
Can Ford Turn Itself into a Tech Company? - georgecmu
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/09/magazine/tech-design-autonomous-future-cars-detroit-ford.html
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Aloha
I'd argue that Ford is already a technology company - just not one out of the
Silicon Valley model.

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rectang
Probably so. The kind of technology company where selling upper management on
investing in security, maintainability, testing, open source, heck even
version control is going to be difficult, because the people at the top don't
have the expertise to evaluate such proposals.

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CamTin
I'm pretty sure automobile manufacturing requires very rigorous technical
standards. Hell, it's the industry where QA was practically invented, with
most of the innovation occurring _in Detroit_ and even _at Ford_.

I trust an oldline automaker like Ford with safety-critical software
engineering before I'd trust any "startup", especially one from the Valley.
I'd bet consumers will feel the same. They'll feel safer climbing into a self-
driving car with a Ford badge on it than one with a Snap badge, no matter how
good Snap's marketing is, or if they ML software is open source.

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csours
Fun fact: Eiji Toyoda got a lot of his quality ideas FROM Ford in 1950! Toyota
(the company) then relentlessly pursued continuous improvement, to the point
where Ford (and every other OEM) had to re-learn what quality meant.

[http://www.autonews.com/article/20130923/OEM02/309239967/eij...](http://www.autonews.com/article/20130923/OEM02/309239967/eiji-
toyodas-rouge-trip-changed-auto-history)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiji_Toyoda](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiji_Toyoda)

One should take early Toyota stories with a grain of salt, as there may be
more than a little bit of hagiography.

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csours
> _Instead, I heard the Ford Motor Company described as a “mobility solutions
> provider” that engages in “multimodal journey planning.” People spoke about
> “whiteboarding” and “blue-skying” big ideas. I watched a video that
> described Ford’s efforts to build a “holistic, organic, interconnected
> system powered by a transportation operating system.”_

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Mission Statement:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4)

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joefourier
What definition of "tech company" doesn't already include a modern car
company? A modern car is a vastly more complex piece of engineering than most
"tech" companies' software, and even low-end ones contain dozens or more
microprocessors, requiring custom software for control, diagnostics, the
entertainment system, etc.

You can bang out a chat app in a 2 months and call yourself a tech company,
but spend 2 or more years designing and engineering a vehicle, developing both
hardware and software, to strict safety and efficiency specifications, and
what you're doing isn't technology?

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curiouscat321
I think the definition is more cultural. The culture of a large bureaucratic
car company is a lot different than most tech companies. They also have
different views on talent

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joefourier
Perhaps "IT company" or a similar term is more appropriate, then? Why is it
that software and Internet companies have reserved the term "tech" to
themselves, so much that their culture has infused the term itself?

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dragontamer
There's only one real question that needs to be answered.

Is Ford willing to spend $150k/year to $200k/year for a large number of senior
level developers to build out and train staff for the next 10 years to build a
thriving tech culture from within the company?

And will these higher-paid staff members have real power and control within
the company, such that they feel that they are doing useful and fulfilling
work?

If so, then yes, Ford (or anyone else really) can become a Tech Company. Money
and power, that's all developers want for the most part.

Give them money but without power to pursue interesting problems... then its
going to be harder to recruit. Give them power without money, and it will be
possible to get college kids maybe, but probably not the senior developers
needed to bootstrap a culture from the ground up.

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swagtricker
They have another problem to address as well: Detroit. Or, culturally
speaking, the high-strung midwest attitude. I say this having spent the first
15 years of my life about 30 miles outside of Detroit and then moved to the
Seattle area to finish high-school, college & start a software development
career. I've still got family back in Michigan, but they're so culturally
closed-minded & uptight I don't know if a $200k salary and dirt cheap houses
from what's left of The Great Recession would be enough put up with the rest
that's broken. Oh - and if you have kids, don't forget about the mess that is
the state educational system: Betsy DeVos' blueprint for destroying public
education nation-wide.

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CabSauce
"High-strung", "closed-minded"? I'm sort of offended. There's some good stuff
going on in Detroit and Ann Arbor. Not to mention Grand Rapids and others.

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Angostura
Don't worry - the poster's just being a bit closed-minded

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free_everybody
So no one can point out close-mindedness without also being close-minded?
Seems a bit close-minded.

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corpMaverick
Oh my God. I love this question. I worked for Ford 25 years ago (in
manufacturing). Great company. But some managers argued with a straight face
that we were NOT a technology company. Which can be translated to we don't
need to follow best software development practices and can get a way with
doing a half assed job.

Now days, every large company is a technology company. If you need to manage
1000s of retail stores you are a technology company. If you manage 100,000s of
SKUs you are a technology company. You cannot operate on a large scale without
being really good at technology. It is an attitude.

Ironically, I recently joined a large company where senior technical leaders
are of this opinion. No wonder projects take years to be completed. Next time
I will ask this on interview.

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ryanmarsh
Making software (as primary differentiator) is going to require a very
different mindset than producing an incremental release on a truck you’ve been
making since 1948.

I know a Ford product manager. I talked with her about this extensively and
came away with the conclusion that they will be able to deliver the software
required to keep up (barely) but not at the speed and quality required to
become the industry front runner. Right now my eye is on GM (through cruise)
and Tesla but only time will tell.

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santaclaus
So what is the NY Times' working definition of a 'tech company' here?

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rrhd
No, because it got nothing to do with technology. They aren't cool enough to
be a tech company.

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siculars
“Unlimited” vacation? Autonomy? Authority? RSU’s? 150-250k engineering
salaries? Select your own workstations?

Hmm. Me thinks not.

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sillysaurus3
In fairness, that's not a tech company, that's an SV tech company. (I didn't
downvote.)

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jbob2000
No chance. Ford is just a company of managers and labourers. All of the
creative/R&D work is farmed out to vendors. They didn't even design their new
super car, the Ford GT; it was done by a Canadian engineering firm.

You can't turn that kind of machine around. Whenever they're faced with a
problem, the only thing they know how to do is ask someone else.

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gumby
Is that a problem?

Cisco pioneered the model of outsourcing a lot of its technical research (two
different teams would quit and start startups to solve problem X; one would
get traction then Cisco would buy it -- bonus for the team! -- and the others
get their jobs back).

Big Pharma has pretty much outsourced early stage candidate development.

In both these cases (and many others) the large company has strong
development, manufacturing, distribution and sales pipelines as well as strong
balance sheets, none of which a startup is likely to develop.

If Ford chooses this path I don't see it a reason to criticize.

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runT1ME
The question becomes does the outsourcing firms they engage have the talent to
build what they want (is top talent really applying to IBM/Accenture/etc?),
and is the overhead of outsourcing (both monetary and time wise) going to
allow them to be competitive with tech companies.

I'm going to argue for any large scale project, the answer will be no.

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gumby
The other parts of the car industry became vertically dis-integrated during
the second half of the 20th century, so there's no reason to believe they
couldn't pull this off.

(Separately they have to adapt to a different market model; I'm not talking
about that).

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zaksoup
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

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ISL
Can Ford Remain a Non-Tech Company?

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NDT
No

