Faculty 73 is the name of a new school of programming, inspired by the love he has for number 73 Sheldon Cooper, a character from the well-known series The Big Bang Theory. This school is a key part of a Volkswagen (VW) multi-million dollar project to strengthen its software development capabilitieswith a view to dethroning the electric car market leader, Tesla.
Located in the VW headquarters in Wolfsburg, the school trains basic program developers in two years. The plan is to train about 600 IT specialists by 2024, most of them drawn from the ranks of its employees.
“More than 70 percent of the students who entered last year were part of the staff and, for the most part, they worked on the assembly line,” says Ralph Linde, head of the Volkswagen Group Academy.
looking for talent
Talent Search Extends Beyond Faculty 73. VW also supports another programming school, 42 Wolfsburg, with experts, equipment and donations. Microsoft and Google equally support this non-profit school. The automotive company hopes that the new generation of professionals will end up working for it and help carry out the transition towards the production of electric vehicles.
42 Wolfsburg does not use conventional methods. There are no classes, no textbooks or teachers; peer learning is practiced (also called peer to peer, or between pairs). The campus features an amphitheater, lounging nooks, video game consoles, and other features to make a stay enjoyable and help students navigate the rigors and pressures as they train to become world-class programmers.
“Volkswagen is very curious to discover the potential of our students and our teaching concept,” Max Sengers, director of 42 Wolfsburg, tells DW. “VW has a huge need for talent,” he adds. Senges, a former Google executive, is planning to open a new campus of his programming school in Berlin, which he hopes to open this year. VW and its software unit CARIAD are also backing the new project for the German capital.
Software: source of money
Software has become the holy grail of car manufacturers, They used to see it as something secondary. The Swiss investment bank UBS estimates that software will be the biggest source of profit for car manufacturers in 2030. It forecasts total revenue of 1.9 billion dollars (1.7 billion euros) in areas such as taxi services. autonomous, in-car infotainment and advanced driver assistance systems.
VW aims to develop 60 percent of the software in-house, up from 10 percent today. The automaker plans to invest some €27 billion over the next five years to drive this development.
The battle for the programmers
Not only Volkswagen has embarked on this course, but also other companies in the industry. According to the consulting firm McKinsey, Automotive industry aspirations could lead to the demand for software engineers tripling or quadrupling by 2030. The European Commission estimates that currently They require about 500,000 IT professionals in Europe.
“It is a big problem, if you aspire to develop software resources only in Europe. And even worse if you plan to do it only in Germany. Our clients think that if it is done globally, it will be somehow manageable, ”Markus Baum, of the Roland Berger consultancy, tells DW.
For companies like Volkswagen, one of the main problems to recruit young programmers lies in its image: Rigid hierarchies, process obsession, and often small-town locations are unappealing. To tackle that problem, VW has created a separate software unit, CARIAD, with a more agile work culture. In addition, he says he is working to reform other business units. (I)
Source: Eluniverso
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