I worked on the infotainment part of recently released top brand car's software. The number of engineers on that was flabbergasting. Way higher than your number.
But the reason was not that it was needed.
The reasons were:
- The approach to developing software (pure waterfall, with lots of agile BS bingo terms as seasoning). As someone else mentioned: Old car companies do not understand software. I may add: At all.
- Upper management throwing more resources at missed deadlines (that were moving all the time anyway). Every seasoned developer knows that more developers will slow you down. Nine women can't have a baby in one month.
- Trying to understand the issues with the project getting pear shaped by looking at burn down charts.
Once I was on a way to one of these meetings in an elevator and someone said: "Gentlemen, are you also on going to our weekly 'Men who stare at graphs' ritual?"
Most senior engineering folks agreed that the work hundreds of developers, dozens of engineering managers, PMs, POs, agile coaches and god-knows-what-other-fancy-title people were doing could be done by a team of around 25.
I completely agree and as such parent is right. 5k-10k people is complete overkill. But then -- given how these companies work -- it is not. It is indeed an underestimation and the very reason this will go nowhere.
A few cars will be released with this OS and then it will be replaced by something much better that someone else, not an old car company, was doing in the meantime.
I have also worked in the infotainment space, now in powertrain space. It seems that the infotainment teams seems to be 2x to 3x the size of a typical automotive engineering team.
Sometimes, I feel that infotainment products are more subjective than the other car functions. eg, Does that "ding" sound notification reflect the values of our brand vs Can the maximum power be transferred to the rear wheels in the snow within 300ms, subject questions vs objective questions. Subjective questions needs more study and analysis, leading to more engineers.
But the reason was not that it was needed.
The reasons were:
- The approach to developing software (pure waterfall, with lots of agile BS bingo terms as seasoning). As someone else mentioned: Old car companies do not understand software. I may add: At all.
- Upper management throwing more resources at missed deadlines (that were moving all the time anyway). Every seasoned developer knows that more developers will slow you down. Nine women can't have a baby in one month.
- Trying to understand the issues with the project getting pear shaped by looking at burn down charts.
Once I was on a way to one of these meetings in an elevator and someone said: "Gentlemen, are you also on going to our weekly 'Men who stare at graphs' ritual?"
Most senior engineering folks agreed that the work hundreds of developers, dozens of engineering managers, PMs, POs, agile coaches and god-knows-what-other-fancy-title people were doing could be done by a team of around 25.
I completely agree and as such parent is right. 5k-10k people is complete overkill. But then -- given how these companies work -- it is not. It is indeed an underestimation and the very reason this will go nowhere. A few cars will be released with this OS and then it will be replaced by something much better that someone else, not an old car company, was doing in the meantime.