Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla
I&#x27;ve been following this debacle in the German press and I think there&#x27;s a structural problem that they will struggle to dig their way out of.  And by &quot;they&quot; I don&#x27;t mean just VW, but much of European industry.<p>Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren&#x27;t amazing developers there -- there are many.  But software isn&#x27;t considered important<p>Let&#x27;s start with cars.  Back before cars were just computers with wheels I was briefly involved in a software project at $SERIOUS_GERMAN_CAR_COMPANY.  Mechanically their cars were outstanding -- I still drive this company&#x27;s cars today.  This project was some cool &quot;by wire&quot; stuff, all modeled in Matlab, just as the ECU code was.  But it was clear that the mechanical guys were the top of the pyramid; the safety guys were all mechanical engineers with some programming experience.  All the user-visible electronics (radio, controls, etc) was subbed out to a low-price bidder because &quot;who cares about that stuff anyway?&quot;.  This wasn&#x27;t VW, but I have some family exposure to VW specifically and that mentality still comes through deeply: electronics are added to the vehicle, not integral.  The mental and organizational rewiring will be very hard.  These are not companies who believe you should &quot;eat your own lunch before someone else comes and eats it for you&quot;.  The long institutional problems seen in yesterday&#x27;s post about Nokia and the &quot;Burning Platform&quot; memo are pervasive throughout Europe (and most places, including a lot of USA): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32698044" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32698044</a><p>You see this in the salaries.  Sure, take-home salaries in the EU are lower than US ones in across the board, but the delta in the high value professions is extreme and quite telling.  My son&#x27;s partner&#x27;s parents in Europe are offended by what Amazon pays him in the US because &quot;he just works in IT&quot;.  Well, he&#x27;s a developer in their highest revenue area, so Amazon think it&#x27;s worth investing in.  Tesla cars ship with all sorts of fit and finish bugs, and are above average in mechanical problems.  But (&quot;FSD&quot; excepted) they spend more of their attention on what really matters: treating their vehicle as a modern electronic device.  But the European car companies are still stuck in the mid 20th century and make the opposite branch cut.  The rest of European industry is the same.<p>Andreeson wrote &quot;Software is eating the world&quot; 11 years ago.  Apparently nobody on the continent of Europe has read it.  Sure, software is considered important, but it&#x27;s just another part of the BOM, not something strategic.<p>IMHO the only countries that really understand software at both a technical and business value add level are US, AUS, Canada, China, with India less so but in that group and Japan just barely getting in.  Pretty damning.<p>FWIW I&#x27;ve worked in France and Germany (and non-European countries), including some car business, but most of my career has been in the Valley (starting 38 years ago).  I am not from Europe or USA so in that sense I don&#x27;t have a preference for either side.  I prefer living in Europe but vastly prefer to work in the US.