If you see one of those these days, it's quite likely attached to someone who thinks pretty carefully about their tools.
If that doesn't make a lot of sense, consider this: it's a general purpose computing device with a suite of acceptable productivity software (and third party ecosystem) that gets over 24 hours of battery life off of 4 AAs. Very useful for head-down writing/thinking.
It's very hard to believe that Ford will be able to compete for talent with the hottest startups in Silicon Valley. Would someone really take a position there over a similar one at Google, Apple or Uber? Or a smaller startup?
Out of those three you mentioned? No brainer. But those aren't startups, by any stretch of the word. What ford really has to compete with is actual startups. Companies that are 10-100 people, offering positions where people can make a difference.
People can make a difference in a startup if it takes off. They can also make a difference by doing a small part of the work of a huge company which half the people in the world have heard about and from which hundreds of millions of people buy very expensive, important products.
If Ford can convince us that working for them is a path toward making motoring better for a hundred thousand people per vehicle model, wouldn't we be interested? Or are we only up for hacking on prototypes whose main hope of mass production is getting acquired by a major maker?
My main point was that at a startup I most likely would have the opportunity to shape the engineering culture, hire people, architect, and build a company from the ground up. I wouldn't have to deal with the horrifying corporate culture that comes with any massive company.
Without going on a spiel about the realities (often times) of working for startups, I'd say that - if Ford gets/hires the right people, I can't see a major reason not to consider them over many an SV startup. They at the least should have resources.
Same here. I'd love to work in automotive tech. I recently came across Koenigsegg's camshaft-less, pneumatic valve actuator system and it made me question everything I know about cars/bikes.
Good question... I guess I don't really care as long as the projects I get to work on are interesting and I actually get to work rather than dealing with bureaucracy. I like when big companies essentially create internal startups which are independently managed.
Subsidiaries are better than the mothership, but it's very hard for subsidiaries to get things done. (Lots of great ideas at Xerox/PARC, but they struggled to bring any to market) The Ford subsidiaries are forbidden from selling outside of Ford. That limits the customer base. Meanwhile, there won't be much in the way of equity, so hiring/retaining will be tough.
Fair points, but as someone who is about -$25,000 in the last 9 years on ISOs/equity at startups, equity isn't something I'm really looking for or caring about unless I'm joining a very early stage company.
Would you really take the Ford bureaucracy over Google auto's? I can understand taking Ford for work-life balance, but I haven't heard anyone claim that's a reason to work there.
If people have true success stories of corporate outposts out here, please share. I'm happy to be proven wrong.
I personally slightly prefer deeper management structures, all else being equal, because they usually result in less management I have to directly deal with. In "flat" organizations it's often the case that you're not very deep in the org chart, but the layer you're on is densely webbed, so there are 3 or 4 people in the level above you who you de-facto report to in one way or another. With more hierarchical organizations you're usually insulated from these other managers because you only directly report to one. For me, having fewer layers of management above me, but in return having to deal directly with a larger number of individual managers, isn't a good tradeoff.
(This is assuming a roughly normal company overall. Something that really takes being flat seriously, like a worker's cooperative, might be different, but I've never worked at such a place.)
Absolutely. Working on auto-related stuff would be far more interesting to me than any of those three you mentioned.
Sure, but the question here is would you rather work on auto-related stuff at Ford or Apple? Admittedly I have no idea what Apple is up to, but I do know from a couple of acquaintances working in the car industry that they've recently interviewed a ton of automotive engineers.
> Sure, but the question here is would you rather work on auto-related stuff at Ford or Apple?
Ford, of course. Where my manager and my manager's manager and so on know about the technical aspects of automobile development, facilities for automobile-specific testing (engine test cells, turbocharger test cells, wind tunnels, anechoic chambers, etc.) are available, experienced technicians can advise me...
Given how many engineers I know of whom have left traditional car companies to go work for automotive 'startups' it seems that they have a real problem holding on to talent despite the advantages you mentioned.
Well, automotive engineering is a very big field involving lots of disciplines (mechanics, combustion, modelling, NVH, design, aerodynamics, etc.) so I assume it heavily depends on what you like to do :)
I have the same amount of knowledge of the internal workings of either company: none!
But I do know that if I wanted to get into the auto industry, I'd rather go with the one that has 100 years experience instead of the one just getting started.
It depends on what you mean by "auto-related stuff." In-Vehicle entertainment? I'd go to Apple. Powertrain management (the stuff that I'm more interested in)? Ford, no question.
It's really unclear to me why a Ford would try to compete in SV given the level of competition and CoL. Sure, maybe establish an innovation center somewhere other than Michigan if only to send a signal that this is something new.But if you're trying to get good people, offer premiums in other locations that have a lot of good people--or even figure out some innovative remote work/travel work programs. You don't take on the Googles head-on.
Chances are there's somebody who is #2 at one of those companies and wants to be #1 and call the shots. Give that person a call, promise a budget in the millions and a chance to his product in millions of cars within a few years, and see what happens.
Better for Ford, there will be a #2 who isn't #2 on purely technical grounds but just because (s)he didn't arrive at just the right time, like the current #1 luckily did.
>Patel: Are you going to want them to design cars? Fields: No
Not sure how they're going to focus on software without integrating that with car design, maybe it's the whole "FordPay" allusion that was made later but this just seems not integrated or solution-driven enough to compete with Telsa, Google, Apple or Uber.
Just seems like Ford wants it's finger in all pies.
In the same vein of startup-like enclave within a large institutions but in the Boston area, Shell has a startup/incubator space in Cambridge that do innovation on drilling and exploration.
Also lots of major hospitals also have "innovation centers" that try to innovate on in-patient and out-patient care and IoT in a clinical setting setting.
Also finally, also very curious if GE's move to Boston will be just for tax breaks or if they are planning to open up an tech incubator of their own in the area:
Some of what the guy says is generic business speak. But then he says this:
"We’re a brand that’s recognized around the world consistently. We don’t have different brands in different parts of the world."
Well, you have Lincoln (and for much of history, Mercury) in the US. They sell your cars under different names, but don't really exist much outside of North America. Then you have Mazda, your activities with which I cannot summarize better than to quote Wikipedia:
"The Mazda B-Series and Ford Ranger models sold in North America were developed by Ford, whereas models sold elsewhere under the same badge were engineered by Mazda."
So no. You aren't a single brand everywhere. It's hard to see how you could claim this with a straight face.
While I agree that the article is all business-speak ("we're just like Apple!" said every auto exec ever), the Mazda/Ford partnership is basically done as of the market crash. Ford at one point owned 33% of it in the 90s, now down to 2.1%.
The article is certainly generic business speak I think he's probably referring to the practice of using different brands in different countries. In Australia general motors is known as Holden. Ford is Ford.
Even if we restrict the discussion to Australia, Ford is not the only Ford. Witness the Mazda BT-50, which is actually a Ford Ranger in disguise. In Southeast Asia, Mazda light trucks are probably the most popular Ford vehicles on the road.
I found it strange that the person in charge would bother to make a statement which seems totally counter to reality. What is he playing at? Is he saying they will disband Lincoln soon, as they did Mercury? Or is he putting forth a brand vision which sounds nice but carries no weight? If the former this is big news. If the latter this raises questions about the vision for the "separate but connected" FSM LLC.
"We want to become a tech company" is the new management fad. Culture change is incredibly hard and requires really great leadership. Capital One wanted to become a software company just like Ford says, the difference, Capital One already had great leaders. Is Ford full of great leaders?
Sure Ford can throw some money at a few labs and occasionally turn something into a product. Spending money on R&D doesn't make you a software company.
> Capital One wanted to become a software company just like Ford says, the difference, Capital One already had great leaders. Is Ford full of great leaders?
Chrysler and GM both went bankrupt during the financial crisis. Ford didn't. It's by far the best run car company in North America.
The fact that Ford didn't need the bailouts that GM and Chrysler got (though I'm aware they still had the line line of credit available) suggests that their leadership is at least strong within the American car making industry, for whatever that's worth. On the side of whether they're developing/integrating tech effectively: on the one hand, that Microsoft system they farmed out for info/music is abysmal and everyone knows it; on the other hand, the Focus RS they've just released shows some impressive work put into even a lower-end car (particularly I'm thinking of the way they handle power delivery to the rear wheels in tight corners.)
At least in what I've seen, Ford is one of the few mass-production car makers doing some pretty interesting stuff.
>Focus RS they've just released shows some impressive work put into even a lower-end car (particularly I'm thinking of the way they handle power delivery to the rear wheels in tight corners.)
That sort of system, while important, is not particularly complicated or advanced though. The tech been employed in various forms for over a decade, I don't see the software implementation as evidence of competency within ford.
A credit line of up to $9 billion (which no bank would have ever gave them), additional legislation (Ford was the second most profiteure of the cash-for-clunkers program) and 5$ billion from the DOE loan program does sound like a kind of bailout for me.
Yeah, from the perspective of them getting easy access to the taxes I've paid, I definitely agree that they got a bailout. Maybe I should have said that they were 1st place in the field of losers that was the American auto industry. And while that isn't particularly inspiring, it may lend support to the notion that I was trying to propose, which is that they have at least some ability to handle potential crises that were evidently easy to fall into (at least for GM and Chrysler, who comprised the American car industry, aside from Ford.)
In hindsight on the whole comment, though, I'm probably just pleased with Ford right now because I'm quite impressed with the Focus RS, but that certainly doesn't prove that their leadership is strong.
That has nothing to with the ability to transform an organizational culture into one that values validated experiments over plans, resiliency over zero defects, collaboration over turf.
I wonder if its a fad so much as recognizing the threat from 200k+ people reserving a car before they've ever seen it with their own eyeballs. I know if I ran a car company I would be deathly afraid of becoming another nokia in an iPhone world. They are extremely far behind on these fronts.
Point #2 - exactly. If the car was available now - in production - I think a lot more people would of put the 1k down. I myself, my lease runs out March 2017 - I can't not have a car waiting on the Model 3 to come out. I'll have to wait for the next round.
Ford makes status-symbol cars, so that's irrelevant. The important question is, could Ford produce a car, status symbol or not, that 200k people would put down even a refundable $1k deposit on, sight unseen?
Going back to the F-150 again, it's a status symbol for some people. I could probably go down to a dealer today and grab one with with most/all of what I want, or wait a little bit and get what I want.
A deposit isn't needed. It's a silly comparison anyway as the Tesla is an entirely new thing, vs already established.
A better comparison would be if 5 years from Tesla announced a new major revision of the model 3 (similar to what ford did with the F-150 this last year) and got 200k orders immediately.
now all this being said, if Ford announced a brand new electric vehicle tomorrow with similar specs/price as the Tesla I really doubt they could get preorders like this.
Unlike phones, cars' price prohibits most people from paying grossly more for a slighly better car (it's say $40k extra for a car vs $400 for a phone). Plus, there are already "iPhones" on the market (Mercedes, BMW etc.).
Check out a 2016 Honda Accord Touring that anybody can pick up for 31k. (or the civic for even cheaper with lane assist and all that) Honda seems to recognize there is a pretty major threat out there... but even they are behind.
All I'm saying is there seems to be a pretty big difference in whats easily and cheaply possible and what the status quo auto industry execs have been doing. A good example is every single car at this point should come with a touch screen head unit and a not-invented-here operating system on it. Traditionally all these execs believe that such a thing should cost thousands of dollars in upgrades either by model class or just the configuration itself. Few seem to realize they can easily generate 10x the revenue with software features and upgrades than they can with the hardware feature upgrade itself. The cost difference is pretty negligible... but the status quo gives them far less potential.
By definition most everyone inside a buracracy is focused inward, on their own performance signaling. I doubt many people noticed without providing some sort of defensive rationalization like "PC guys aren't going to just come in and..."
> I know if I ran a car company I would be deathly afraid of becoming another Nokia
It's far worse than that. The top phone manufacturers before Apple were Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Blackberry.
These transitions are wrecking entire fields of players. It's not enough to avoid becoming the next Nokia, you have to sprint like hell and pray to Jesus, Allah, and Vishnu that you can become the next Samsung.
And unless you have a major government behind you, odds are you're not the next Samsung.
It may be a fad, or a realization of 'software is eating the world'. Each year more industries are moving from software enabled, to software being key component and differentiation.
Unfortunately software is also fastest moving and most labor intensive of all components, it is also permeated across business. So you have to build a culture for it. So a company moving earlier will have key advantage over a company trying to acquire software and its culture at last moment.
We have seen it happen earlier in industries, and it will keep on happening. Will Ford be able to pull it up a question, but there is no other road to take.
Ford has a deployment advantage. They can make stuff in volume at low cost. Tesla has to learn to do that, and fast. (It's nice having an order backlog, but now you have to produce at a cost where those orders are profitable.) Apple outsources their manufacturing. Google has very little manufacturing capability.
I told my mom it's time for you to look for a new vechicle.
I've always worked on her vechicles.
I mentioned maybe a Subaru? A few weeks went by, and through an email she said she wanted a new F-150. She, is I belive in her 70's. She always lied about her age, so I don't know her exact age.
I just thought it was a strange pick. Ford is doing someting right with that truck. I asked her why, and she said she liked the aluminum body. I think it has more to do with just the ride height? She's small in stature.
I've always liked the f-150, but went away from Ford when I realized I can put 250,000 on a Toyota.
> "We want to become a tech company" is the new management fad
I'd say that it's the new necessity for any large-scale operation. Software (and tech overall) is integrated into everything, and relegating it to an expense column is increasingly a mistake in any enterprise.
It is most certainly the new necessity. That said:
1. This fact is not widely recognized by CEOs
2. The culture change required is immensely difficult
I do this for a living (teach Fortune 500 to make software like SV). The culture change is immensely hard and most organizations flat out cannot make the change. They will see more nimble competitors emerge, margins will shrink, then they'll consolidate, and continue to seek regulatory protection via lobbyists.
People underestimate the importance of culture change. I hate this word, but there has to be a company-wide re-education if any company is serious about becoming more high-tech. Often, measures like opening a new R&D lab or pumping more money here or there gets wasted since it rarely has a wider effect. When the effect isn't wider, there is a lack of critical mass for high-impact high-tech projects to get out of the door. The internal friction is generally high in big old companies, and most people causing the friction tend to be old-school "company-persons" who have fixed mindsets about where the company should be. Many of these people aren't necessarily tech savvy and some even pride themselves on not understanding computers as though the ignorance burnishes their skills in science/mechanics/biochem or whatever is the core of their company.
If they really wanted to affect change within the company, they'd make bolder decisions with upper management to change the core of the company from within and up top.
As aside, I watched "A faster horse" documentary on Netflix a couple of months ago. It is a documentary on the evolution and the design of the 2015 Ford Mustang. The passion of getting a car from concept through to Job1 is infectious.
So, perhaps a silly question...but if Ford is going to be competing for the best talent Silicon Valley has to offer, will they establish a stronger presence in the region?
I am not trying to knock Detroit or Dearborn, but it seems like they would need to do this. Maybe I missed it in the article. I think it would be kind of hard (even given the cost of living) to get top talent to migrate from, say Cupertino, to Dearborn en masse.
I know the person who got permission from Ford leadership to open and lead their Silicon Valley lab in 2012. They gave him funding to select a building, and select furniture, but somehow neglected to authorize any meaningful hiring for over a year, except a few interns. He sat in a virtually empty office.
When he finally left this situation behind, Ford didn't hire a new lab head for nearly a year after that.
Press coverage for Ford's new presence in Silicon Valley continued unabated during this entire period. When you read these articles, you should picture very expensive office space in Palo Alto, sitting empty.
90 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 222 ms ] threadIf that doesn't make a lot of sense, consider this: it's a general purpose computing device with a suite of acceptable productivity software (and third party ecosystem) that gets over 24 hours of battery life off of 4 AAs. Very useful for head-down writing/thinking.
If Ford can convince us that working for them is a path toward making motoring better for a hundred thousand people per vehicle model, wouldn't we be interested? Or are we only up for hacking on prototypes whose main hope of mass production is getting acquired by a major maker?
My main point was that at a startup I most likely would have the opportunity to shape the engineering culture, hire people, architect, and build a company from the ground up. I wouldn't have to deal with the horrifying corporate culture that comes with any massive company.
If people have true success stories of corporate outposts out here, please share. I'm happy to be proven wrong.
If the management tree is deeper than log(2) your age, run away :-)
(This is assuming a roughly normal company overall. Something that really takes being flat seriously, like a worker's cooperative, might be different, but I've never worked at such a place.)
Sure, but the question here is would you rather work on auto-related stuff at Ford or Apple? Admittedly I have no idea what Apple is up to, but I do know from a couple of acquaintances working in the car industry that they've recently interviewed a ton of automotive engineers.
Ford, of course. Where my manager and my manager's manager and so on know about the technical aspects of automobile development, facilities for automobile-specific testing (engine test cells, turbocharger test cells, wind tunnels, anechoic chambers, etc.) are available, experienced technicians can advise me...
Given how many engineers I know of whom have left traditional car companies to go work for automotive 'startups' it seems that they have a real problem holding on to talent despite the advantages you mentioned.
But I do know that if I wanted to get into the auto industry, I'd rather go with the one that has 100 years experience instead of the one just getting started.
It depends on what you mean by "auto-related stuff." In-Vehicle entertainment? I'd go to Apple. Powertrain management (the stuff that I'm more interested in)? Ford, no question.
Perhaps I'm just jaded by the traditional Detroit mismanagement.
Secondly, $$$ can go a long way in competing for talent
Better for Ford, there will be a #2 who isn't #2 on purely technical grounds but just because (s)he didn't arrive at just the right time, like the current #1 luckily did.
Not sure how they're going to focus on software without integrating that with car design, maybe it's the whole "FordPay" allusion that was made later but this just seems not integrated or solution-driven enough to compete with Telsa, Google, Apple or Uber.
Just seems like Ford wants it's finger in all pies.
http://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/innovating-togeth...
Also lots of major hospitals also have "innovation centers" that try to innovate on in-patient and out-patient care and IoT in a clinical setting setting.
http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-...
Also finally, also very curious if GE's move to Boston will be just for tax breaks or if they are planning to open up an tech incubator of their own in the area:
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/blog/techflash/2016/03/ge-...
"We’re a brand that’s recognized around the world consistently. We don’t have different brands in different parts of the world."
Well, you have Lincoln (and for much of history, Mercury) in the US. They sell your cars under different names, but don't really exist much outside of North America. Then you have Mazda, your activities with which I cannot summarize better than to quote Wikipedia:
"The Mazda B-Series and Ford Ranger models sold in North America were developed by Ford, whereas models sold elsewhere under the same badge were engineered by Mazda."
So no. You aren't a single brand everywhere. It's hard to see how you could claim this with a straight face.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_BT-50
Ford and Mazda vehicles are manufactured in Thailand by a single company:
https://www.autoalliance.co.th/en/about_product.php
Sure Ford can throw some money at a few labs and occasionally turn something into a product. Spending money on R&D doesn't make you a software company.
I wish them the best.
Chrysler and GM both went bankrupt during the financial crisis. Ford didn't. It's by far the best run car company in North America.
At least in what I've seen, Ford is one of the few mass-production car makers doing some pretty interesting stuff.
That sort of system, while important, is not particularly complicated or advanced though. The tech been employed in various forms for over a decade, I don't see the software implementation as evidence of competency within ford.
In hindsight on the whole comment, though, I'm probably just pleased with Ford right now because I'm quite impressed with the Focus RS, but that certainly doesn't prove that their leadership is strong.
2. It's a 1k deposit. I just purchased a car last year, otherwise I probably would have put down 1k on the chance I do decide to buy a Tesla.
A deposit isn't needed. It's a silly comparison anyway as the Tesla is an entirely new thing, vs already established.
A better comparison would be if 5 years from Tesla announced a new major revision of the model 3 (similar to what ford did with the F-150 this last year) and got 200k orders immediately.
now all this being said, if Ford announced a brand new electric vehicle tomorrow with similar specs/price as the Tesla I really doubt they could get preorders like this.
All I'm saying is there seems to be a pretty big difference in whats easily and cheaply possible and what the status quo auto industry execs have been doing. A good example is every single car at this point should come with a touch screen head unit and a not-invented-here operating system on it. Traditionally all these execs believe that such a thing should cost thousands of dollars in upgrades either by model class or just the configuration itself. Few seem to realize they can easily generate 10x the revenue with software features and upgrades than they can with the hardware feature upgrade itself. The cost difference is pretty negligible... but the status quo gives them far less potential.
It's far worse than that. The top phone manufacturers before Apple were Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Blackberry.
These transitions are wrecking entire fields of players. It's not enough to avoid becoming the next Nokia, you have to sprint like hell and pray to Jesus, Allah, and Vishnu that you can become the next Samsung.
And unless you have a major government behind you, odds are you're not the next Samsung.
Unfortunately software is also fastest moving and most labor intensive of all components, it is also permeated across business. So you have to build a culture for it. So a company moving earlier will have key advantage over a company trying to acquire software and its culture at last moment.
We have seen it happen earlier in industries, and it will keep on happening. Will Ford be able to pull it up a question, but there is no other road to take.
Something else to consider. Tesla sold about 50k model S last year. Ford sold that many F-150s, in a month.
I mentioned maybe a Subaru? A few weeks went by, and through an email she said she wanted a new F-150. She, is I belive in her 70's. She always lied about her age, so I don't know her exact age.
I just thought it was a strange pick. Ford is doing someting right with that truck. I asked her why, and she said she liked the aluminum body. I think it has more to do with just the ride height? She's small in stature.
I've always liked the f-150, but went away from Ford when I realized I can put 250,000 on a Toyota.
I'd say that it's the new necessity for any large-scale operation. Software (and tech overall) is integrated into everything, and relegating it to an expense column is increasingly a mistake in any enterprise.
I do this for a living (teach Fortune 500 to make software like SV). The culture change is immensely hard and most organizations flat out cannot make the change. They will see more nimble competitors emerge, margins will shrink, then they'll consolidate, and continue to seek regulatory protection via lobbyists.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3762974/
I am not trying to knock Detroit or Dearborn, but it seems like they would need to do this. Maybe I missed it in the article. I think it would be kind of hard (even given the cost of living) to get top talent to migrate from, say Cupertino, to Dearborn en masse.
edit: aside from the Innovation Center/Lab.
I know the person who got permission from Ford leadership to open and lead their Silicon Valley lab in 2012. They gave him funding to select a building, and select furniture, but somehow neglected to authorize any meaningful hiring for over a year, except a few interns. He sat in a virtually empty office.
When he finally left this situation behind, Ford didn't hire a new lab head for nearly a year after that.
Press coverage for Ford's new presence in Silicon Valley continued unabated during this entire period. When you read these articles, you should picture very expensive office space in Palo Alto, sitting empty.