Some further opinions from last year: https://twitter.com/BertelSchmitt/status/1550859623670095879
And another tweet I remember about cariad and rumors around it: https://twitter.com/itskyleconner/status/1549432590553288706
It's a mistake I keep seeing repeated in many big German SW companies: put in charge some old geezer from traditional industry who has a PhD from a well known German uni, who hasn't wrote any code in over 20 years, and has a top-down approach to SW dev like his team was designing car engines in the '80's. Then realize things aren't working out, give him a golden parachute and hire another overpaid crusty guy just like him but from another big company to shake up the org and ultimately achieve the same "results". Rinse and repeat.
The problem is with German corporate leadership mentality which is highly traditional and therefore strictly top-down and nobody at the top is up to date on the shit-show the SW devs are dealing with in the trenches, nor do they care to address this. It's a tragedy of the commons.
Ehhhh, I think they want to be PAID and PAMPERED like they work at Google. That's certainly not typical of Europe, automotive, or embedded hardware. Hey, anyone know how Tesla pays its software devs (outside of self-driving)?
I love how this is buried as the fifth point (and actually, isn't even the fifth point).
You want good software and software devs? Yeah, uh, hire and pay good people.
Time number one billion that some failed enterprise is discussed at the leadership level and everyone pretends that paying good people wouldn't have helped.
Instead, it's "management issues", aka the money you paid to execs that's the problem, not the people you know ACTUALLY MAKING YOUR FUCKING SOFTWARE.
IF you are a company with a CRITICAL software deficit, then I hate to tell you this, you probably need to spend money on good developers. Experienced, good developers.
Spinning off a new company under different management? That's deck chair rearranging. Actually, spinning off the software, which the parent company views as an annoying expense / cost and not a feature of quality or something that will close sales or build customer loyalty (which is HUGE in automotive) was a terrible idea, unless there was a fully top leadership endorsed billion dollar blank check to get it off the ground. Which of course, even without knowing, I know there wasn't buy-in.
Old car companies don't respect software. Name me one, just one, that provides software visibility of OBD-2 codes without having to buy some stupid OBD port that communicates with a smartphone? That provides techie metrics dashboards for fuel use, rpms, etc?
I mean, the DATA IS ON THE CAR'S INTERNAL NETWORK. That's why the OBD reader can read it.
Hate on Tesla and Elon all you want, but he fostered a company that had at least decent value in software. And I'm not even saying Tesla had GOOD software. It just has "OK" software, which is WAY better than any other company by a wide wide wide margin.
I can assure you that VW has great developers. But developers only develop, there’s a whole layer of people who decide what and how it is developed.