How the Automotive Industry Realizes "Software Talent Freedom"

"Retrain 1,000 parts engineers as software development engineers!" The decision recently announced by Japanese parts giant Denso Corporation has attracted much attention in the automotive industry, and it also highlights the automotive industry's thirst and anxiety for software talents.

Coincidentally, previously, the German parts giant Bosch also let the hardware engineers of the powertrain division go to the University of Stuttgart in Germany for 3 months to study software courses. Today, automakers from Bosch and Denso to Volkswagen and Toyota are accelerating their transformation and are all "making big moves" to enhance their "soft power." These companies are deeply aware that the "elephant turn" requires talent, especially software talent to drive transformation.

"It can be seen from the importance attached by multinational brand auto companies to software talents that the current transformation of the automotive industry and the transformation of enterprises are accelerating, and the desire for software talents is not only the just need for enterprises to compete for the commanding heights of technology, but also the key to determining whether they can win the competition of intelligent and connected vehicles." Zhu Mingrong, chairman of the Automotive Talent Professional Committee of the Chinese Talents Research Association, said in an interview with China Automobile News. So, what are the best tricks for automakers to achieve "software talent freedom"?

01

Training and transfer of self-employed talents "from hard to soft"

With the development of intelligent, networked and electrified vehicles, the role of software in automobiles has become more and more important. Ten years ago, a car only needed about 10 million lines of software code; today, a smart electric car already has 100 million lines of software code. The agency predicts that by 2030, the number of more intelligent lines of automotive software code will increase to about 700 million lines, and software costs will account for more than 50% of the cost of automobiles. However, at present, the main composition of most automotive manufacturers' employees is industrial and mechanical manufacturing talents, and the proportion of IT professionals is very low.

Recognizing this trend, DENSO encourages young component hardware engineers under the age of 30 to voluntarily "change careers" and participate in a six-month software engineer training program in its training program. During this period, the personal experience of one of Denso's mechanical design engineers is quite representative. The engineer was temporarily seconded to Toyota to assist in the design work, and realized in his actual work that software would become the "main force" in the design of the car, which generated a strong sense of crisis, and immediately signed up for the software engineer training after returning to DENSO.

Denso plans to select 1,000 young parts engineers from the company for training by 2025, so that they can become software development engineers, and gradually improve the level of software development through training. However, DENSO is still worried that the company still has a large gap in software talent.

Denso's parent company, Toyota Group, not only established a technology development subsidiary in 2019 to recruit software talents, but also plans to expand the number of software employees across the group to 13,000 to further increase the proportion of software self-research.

Also in 2019, Toyota's old rival Volkswagen also set up a relevant department to recruit software talents. In the same year, Volkswagen also launched the "73 Academy" IT expert training program. In 2021, Volkswagen will establish the "Wolfsburg 42 Programming School" at its headquarters in Germany, where employees can sign up for programmer training programs. It is expected that these two plans will add another 5,000 software developers to Volkswagen by 2025, and eventually achieve a 60% software self-development ratio for Volkswagen's electric vehicles. On this basis, the Volkswagen Group established a dedicated automotive software company CARIAD in March 2021, which currently has about 4,500 software engineers. Volkswagen Group CEO Dies said: "In the near future, the car will become a software product, and Volkswagen will become a software-driven technology company. ”

In February, Bosch announced that it would spend about 2 billion euros (currently about 6.94 yuan for 1 euro) to retrain its employees, with the aim of enabling more practitioners to adapt to the latest technology and industry needs in the era of electrification, so as to avoid business development bottlenecks caused by talent gaps. In fact, in the past 5 years, Bosch has spent 1 billion euros on training employees who are engaged in traditional technical work. The latest round of employee training is aimed at non-automotive employees to receive courses on artificial intelligence and other software skills.

At present, in the process of transformation of enterprises, if they can transform their original talent reserves through training, it is undoubtedly the most cohesive and humane approach.

02

Software outsourcing? Still "treating the symptoms but not the root causes"

The lack of software talents has brought real dilemmas to car companies. Nurturing and recruiting talent takes time. In desperation, many car companies can only "take the side of the sword", through outsourcing, strategic cooperation and other ways to "save the field" and solve the urgent need for software development problems.

Previously, 90% of Volkswagen's related in-vehicle software was outsourced, and its software suppliers once reached more than 200, but this also led to its dependence on outsourcing of third-party software developers, and Volkswagen's own software talent reserves and development capabilities became a short board.

With the surging trend of the "new four modernizations" of automobiles, the drawbacks of software outsourcing have also begun to appear. In 2019, Volkswagen's first electric production model, the ID.3, built on the MEB platform, was delayed several times due to software problems, mainly due to the incompatibility of the newly developed software with many system software originally developed by various developers.

"It can be seen that in the era of software-defined automobiles, blind outsourcing obviously does more harm than good. At the very least, enterprises should ensure that the core software system is self-developed, and even if it is outsourced, it is necessary to formulate unified standards and specifications, so that the software interface of each system is kept uniform, and the software between the systems has good compatibility. Zhang Ruilin, a researcher at the Intelligent Perception and Control Engineering Research Center of South China Institute of Technology, told the "China Automotive News" reporter that the root cause of this problem is that in the context of the rapid evolution of the automobile "new four modernizations" technology, the number, level and intensity of automotive software development are increasing, and the demand for software talents is a situation of "one will be difficult to seek", which is a great constraint on the software development of car companies, and it is also a bottleneck that needs to be broken.

Just as Volkswagen, Toyota and others later chose to establish independent automotive software development companies, domestic car companies such as SAIC, Great Wall, and Geely are also strengthening their dominance and control over software development in this way. "If a company provides us with a holistic solution, then it becomes the soul and SAIC becomes the body. For such a result, SAIC is unacceptable and must take the soul into its own hands. As Chen Hong, chairman of SAIC Motor, said, SAIC has always firmly grasped the project of software development as a "soul master" project in the palm of its hand.

"With the advent of the 'software-defined car' era, the shortage of software talents makes car companies seek software outsourcing and strategic cooperation, these measures can only help car companies alleviate the urgent need to a certain extent, 'cure the symptoms but not the root causes', it is difficult to fundamentally solve the shortcomings of the shortage of software talents in car companies." Zeng Wenxiang, a researcher at the Northern Institute of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, told The China Automobile News that on the one hand, even if the software company has strong programming business capabilities, it does not have a good understanding of the functions to be achieved by the car and the software and its compatibility with the various systems of the car; on the other hand, there are very few software technical talents who are both proficient in software and understand smart cars. Therefore, car companies set up special software development departments or subsidiaries internally, just like Volkswagen and Toyota, which is a common "way of playing" for powerful car companies.

03

Robbery War High salary, equity is not soft

If you want to ask what made Tesla today, the "bellwether" in the field of smart electric vehicles in the world, the answer is certainly indispensable to the role of software talent. From the perspective of proportion, Tesla's software talent density is 4 to 10 times that of traditional OEMs. "In the field of intelligent networking, the number and quality of top talents in the field of intelligence of Chinese car companies are still very large compared with European and American car companies." Zhu Mingrong, chairman of the Automotive Talent Professional Committee of the Chinese Talents Research Association, told reporters.

In order to enhance their "soft power", "grabbing people" has become a common action of many car companies. As early as 2018, when Ford reorganized the traditional fuel vehicle business and the pure electric vehicle business, it newly established a self-driving car co., LTD., and twice "poached people" from Apple, and even dug up Doug Field, the head of Apple's car project, to Ford. Subsequently, Ford acquired a controlling stake in Argo AI, a U.S. artificial intelligence startup, for $1 billion (currently about $6.6 yuan) and allowed it to operate independently. Ford said that the reason why it did not wholly acquire Argo AI is that it hopes to attract top software talents through equity incentives. Argo AI was founded by two top software engineers from Google and Uber and is now valued at more than $7.5 billion.

In recent years, car companies have continued to spend huge sums of money to recruit software talents, such as GM's new five-year plan to increase investment in electric vehicles and autonomous driving from $27 billion to $35 billion; Ford recently announced that it will reach $30 billion in research and development in the field of electric vehicles by 2025; Great Wall Motors announced that the cumulative research and development investment in the next five years will reach 100 billion yuan, all of which include high-paid recruitment and "digging" costs for software technology talents.

At present, system basic software engineers, intelligent cockpit system engineers, AI algorithm engineers, and chief architects of communication networks have become the "fragrant food" that car companies are competing for, and they are also hot positions for Xiaopeng Automobile, Weilai Automobile, SAIC, Chery Automobile and other enterprises. Among them, Xiaopeng Automobile offers a maximum monthly salary of 50,000 yuan for system basic software engineers; Chery Automobile offers a maximum monthly salary of 75,000 yuan for ADAS software development managers; and Weilai Automobile offers a maximum monthly salary of 180,000 yuan for the chief architect of communication networks... The price code is higher than one, and it is not difficult to see that in terms of "grabbing people", the degree of "inner volume" of car companies is staggering.

Increasing salaries and aligning with the Internet industry is one of the tricks for car companies to attract and retain software talents. In addition, car companies are also actively exploring various ways to motivate talents. Previously, Dongfeng Lantu Automobile launched the equity incentive mechanism for core employees. Lu Fang, CEO of Lantu Automobile, said: "In order to promote the enterprise system and mechanism to be more flexible and continue to introduce high-end talents, the company has launched an equity incentive plan for the core backbone of the enterprise. In the future, strategic investors will be introduced to explore more possibilities in the capital market. ”

On April 22, BYD announced that the company intends to repurchase shares for the employee stock ownership plan, and the expected repurchase amount will not exceed 1.85 billion yuan, not less than 1.8 billion yuan, and the repurchase price will not exceed 300 yuan per share.

At present, the competition in the automotive industry is becoming increasingly fierce, and the "talent defense war" of car companies is becoming more and more intense. Whether it is a new car-making force or a cross-border car-making technology company, it is robbing high-end talents from traditional car companies through high salaries and equity incentive mechanisms, which makes traditional car companies have to accelerate change, prevent the loss of core personnel, and attract new software talents.

04

Tonality is consistent Culture and atmosphere are more important

"Confirm the look, you are the person I am looking for." In addition to the real interest temptations such as high salaries and equity, for the younger and younger software talents such as "post-90s" and "post-00s", the corporate culture of healthy and benign development and the relaxed and open working atmosphere are more important.

In fact, not only young people, most "hit workers" are more concerned about whether self-worth can be reflected in the enterprise than salary. In order to attract and retain software talents, car companies are becoming more and more close to Internet companies in the process of transforming into travel service providers.

Many car companies have changed the corporate culture of the past with one board and one glance and relatively closed, and have become more open and free. For example, Toyota's newly established autonomous driving research and development unit, Textile Planet, is located in a luxury office building in Tokyo, Japan, surrounded by many restaurants and bars. It follows the corporate culture of Silicon Valley tech companies in the United States, where employees can work anytime, anywhere, with hammocks, electric balance bikes, massage rooms and greenery to relax employees. The entire glass wall of the conference room provides a wide view, making it look more like a Silicon Valley company. Textile Planet revealed that in fiscal 2021 (April 2021 to March 2022), the number of software talents it recruited increased by 1 times year-on-year.

Not only Toyota, but also other Japanese car companies that have always been conservative in terms of corporate culture are also making changes to attract software talent. Subaru has taken similar steps to attract software talent. In 2020, Subaru opened an AI lab for self-driving car technology in Shibuya, Japan, with a stylish and avant-garde appearance. The head of Subaru Shibuya Lab said that the company's self-driving AI department received more than 10 times the number of resumes in the previous year.

A scholar at the International Institute for Management Development in Lausanne, Switzerland, said that software engineers were reluctant to work for traditional Japanese car companies because they were worried that their projects would go through a cumbersome approval process. These talents are more eager to become an innovator and see their results can be quickly and rationally applied.

It is worth mentioning that in order to attract software talent, Ford's software research and development department even allows employees to bring their own pets to work, creating a "pet-friendly" office for them. In fact, in recent years, more and more "Internet factories" have allowed employees to bring pets to work, which can not only avoid pets being lonely at home and "demolishing homes", but also allow employees to alleviate work pressure, improve work efficiency, and make the company's atmosphere warmer and more active.

Amazon, the U.S. tech giant, at its headquarters in Seattle, USA, has employees who have registered more than 7,000 pet dogs to work with them. Between "shovelers" and "hit workers," employees have found a better balance, and businesses have become more attractive.

"All in all, in order to attract and retain the shortage of software talents, car companies must not only retain people with high salaries, but also retain people with careers, culture, and feelings, give full play to the role of software talents, and use 'good steel on the blade' to reflect the value of talents and enterprises can benefit from it." Zeng Wenxiang said.

Source: China Automotive News