by alaricus »

wonderbore wrote: post #100
alaricus wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is fk'ed if wide-scale ad blocking really picks up. For example ISP-level adblocking.

Of course they’re not. It just might get more complicated for users but it’d be super easy for them to set up cloaking. uBlock could deal with that, ISP won’t. Either way that will never happen obviously; Why would an ISP “block ads”? They’re literally hosting Google hardware (specifically YouTube’s cache)

> Why would an ISP “block ads”?

"Pay 5 euros per month for the ad-blocker privacy feature!"

They could probably make a lot of money from this.

Re: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation

#226

Post by brnt »

Hamuko wrote: post #172
cgriswald wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an older in-car system and my experience is the opposite. First, the car doesn't download map data. I'm stuck with what was on the car when I bought it unless I want to pay an unreasonable amount to update it. Second, it does download traffic data, but it's so slow that it's useless. I took its advice once and it cost me over an hour, because the alternate route had already filled up and had the disadvantage o…

> First, the car doesn't download map data. I'm stuck with what was on the car when I bought it unless I want to pay an unreasonable amount to update it. Apparently car navigation maps are a thing that you can also pirate. I think I saw a Windows tool for downloading Mercedes-Benz map updates. Never tried it though, since I was pretty content to sticking with Google Maps and a phone mount.

My car manufacturer just posts an update every year that I can tranfer myself to the SD card that it reads off. Pretty nice.

Re: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation

#227

Post by alaricus »

babypuncher wrote: post #121
alaricus wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way as PiHole does. It's not hard to block Google adds on 3rd party sites with a DNS or IP-level block.

If advertisers felt motivated enough, circumventing PiHole would be trivial. Since all they do is block DNS requests based on a blacklist, an ad company just needs to serve their content from a trusted domain. Google owns plenty of domains which few PiHole users are likely to tolerate being blacklisted. They already do this with ads on YouTube.

Youtube ads are not a problem because of uBlock Origin / Newpipe etc... I have not seen an ad in Youtube in more than a decade.

But you are right. This could motivate them to move to a single domain for all Google content. But this is just another escalation in the adblock arms range. uBlock-style blockers would proliferate.

Re: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation

#228

Post by rejectfinite »

eezurr wrote: post #196
nradov wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly the business model for some private equity firms (corporate raiders). They identify undervalued companies with strong revenue and significant assets where incompetent management is wasting resources and buy the company. Then they stop investing in growth, cut expenses to the bone, borrow against the assets, issue huge dividends to shareholders, and allow the company to gradually die. There's nothing r…

Quoted post unavailable.

Why call out "the europeans" like this?

The places we won over already had domestic slaves.

Plus ur right.

Re: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation

#229

Post by DavidPeiffer »

hulitu wrote: post #118
scarface74 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most consumers would much rather have either CarPlay or Android Auto than the crappy software that is made my the manufacturers.

Android Auto is crap. It only works with Google apps and some third party media players, when it starts. I gave up on it a long time ago.

This week I've been trying Android Auto out in a rental car. I'm not impressed so far. Google Maps has worked okay, but Spotify has not. I don't know where the line is between Android Auto and the Jeep Cherokee interface, but the turn by turn directions are super quiet compared to the music with seemingly no way to adjust. Squarely on the Jeep UI side, I've been using the car for 4 days and still haven't figured out how to turn the radio off but keep the screen and turn by turn directions running.

While I haven't tried it, Osmand recently added support for Open Street Maps on Android Auto. I'm hopeful the experience is decent, but not willing to pay for it at the moment.

Re: TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation

#230

Post by kube-system »

pkulak wrote: post #211
kube-system wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't have to plug in my phone, or even look at it. I get turn by turn in the binnacle AND the heads-up display. And on top of that, it _doesn't_ do all the silly stuff that Google does to make people think it's so great, like routing me through some residential neighborhood to save 45 seconds. Apple CarPlay + Apple Maps checks all of those boxes in my car.

I don't get it. You don't have to look at your phone and you get turn-by-turn in your HUD by using Apple Maps?

Correct. Many new vehicles integrate the CarPlay APIs into the vehicle quite well. And it has wireless carplay, so I don't even take the phone out of my pocket. It just auto-connects when I start the car. I press the voice command button on my steering wheel, tell Siri to navigate somewhere, and all of the navigation displays (hud/cluster/infotainment display) in my car display the directions that Apple Maps is spitting out. It works identically to the way a factory nav would otherwise work.
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