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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

#61

Post by hef19898 »

the_duke wrote: post #53
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…

You are spot on. I see this attitude in many domains, even among younger generations in startups where the majority of co-founders aren't developers, or after the original co-founders are sidelined by business people. Software is just considered a necessary chore needed to do business, almost never a core part of the business with inherent value. It's one of the reasons why Europe has almost no significant players in…

Not in the web / ad space you mean.

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

#62

Post by gregsadetsky »

tsunamifury wrote: post #23

I had a Porsche Taycan almost kill me and my entire family due to the absolutely negligent engineering team at porsche. An update was applied which killed the motor due to a stack overflow error — while driving! Porsche set up the error handling to kill the engine immediately with even the slightest error. I testified along with fellow owners to the NHTSA and got all Taycans recalled. The arrogance and denial that Po…

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 ECUs in the vehicle can, in certain instances, incorrectly and sporadically detect a potentially faulty communication, set an error memory entry, and trigger a shutdown of the power train, resulting in loss of motive power.”

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

#63

Post by davidro80 »

tsunamifury wrote: post #23

I had a Porsche Taycan almost kill me and my entire family due to the absolutely negligent engineering team at porsche. An update was applied which killed the motor due to a stack overflow error — while driving! Porsche set up the error handling to kill the engine immediately with even the slightest error. I testified along with fellow owners to the NHTSA and got all Taycans recalled. The arrogance and denial that Po…

Thank you for speaking up. That is horrifying. I am glad you and your family are okay.

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

#64

Post by sgjohnson »

geodel wrote: post #47
chrisseaton wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Five separate companies cannot be described as having a meaningful monopoly between them. And there are hundreds of companies that pay at that level in the US, not just FAANG. Reality is European workers are under-paid, not US workers over-paid. Also curious what you think is different in Australia? Are software salaries there like in the US and above somewhere like London?

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…

> 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 quality software which many(not you) seems to be arguing here.

That's a different problem. That's because you, the user, are not a customer of Atlassian. Companies and their micromanagers, however, love JIRA.

Microsoft is in the same boat. Virtually no users of their products are actually their customers.

That's how you get away with producing very crappy software, even if you hire the top talent.

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

#65

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #4

I don't want any of this in a car. I want analog/tactile nobs, zero connectivity, and at most a power cable and holder to plug in a smart phone. Anyone left that provides this?

It’s like trying to find a cathode ray tube TV anymore: technically possible to produce, but economically infeasible in terms of costs. Chips are just cheaper than going analogue, even with the current shortages.

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

#66

Post by pedalpete »

astrange wrote: post #52
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…

> IMHO the only countries that really understand software at both a technical and business value add level are US, AUS, Canada, China, with India less so but in that group and Japan just barely getting in. What are Australia and Canada doing in there? Australia has… Atlassian? Besides that, I’ve only heard of developers in Aus/Canada/Japan being well paid if they work for US companies like Google or are parked there…

I'm a Canadian living in Australia.

Australia has much more than just Atlassian. Canva is the 9th most valuable private company according to crunchbase [1].

But you need to look deeper than just "who has the biggest most successful companies. Note, the comment says "countries that understand software".

From what I've seen, and one of the reasons I moved here, Australia values quality production. They understand where software drives business and invest in that.

I'm former NICTA/CSIRO, and those organizations used to be drivers of technology and research.

Canada is a major technology hub. Microsoft and Facebook both have major development centres in Canada. Of course, being so close to the US, most of the brain drain goes directly out of the country, but that is part of the country and the people understanding the value of software. The education is good, and so people go to where the dollars are.

Canada and Australia are not going to be able to compete with the US from a dollar perspective. So many of the best Canadians, Australians, Chinese and Indian are going to end up in the US.

[1]https://www.crunchbase.com/lists/crunchbase-private-unicorn-...

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

#67

Post by est31 »

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…

> But ("FSD" excepted) they spend more of their attention on what really matters: treating their vehicle as a modern electronic device. But the European car companies are still stuck in the mid 20th century and make the opposite branch cut. The rest of European industry is the same.

You can probably say the same about GM or Ford, and I'd extend this to companies that sell hardware products in general. In the US too, the hardware department of many hardware companies runs the show, even though the hardware sold still runs a lot of custom software.

Tesla was shaped by a guy who got rich thanks to having founded a software company, and he brought those practices to hardware. It's the exception rather than the norm.

So the question should be, with Tesla and Rivian both being pretty young, where are the european startups? There is so much expertise in Germany for building cars, you would think that it is the best place to found a car startup. But where are they? DHL couldn't find a single German buyer for their car company.

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

#68

Post by barbazoo »

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…

Pay aside, I wonder if the German automotive industry is just a particularly bad example. I've worked in Germany, Switzerland, Canada and now for an American company and I found that software companies aren't not that much different. I've also worked for an automotive supplier in Germany and can understand where parent is coming from.

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

#69

Post by TacticalCoder »

hef19898 wrote: post #61
the_duke wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are spot on. I see this attitude in many domains, even among younger generations in startups where the majority of co-founders aren't developers, or after the original co-founders are sidelined by business people. Software is just considered a necessary chore needed to do business, almost never a core part of the business with inherent value. It's one of the reasons why Europe has almost no significant players in…

Not in the web / ad space you mean.

Nope. The biggest european software company is, what, the german SAP. And SAP is tiny compared to US software companies.

Europe has something like six companies in the top 100 software companies when ranked by market cap and only one in the top 10 (the german SAP).

That's hardly being a "significant player in the non web / non ad space".

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

#70

Post by whb07 »

gumby wrote: post #21
adventured wrote: post #11

Producing really good software is really hard. Here's a tip for all the backwards big companies in Europe: pay your software engineers a lot more. Whatever you're paying now, increase it by 2x-3x. If you want the best, you're going to have to pay for it, or you're going to suffer the predictably mediocre results indefinitely (to the benefit of Tesla & Co.; Tesla's sales are now up to $67 billion; that's closing in on…

The salaries are a symptom of the problem, not the cause. Most companies in the world (though Europe in particular has no excuse) don't understand that software is a strategic (and existential) issue, so pay for it like any other thing in their BOM. cf my long comment on this subject.

Exactly! Most people view things simplistically and even backwards!

Why is Shake Shack better tasting than McDonalds? All they have to do is pay them better!

Why did Nokia fail when the iPhone launched? All they needed to do was pay devs better, duh!

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