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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

#91

Post by s1artibartfast »

topaz0 wrote: post #87
noasaservice wrote: post #2

Damn. And instead of reinvesting and furthering R&D, product lines, and more - they're just chopping 10% (or 450 people). That's a hell of a lot of institutional knowledge just gone. It also goes to show that when I automate, I should keep it hidden. That's because I do not receive the gains of automation. Instead, I receive more work or get laid off.

What they should really do is take those productivity gains and use them to allow the same number of workers to do less work each, for the same pay.

What productivity gains? The company makes less and less money every year. Revenue per employee is trending down, not up.

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

#92

Post by scarface74 »

alFReD-NSH wrote: post #73
dtech wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pretty much lost because free (subsidized) alternatives like Google Maps became available, pretty much the same story as Netscape. It probably didn't help that their maps were also incredibly expensive, €100-200 for western Europe in 2005 money.

Something that most commenters are missing is that TomTom's most revenue comes from B2B deals, which are mostly deals with automotive companies for car screens experience and also providing maps data for products like Bing Maps.

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

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

#93

Post by wutbrodo »

tdfx wrote: post #88
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…

If it makes you feel better, Google doesn't have a second gold vein yet, either.

I'm always a little confused by this claim. Focusing on revenue-generating products and not the user products they use to sell them: Google Search was their first success, then AdSense (third-party display ads), then YouTube. The latter two each make almost $30B/yr (run rate). Ignoring ads, Google Cloud makes >$20B/yr, as do Google hardware sales, with an additional $30B/yr from "non-advertising Other".

I don't really understand how one supports this claim without using decidedly non-standard definitions and grouping of revenue. If you insist on lumping together separate, wildly-successful revenue-generating products into overbroad groups by the manner in which the revenue is collected, and ignore a couple of objectively enormous revenue streams: Do you similarly feel that Apple "hasn't found a second gold vein" beyond "hardware sales"?

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

#94

Post by throwaway2037 »

hellisothers wrote: post #54
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…”

Most growth in insurance is coming from developing countries at this point. They still have rapid economic and population growth.

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

#95

Post by groovybits »

alaricus wrote: post #77
fbn79 wrote: post #62

Using TomTom web map API for a project and they are really well developed. Great product that can compete with Google Maps.

I think Apple Maps is basically TomTom with a Apple logo slapped to it.

"The main provider of map data is TomTom, but data is also supplied by Automotive Navigation Data, Getchee, Hexagon AB, IGN, Increment P, Intermap Technologies, LeadDog, MDA Information Systems, OpenStreetMap, and Waze."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maps#Features

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

#96

Post by alaricus »

tdfx wrote: post #88
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…

If it makes you feel better, Google doesn't have a second gold vein yet, either.

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

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

#97

Post by alaricus »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #11
noasaservice wrote: post #2

Damn. And instead of reinvesting and furthering R&D, product lines, and more - they're just chopping 10% (or 450 people). That's a hell of a lot of institutional knowledge just gone. It also goes to show that when I automate, I should keep it hidden. That's because I do not receive the gains of automation. Instead, I receive more work or get laid off.

It's not clear from the article what the 500 people are doing - they could be doing manual data entry or map validation tasks which are made redundant by the new "automated mapmaking platform" built by others (developers/engineers etc). The saving from those roles could well be going to be reinvested in R&D and product lines.

It's probably better to outsource manual map updates to OpenStreetMap

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

#98

Post by rickdeckard »

colechristensen wrote: post #79
dtech wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pretty much lost because free (subsidized) alternatives like Google Maps became available, pretty much the same story as Netscape. It probably didn't help that their maps were also incredibly expensive, €100-200 for western Europe in 2005 money.

Free mapping existed before Google Maps. Mapping isn't the hard part or the expensive part, the hardware is. Smartphones have GPS and when people started getting smartphones, the value of having a separate navigation devices went to zero-ish unless it's built in to your car or maybe some low power thing for wilderness exploration (or having a boat or a plane or that kind of thing)

> Free mapping existed before Google Maps.

Not sure if free mapping really existed as an accessible (mobile) product, considering that nearly everyone had to buy the mapdata from dedicated companies (Navteq and TeleAtlas dominated the market, Navteq was later acquired by Nokia, TeleAtlas by TomTom)

In any case, free NAVIGATION didn't exist until Google Maps came along, completely disrupting the whole industry of "casual" Navigation solutions. Hardware wasn't even the issue, companies worked out profitable compact hardware solutions, introduced different tiers from Entry to Premium and in parallel TomTom (and Wayfinder et al) started to offer Navigation as a subscription service directly and as white-label via mobile carriers, with applications for J2ME, Windows PPC, Series60 (Nokia, Samsung,..), Symbian UIQ (Sony, Motorola). They had a robust offering, quality maps and plenty of added datasets like POI, speed-information, radar-warning,... (anyone remembers the celebrity voice packages?)

Then Google opened Navigation as public beta, grabbed a huge chunk of this market and later added offline maps to grab another chunk of it (for navigation in international roaming). The quality was far below any competitor, but it was free and for occasional use totally sufficient...

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

#99

Post by tablespoon »

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…

> 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 amount of specialization you need to acquire.

In the future, complementary euthanasia will be part of your severance package.

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

#100

Post by wonderbore »

alaricus wrote: post #96
tdfx wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it makes you feel better, Google doesn't have a second gold vein yet, either.

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)

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