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VW has had large problems getting their software processes straight. They've thrown money at the problem for years (instead of changing company culture, which n

by neals 2y ago

VW has had large problems getting their software processes straight. They've thrown money at the problem for years (instead of changing company culture, which needs to happen first) so I'm not surprised they'd buy a whole car company just for the software.

constantcrying 2y ago
>They've thrown money at the problem for years (instead of changing company culture, which needs to happen first) I don't think that is true at all. They even tried to create a separate company, just to focus on software, so that culture there could develop differently. It just didn't work out.
- dacryn 2y ago
  because they forced their policies and standards onto the new startup company. It's the classic mistake: you setup a separate 'startup style' company to move fast, but give them too much budget and too much rules, so they just spend the budget on rebuilding the same mess instead of innovation. It's a consultant heaven to make a lot of money, but in the end this really only works if the group company stays in the dark for a considerable amount of time and doesn't impose their ideas
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  > They even tried to create a separate company This is an attempt to sidestep the politically hairy problem of changing a company’s culture. This never works because the daughter company either gets eaten by the more powerful parent company‘s culture, or their output is ignored and never integrated back into the parent.
  - constantcrying 2y ago
    What do you do instead? The VW processes for mechanical, manufacturing and mechatronics engineering seem to work reasonably well. How do you change the culture of such a large company, without breaking what works?
    - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
      You recognize that software engineering is different from mechanical/electrical engineering and stop shooting yourself in the foot. This will only happen when a competent software guy is part of the top executive suite and has sufficient freedom to do what is necessary. I think the chances are slim, considering the general ineptitude regarding software development in German companies. They will get better until finally arriving at mediocre, but they will never be as great as American companies. I hope one day they manage to implement a functioning CarPlay in their VW Polos, it has been broken since years.
    - lucianbr 2y ago
      I expect people making tens of millions per year to figure it out. Are there no auto manufacturers with ok software? Presumably it's not impossible.
      - dagw 2y ago
        Are there no auto manufacturers with ok software? The only in house auto software people don't seem to completely hate is Tesla.
    - n_ary 2y ago
      The core issues of such daughter concerns is that, despite being a separate thing, a lot of "leadership" people from core management are shipped to run the separate thing. These leadership people carry over the whole process and cultural mess into the new place while claiming to be "startup culture". Secondly, one major issue that frequently occurs but goes unnoticed is that, the pay is abysmal. Basically, the leadership expect to hire talents for the same pay(or sometimes less) of what is paid in core group but forget that core group gets plenty other benefits(union benefits are immense things, educational budgets, pursue some other stuff for a while and then come back anytime to take up where you left off, family benefits, discounts, profit sharing etc.) and get confused when people obviously don't want to work for that kind of pay minus all the benefits. So eventually, they hire a lot of expensive consultants, who create lot of busywork to induce artificial lack of manpower to hire more of them. Eventually, a lot of budget is spent, only thing left to show are a lot of irrelevant proof of concepts. Then core group finance people comes asking for massive budget cuts, when all of these consultants leave(with any domain knowledge) and suddenly a small firefighter internal people have to start cleaning up the mess and work long hours. Thanks to good social benefits, most people internally get frustrated due to such bad conditions and leave and then eventually the company folds. Sadly, it is mostly a repeat playbook of big names and I have seen it happen three times already. I don't blame the consultant firms as it is not their fault to make as much billing as possible because they know there will be budget cut anytime. I don't blame internal people leaving because, they are never paid fairly, subjected to very bad conditions and they are free to leave and care about their wellbeing.
- Moldoteck 2y ago
  they tried to create a separate company, but culture was imported. It's called vw group for a reason. They have lot's of 'bureaucracy' and this is not specific just for vw. That's why things do happen so slow - changing the processes that do already work (poorly but work) is super hard when there are lot's of ppl that do praise these procedures
k8sToGo 2y ago
One of the reasons they replaced the CEO, thankfully.
lostlogin 2y ago
So there is Apple, a massive company that makes software and has struggled with its car project, and VW, a massive company that makes cars and has struggle with software. In another universe, I wonder if this could have been a partnership?
- dtech 2y ago
  Apparently working together with Apple is extremely difficult because they are so controlling and demanding, and that is even without the cultural and timezone difference, so I doubt it's viable.
  - ajb 2y ago
    Apple regularly does acquisitions (like, multiple per year), so I guess it's not impossible - but they seem to usually be much smaller companies which presumably assimilate. Their last big one[1] seems to have been the purchase of Intel's smartphone modem for $1B, still a lot smaller than VW's market cap of $58B. A company which does multiple acquisitions per year will have a team specialising in the integration of acquired companies, and practice and institutional knowledge of the issues of doing so. But a merger would be different - a smaller company will slot in under some existing executive, with maybe the CEO promoted into the top team if it's a really hot company; a merger would require the merger of two executive teams, which would be a difficult event. So yeah, might not be viable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
    - londons_explore 2y ago
      Might make sense to acquire part of VW. Ie. one or two brands, one or two factories, and a chunk of the design team. Then sign an IP/licensing deal that both halves of the new company have access to most/all of the IP developed historically.
      - swores 2y ago
        Or even make it a full acquisition, but allow VW to remain a separate organisation with its own CEO and own board who answer to Apple's shareholders (and/or to the very top Apple execs) rather than to a separate group of shareholders? I.E. securing any future VW profits, and ensuring that the IP licensing deal is indefinite, while staying hands off and allowing VW to keep doing what they do with the exception of using Apple software.

by neals 2y ago

constantcrying 2y ago

>They've thrown money at the problem for years (instead of changing company culture, which needs to happen first) I don't think that is true at all. They even tried to create a separate company, just to focus on software, so that culture there could develop differently. It just didn't work out.

dacryn 2y ago
because they forced their policies and standards onto the new startup company. It's the classic mistake: you setup a separate 'startup style' company to move fast, but give them too much budget and too much rules, so they just spend the budget on rebuilding the same mess instead of innovation. It's a consultant heaven to make a lot of money, but in the end this really only works if the group company stays in the dark for a considerable amount of time and doesn't impose their ideas
MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
> They even tried to create a separate company This is an attempt to sidestep the politically hairy problem of changing a company’s culture. This never works because the daughter company either gets eaten by the more powerful parent company‘s culture, or their output is ignored and never integrated back into the parent.
- constantcrying 2y ago
  What do you do instead? The VW processes for mechanical, manufacturing and mechatronics engineering seem to work reasonably well. How do you change the culture of such a large company, without breaking what works?
  - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    You recognize that software engineering is different from mechanical/electrical engineering and stop shooting yourself in the foot. This will only happen when a competent software guy is part of the top executive suite and has sufficient freedom to do what is necessary. I think the chances are slim, considering the general ineptitude regarding software development in German companies. They will get better until finally arriving at mediocre, but they will never be as great as American companies. I hope one day they manage to implement a functioning CarPlay in their VW Polos, it has been broken since years.
  - lucianbr 2y ago
    I expect people making tens of millions per year to figure it out. Are there no auto manufacturers with ok software? Presumably it's not impossible.
    - dagw 2y ago
      Are there no auto manufacturers with ok software? The only in house auto software people don't seem to completely hate is Tesla.
  - n_ary 2y ago
    The core issues of such daughter concerns is that, despite being a separate thing, a lot of "leadership" people from core management are shipped to run the separate thing. These leadership people carry over the whole process and cultural mess into the new place while claiming to be "startup culture". Secondly, one major issue that frequently occurs but goes unnoticed is that, the pay is abysmal. Basically, the leadership expect to hire talents for the same pay(or sometimes less) of what is paid in core group but forget that core group gets plenty other benefits(union benefits are immense things, educational budgets, pursue some other stuff for a while and then come back anytime to take up where you left off, family benefits, discounts, profit sharing etc.) and get confused when people obviously don't want to work for that kind of pay minus all the benefits. So eventually, they hire a lot of expensive consultants, who create lot of busywork to induce artificial lack of manpower to hire more of them. Eventually, a lot of budget is spent, only thing left to show are a lot of irrelevant proof of concepts. Then core group finance people comes asking for massive budget cuts, when all of these consultants leave(with any domain knowledge) and suddenly a small firefighter internal people have to start cleaning up the mess and work long hours. Thanks to good social benefits, most people internally get frustrated due to such bad conditions and leave and then eventually the company folds. Sadly, it is mostly a repeat playbook of big names and I have seen it happen three times already. I don't blame the consultant firms as it is not their fault to make as much billing as possible because they know there will be budget cut anytime. I don't blame internal people leaving because, they are never paid fairly, subjected to very bad conditions and they are free to leave and care about their wellbeing.
Moldoteck 2y ago
they tried to create a separate company, but culture was imported. It's called vw group for a reason. They have lot's of 'bureaucracy' and this is not specific just for vw. That's why things do happen so slow - changing the processes that do already work (poorly but work) is super hard when there are lot's of ppl that do praise these procedures

k8sToGo 2y ago

One of the reasons they replaced the CEO, thankfully.

lostlogin 2y ago

So there is Apple, a massive company that makes software and has struggled with its car project, and VW, a massive company that makes cars and has struggle with software. In another universe, I wonder if this could have been a partnership?

dtech 2y ago
Apparently working together with Apple is extremely difficult because they are so controlling and demanding, and that is even without the cultural and timezone difference, so I doubt it's viable.
- ajb 2y ago
  Apple regularly does acquisitions (like, multiple per year), so I guess it's not impossible - but they seem to usually be much smaller companies which presumably assimilate. Their last big one[1] seems to have been the purchase of Intel's smartphone modem for $1B, still a lot smaller than VW's market cap of $58B. A company which does multiple acquisitions per year will have a team specialising in the integration of acquired companies, and practice and institutional knowledge of the issues of doing so. But a merger would be different - a smaller company will slot in under some existing executive, with maybe the CEO promoted into the top team if it's a really hot company; a merger would require the merger of two executive teams, which would be a difficult event. So yeah, might not be viable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    Might make sense to acquire part of VW. Ie. one or two brands, one or two factories, and a chunk of the design team. Then sign an IP/licensing deal that both halves of the new company have access to most/all of the IP developed historically.
    - swores 2y ago
      Or even make it a full acquisition, but allow VW to remain a separate organisation with its own CEO and own board who answer to Apple's shareholders (and/or to the very top Apple execs) rather than to a separate group of shareholders? I.E. securing any future VW profits, and ensuring that the IP licensing deal is indefinite, while staying hands off and allowing VW to keep doing what they do with the exception of using Apple software.