Good morning dear readers,
Software experts are the rare earths of the modern job market. If you have them, you won’t give them away anytime soon – one would think so. Especially not in the automotive industry, where almost all innovation challenges revolve around bits and bytes: autonomous driving, charging management for battery systems, smooth infotainment.
It is all the more disconcerting what the Handelsblatt US correspondent Felix Holtermann reports: At the end of October, the automotive groups Volkswagen and Ford sealed the end of Argo AI. The company developed software and hardware for fully autonomous vehicles. But doubts had recently grown as to whether Argo could achieve rapid success.
At the Munich location alone, Argo employed more than 280 people, including many sought-after IT specialists. It is therefore only logical what Volkswagen told the German Argo employees in a memo after the end: “We are pleased to be able to inform you that your employment relationship will not be interrupted.”
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But strangely little has happened since then. Employees complain that VW managers are rarely around. there is hardly any work. A double-digit number of talents have already quit. One developer complains: “We sit around.”
Meanwhile, inboxes are filling up with job offers. An Argo employee says he has received inquiries from Apple, Nvidia, Tesla, Cruise and Daimler. According to another, most of the colleagues he knows are in the application process.
Ford is apparently doing better. According to Argo circles, the group is said to have already secured 500 of the former employees in the USA. Ford CEO Jim Farley personally stopped by the Argo Pittsburgh site.
Suggestion: Perhaps VW boss Oliver Blume should quickly plan a business trip to Munich to boost morale at Argo? In the VW ID.3, the route from Wolfsburg can be easily managed with two charging stops.
Apple is apparently preparing to allow alternative app stores on its iPhones and iPads in the European Union. This was reported by the Bloomberg news agency last night, citing insiders. As part of the changes, customers could download third-party software onto their devices without using Apple’s online store.
(Photo: AP)
The background to this is new regulations from the EU Commission, which are likely to come into force in mid-2024. So far, digital products can only be downloaded from Apple’s own App Store. The group charges a commission of 30 percent – a highly lucrative business. This income is at risk if corporations such as Microsoft, Meta or Amazon are allowed to have their own app stores on Apple products.
However, the stock analyst Angelo Zino from the analysis house CFRA assumes that a maximum of 0.2 percent of Apple’s total sales will be affected by direct competition in the app stores in Europe: “In the end, the effects will be minimal because most consumers are creatures of habit .”
We’ve gotten far too used to numbers like this: The proportion of women on the executive boards of the 50 largest listed banks in Europe was just 22 percent at the end of 2021. In the previous year it was even three percentage points less. This is shown by a study by the management consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which is available exclusively to the Handelsblatt.
It gets interesting when you take a closer look at the data. Study author and BCG partner Claudia Rasper: “Men are far more likely to become CEOs or chief financial officers or IT executives. On the other hand, women are more often to be found in less well-endowed departments such as human resources, marketing or communication.”
According to the analysis, 48 percent of the human resources department in banks is in the hands of women, and 39 percent of the marketing area. In the finance department it is just nine percent. This imbalance contributes to the fact that female bank executives earn an average of 22 percent less than executives. Because CEOs, IT bosses and finance bosses earn the best in banks, HR and marketing managers the worst.
My guess: It looks very similar in other sectors.
In the US, inflation appears to have peaked. This feeds speculation on smaller rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve. The US government reported an inflation rate of 7.1 percent yesterday, compared to 7.7 percent a month earlier. A large majority of investors now expect the Fed to hike rates by just 0.5 percentage point today, up from the 0.75 percentage point of the last four hikes.
And then there are the big Ballheims, who, according to the will of the German Football Association (DFB), should work up the sporting misery of the national team. The expert council includes the grizzled football legends Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Rudi Völler, Oliver Kahn and Matthias Sammer. There are also Red Bull manager Oliver Mintzlaff and Hans-Joachim Watzke, DFB vice president and head of Borussia Dortmund.
We wish the gentlemen every success and many years of good health!
What really got me excited: When asked by journalists why the expert council was made up entirely of men, DFB President Bernd Neuendorf replied that ultimately the men’s national team alone was the subject of discussion. An argument as clever as a body fake by Messi. With a single sentence, Neuendorf catapulted the DFB to the forefront of the identity-political debate: Of course, only men should have the right to judge the performance of male footballers.
The DFB headquarters will henceforth become a “safe space” for the vulnerable minority of unsuccessful national players. At the next public viewing, female fans who don jerseys for the men’s national team are kindly pointed out that this form of cultural appropriation is really not okay.
It can only be a matter of weeks before the federal government appoints a special representative for the protection of male national players, of course from among the victims.
Oh, what does Lothar Matthäus actually do?
I wish you a day as sheltered as Kahn’s goal at its best.
Best regards
Her
Christian Rickens
Editor-in-Chief Handelsblatt
