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VW Says China To Become Global Software Development Hub For Autonomous Tech (reuters.com)
Volkswagen will use Chinese software developers to help design a global autonomous vehicle architecture thanks to the prevalence of qualified programmers which carmakers are struggling to hire elsewhere, senior executives said on Monday. Reuters reports: As carmakers scramble to develop advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous driving functions, carmakers are struggling to find qualified engineers to build the software algorithms needed to teach cars the right reflexes. Volkswagen has 4,000 engineers in China, with an average age of 29, spread over five research and development sites and a rapidly growing number of software engineers. "In a short period from now they will be able to do 15 to 20 million lines of programming code on an annual basis," Volkswagen China's passenger cars chief Stephan Woellenstein said in Shanghai on Monday.
The prevalence of software engineers, combined with the country's willingness to roll out the infrastructure for connected and self-driving cars, will make China one of the first markets in which autonomous cars gain widespread acceptance, VW managers said. As a result, Chinese suppliers will help Volkswagen Group to design a global autonomous vehicle architecture, he said.
The prevalence of software engineers, combined with the country's willingness to roll out the infrastructure for connected and self-driving cars, will make China one of the first markets in which autonomous cars gain widespread acceptance, VW managers said. As a result, Chinese suppliers will help Volkswagen Group to design a global autonomous vehicle architecture, he said.
I wonder why. Speaking as someone who keeps getting turned down for embedded dev jobs despite having PIC and arduino programming experience along with my 20+ years of system level C,C++ and x86 assembler programming, I suspect its the usual case of a company wanting high grade skills but only wanting to pay low grade wages.
I work at a chinese owned car company, a big one, but we don't yet have a sales presence in the US.
we have thousands in china and a few hundred in the bay area.
I often can see the difference in approach and code quality between east and west.
all I will say is: code and design from china mostly sucks. they are STILL windows-based (in thoughts and machinery) and while e-cars are all going qnx and linux (and android), the windows people still are the majority of the so-called programmers over there.
they can throw 10x as many people at a project and it will still suck.
there is a REASON software is done here in the US, for complex projects. china simply cannot do it; if they could, they would not ALL have local bay area offices where the real design is done.
the bay area engineers are more skilled and experienced, but being a chinese owned company, we are a little too, uhm, 'thrifty' and this is going to hurt us, long-term.
we also don't pay for performance and we don't reward top performers. the china way is: burn people out and hope they leave on their own, soon.
this is NO WAY to do business. but sadly, its how it is, right now.
(perhaps hold off buying chinese-made cars for a while, is my advice)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Oh please. China has a higher population than North America and Europe combined.
When you're looking for cheap programmers it's hardly a fucking surprise that you'll find some there.
Chinese put tons of money into universities and incentives for young people to go there
..and yet despite the higher population China has less than 4/5 the number of students at university that America and the EU have, even without counting the rest of North America and Europe.
Is anybody surprised that their method worked better than the asinine political circus we are currently obsessing over at the expense of everything else except tax breaks for the fabulously rich?
Yes, I'm completely fucking amazed you claim their method worked better.
They have an adequate supply of qualified developers and engineers, the EU and US in particular don't. That speaks louder than any words and has so far resulted in Huawei managing to research their way to owning 1529 "standard-essential" 5G patents, the most of any company, and Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, and VIVO lead the list after Samsung and Apple on the list over the biggest smartphone manufacturers. Underestimating your opponent is the mother of all defeats.
P.S. Inserting a colloquial term for sexual intercourse into your sentences does nothing to make your argument more convincing.