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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

#51

Post by zelos »

cerol wrote: post #36
wjnc wrote: post #6

TomTom is such an interesting story in technology and finance. Went from zero to $ 10B+ between '05 - '07 [1]. Everyone you knew had one, used one, loved one. Then the sudden boom in mobile phones and mobile internet and the financial crisis. Total crash of the stock. Pretty much subsistence without any proper profits since '09-'10. Not enough IP to get bought, a few licensing deals here and there. Always falling rev…

As a marathon runner, I know TomTom mainly for its sports watches. But I feel they've been fading away slowly. Garmin is still the champion in that area, but both must be taking a hit with all the cheap chinese knock offs. At the end of the day, you don't even need a high end sports watch unless you're a high end athlete. Reliable location tracking and good battery life is all you need, every other information can be…

> But I feel they've been fading away slowly.

TomTom closed their sports division and made most of the staff redundant.

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

#52

Post by nerdponx »

cwilkes wrote: post #44
myst1 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most company's right now want to automate all skilled labor away as quickly as possible. CEOs don't want innovation, they want a saleable product with the highest profit margin and the least risk. Removing people was always the goal. I've worked at two jobs were in the first week I was told my goal was to automate myself so I could progress my career... Yup okay then...

Isn’t automation an innovation?

It is, but the gains to this innovation are captured almost entirely by your employer and not by you. Maybe if you're lucky you have a tiny ownership stake in the company, which if you are very lucky maybe entitles you to a tiny percentage of those gains.

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

#53

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

davidktr wrote: post #46
Aperocky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> due to the amount of specialization I see high amount of specialization but only after onboarding and not asked of potential candidates. All we ask are capable software engineers, who we then train to be very specialized in what we do.

And out of the entire work force, what percentage do you consider to be capable software engineers? 5%? 1%?

> 5%? 1%?

Why would you estimate so low? There are a lot of mediocre engineers, myself included, but even they are “capable” depending upon what they are tasked to do.

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

#54

Post by hellisothers »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #47
wjnc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netscape disbanded as a company in 2003. Why is TomTom still here? I like the questions at the end of a company since a large market I work in (insurance / life insurance) is dwindling as well. What does that do with companies? How do they communicate? What happens when the inevitable shrinking sets in and your brain drain is faster than the way you shrink? Should you ever actively terminate a company and tranfer IP…

> since a large market I work in (insurance / life insurance) is dwindling Out of curiosity, why is the life insurance market dwindling??

Less people with dependents (partners, kids)? Less people care or put thought into what happens after they die? Also anecdotally many/most peers I talk to about this say their company provides life insurance, I then point out the difference between this and actual term life insurance for when/if they change companies: “oh huh…”

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

#55

Post by reidjs »

cerol wrote: post #36
wjnc wrote: post #6

TomTom is such an interesting story in technology and finance. Went from zero to $ 10B+ between '05 - '07 [1]. Everyone you knew had one, used one, loved one. Then the sudden boom in mobile phones and mobile internet and the financial crisis. Total crash of the stock. Pretty much subsistence without any proper profits since '09-'10. Not enough IP to get bought, a few licensing deals here and there. Always falling rev…

As a marathon runner, I know TomTom mainly for its sports watches. But I feel they've been fading away slowly. Garmin is still the champion in that area, but both must be taking a hit with all the cheap chinese knock offs. At the end of the day, you don't even need a high end sports watch unless you're a high end athlete. Reliable location tracking and good battery life is all you need, every other information can be…

There is a luxury market among social athletes for these watches. Rolex for runners/bikers.

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

#56

Post by normie3000 »

hvjackson wrote: post #48

Maybe this is just my consumer perspective but I feel like TomTom really missed on a pivot to other GPS-related products that Garmin has successfully nailed. 10-15 years ago both companies were known mainly for car sat-nav systems but Garmin now has an incredibly diverse product line with well-liked fitness watches, bike computers, exploring/off-grid satellite communicators, marine charts, aviation, etc. Whereas TomT…

Wasn’t Garmin already an established company with other GPS-based product lines before they got into car satnav?

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

#57

Post by cerol »

zelos wrote: post #51
cerol wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a marathon runner, I know TomTom mainly for its sports watches. But I feel they've been fading away slowly. Garmin is still the champion in that area, but both must be taking a hit with all the cheap chinese knock offs. At the end of the day, you don't even need a high end sports watch unless you're a high end athlete. Reliable location tracking and good battery life is all you need, every other information can be…

> But I feel they've been fading away slowly. TomTom closed their sports division and made most of the staff redundant.

That explains it. I recently had to download their activity upload app, but it was nowhere to be found on their website. Eventually I found a binary somewhere on the internet and it worked, and their upload infrastructure is still running it seems. As long as I can get the activities from my 8 year old TomTom Runner to my Strava account, I'm good.

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

#58

Post by fumeux_fume »

tluyben2 wrote: post #29
belter wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the owner of several TomTom devices, who tried a smartphone and google maps as an alternative, my experience is that the maps are of higher quality and the navigation recommendations better. Multiple times, when in a Taxi in a foreign country, that used the usual solution of smartphone and Google maps, managed to get on time and find a tricky destination by popping up my trusted TomTom.

Guess it depends on the location? We used it to drive through rural Canada and if we had followed any of the many wrong ways it tried to send us, we would be very dead.

I have TomTom as the built in nav for my car (2021 model). It's awful compared to Google maps and we live in a highly urbanized area so maybe it's just bad in general. Seeing the company's continual decline comports with my experience with their main product.

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

#59

Post by wcunning »

madiator wrote: post #3

> Regrettably, this will have an intended impact on approximately 500 employees in our Maps unit, equivalent to around 10% of our total global headcount. At least they are honest about it. I am currently reading the first chapter of 21 lessons for the 21st century and it fills me up with a bit of dread. People having been losing jobs for a long time, but in the future it will get harder to get new ones due to the amo…

On the other hand, I work in autonomy role at an automaker and we have need for a bunch of people in mapping technology, so they may be well positioned to move to technician roles in related areas. Creative destruction doesn't always have to wipe out the value of "old" skills.

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

#60

Post by ben_w »

jopsen wrote: post #16
ben_w wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember hearing much the same words (cf. “My job is to make myself redundant”) in 2004. I’m fairly sure this was the goal at least as far back as when ship builders switched from high-skilled artisans to carve each pulley for the sails individually and by hand, to using jigs so that low-skilled carpenters could make a lot that were almost as good for a fraction of the price.

> when ship builders switched from high-skilled artisans to carve each pulley for the sails individually and by hand, to using jigs so that low-skilled carpenters could make a lot... Sounds like an interesting story, do you have a link :D

Sadly not, it was from a TV documentary
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