I got an email this morning from my kid’s school that included a clearly AI-generated poster. This didn’t upset me at first, as there are some totally reasonable uses for the technology. Was this one, though? Most school posters prior to this were made using generic templates and clip art, giving them a sort of boring sameness. The theory was that generative AI would allow people to unlock new creativity by overcoming a skills gap, yet, this poster looked like every other AI-generated poster. All that work, all that water, all that energy, to just wind up with a new kind of boring sameness.
When I was in college, I was part of the student union, which had two artists on staff to make signs, business cards, and posters. Those posters were inventive and unique. I can’t remember the names of most of my professors, but I can remember the poster for the Dave Attell comedy show. Expertise has its place, and you can track some of Ford’s many quality woes to a decision to get rid of it. The question is: how quickly can it get it back?
In Friday’s Morning Dump I mentioned that the board agreement made my Volkswagen allowed the company to avoid a nuclear option, though it wasn’t clear at the time how likely that was. It turns out, the nuclear option was the only other option given. What VW desperately needs, other than time and money, is a hybrid platform, and maybe an off-roader. Perhaps the new waterproof Horse engine could work?
While a lot of the good Japanese cars have already been raided by importers, the yen continues to appreciate to the dollar, so maybe it’s not a terrible time to buy a JDM car.
Ford Needed Engineers With ‘Scars On Their Backs’
As someone who covers the car industry, I’ve become a bit inured to car recall stories. I lived through Takata airbags, Toyota floormats, and GM ignitions. There is no automaker truly immune to recalls, though even I noticed how many Fords have been recalled these last few years.
While recalls stretch across model years, it’s not hard to notice that a lot of the problematic vehicles seem have been developed in a stretch from the late 2010s to early 2020s. Some of this is just timing, as recalls tend to lag by a couple of years as customers and regulators identify issues, though Ford has trended above its peers recently.
If one can pick a single point in history where this may have developed, I’d like to point you to this Reuters article from 2019, and a quote from an email sent by then-CEO Jim Hackett to employees:
“2018 was mediocre by any standard,” Hackett said in the email. “Yes, we made $7 billion last year. But think of it this way: this represents a 4.4 percent operating margin, about half what we believe is an appropriate margin. So we are aiming for much closer to $14 billion.”[…]Hackett, who has been on the job for 20 months, also said that it was “time to bury the year (2018) in a deep grave, grieve over what might have been and become super focused on meeting, and, in fact, exceeding this year’s plan.”
“They have the scars on their back,” Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told Automotive News. “We realized that we needed some subject-matter experts in all of our key technology areas — individuals who are experts in their particular field.”[…]“There was a recognition as we were struggling through our quality performance several years ago that something needed to change,” Poon said. “We were not effectively solving problems, and we were not effectively preventing problems.”
That’s when Ford started promoting engineers and other specialists from within, and looking outside to other automakers and suppliers. It informally refers to the group as “graybeards” for their expertise.
The rest of the article goes onto note that, while AI is useful when dealing with a large amount of data, the data it has is key and that most of the valuable collaboration is between humans.
Back in 2023, Ford said it was going to make real changes to fix its quality problems, and now that it’s 2026 there have been some signs of improvement in JD Power’s Initial Quality Survey, which is something. It’ll still be a couple of years before we really know if the graybeards truly fixed the problem.
[Ed Note: At Chrysler, there was a similar problem. Not only had the company gone through enough bankruptcies/bailouts that many of the qualified old-timers took the money and ran, but the company did not write down nearly enough best practices, so many of those experts took their knowledge with them. What’s more, there was a culture of “do two years in this department, then gain new skills in the next role so you can broaden your skillset and make more money.” The result was a lack of true subject matter experts who have seen enough disaster to help you avoid it in the future. So, this is very much a real thing; bless the old-timers. -DT].
VW Really Did Offer Up The Nuclear Option
The headline of last Friday’s TMD mentioned that Volkswagen avoided the “nuclear option” in securing a deal with its board. Here’s how I described the nuclear option:
It’s been hinted that Blume and chair Hans Dieter Pötsch could move to skip the board altogether and go for the nuclear option: hold a general shareholder vote if he didn’t get his way. This would have meant that, in theory, Blume could ignore the competing interests on the board (specifically, the workers and the state) and push forward a plan that likely included breaking off parts of the business and closing plants without any kind of veto. No one knows what would happen if it was attempted, but assume large strikes and massive political upheaval.
Welp, new reporting from Reuters lays out that the threat of a nuclear option is what got the deal done:
This threat to use what the sources called a “nuclear option” paved the way for a compromise on Sept. 2, with the growing sense that the outcome of failing to reach a deal could be even worse than the mooted job cuts, with legal battles dragging on for years, hurting VW even more.
“The damage would have been unimaginable if there hadn’t been a solution,” one of the four people said.
That, along with a first meeting of top stakeholders on Sept. 1 in Hanover, set the basis for the next day’s crucial meeting. Blume, Lies and Poetsch, VW’s former finance chief and the CEO of its largest shareholder Porsche SE, began to draw up the contours of an agreement, knowing they had to move fast.
That’s one catastrophe avoided, at least. Now Volkswagen has to do the hard work of making cars people want, cutting jobs without losing capability, building a truck, and bringing a bunch of trucks to the US market.
Horse Now Has A Waterproof Hybrid Motor For Off-Road Use
While Chinese automakers have excelled in building electric vehicles, one of the more interesting companies has been Horse Powertrains, which is a London-based JV between Renault and Geely. This is the company behind the turn-your-EV-into-a-hybrid solution.
The company’s latest project? A waterproof hybrid motor:
Designed for extreme off-road vehicles and deep-water wading, the HORSE B20 brings all-terrain capabilities to hybrid vehicles, including applications for SUVs and pick-up trucks. Fully compliant with IPX8 waterproofing standards, the HORSE B20 can operate up to depths of 1.1 meters. It is also capable of maintaining continuous and stable power output under extreme off-road high-load conditions including 100% grade climbing.
Weighing just 130kg, the HORSE B20 is a four-cylinder, 2-liter inline gasoline engine designed for HEV, PHEV, and REEV applications. Featuring a turbocharger and direct injection technology, it can output up to 140-185kW of power and 300-380Nm of torque. The engine is powered by an advanced Miller cycle, enabling a brake thermal efficiency of 48.4%.
Geely is now testing this new engine in its Geely Galaxy Cruiser 700.
The ‘Yen Carry Trade’ Unwinding Is Maybe Good For Enthusiasts
I’ve talked about the ‘yen carry trade‘ before, but the gist of it is that super lower interest rates in Japan have meant that traders can borrow money cheaply in yen, convert it to dollars for investment, then do the whole thing backwards in order to realize profits without paying a large interest penalty for it. With Japan facing inflation, the expectation is that Japan is going to raise interest rates, which reduces the appeal of the trade.
Per Nikkei Asia:
As of 11:30 a.m. in Tokyo, the yen was up 1.7% at around 152.88 per dollar, the highest level since mid-February. The currency has risen close to 3 yen from its level at 5 p.m. the previous day.
Analysts point to the potential unwinding of yen carry trades, which involve borrowing yen at low interest rates and investing the proceeds in higher-yielding assets like the dollar, as a reason for the surge.
The popularity of these trades helped keep the yen weak for years. But growing speculation that the BOJ could raise interest rates more quickly has reduced the strategy’s appeal.
It’s clear to me that now is the time to buy a Cappuccino.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Fall is on the doorstep, and Tom Waits is on the radio, raspily crooning “Downtown Train.”
The Big Question
Who is the wisest person you’ve ever worked with?
Top photo: Ford
I worked for a guy and mentored under, who came out of early 70’s Silicon Valley. He’d worked for and with variously Ampex, PARC, HP, Tectronix and other early pioneers. I learned tons about business and tech from him.
In term of the Dilbert and Peter Principles in practice. Hardly new or brought on by AI. They’ve been around for centuries in various forms. AI is just a convenient escape goat for incompetence.
Funny Dilbert story. When Dilbert was first becoming popular I was working for a national telco in the Data Warehousing and Analytics group. We all had our favorite Dilbert cartoons plastered over our cubes. An edict came down from management that they all hard to come down BC the cartoons were insulting to management. Isn’t it ironic.
Its not a scapegoat. There are very legitimate reasons why Nobel prize winners, computer and data scientists and even pioneers in Ai sounded the warning bell on Ai as soon as the first chat tools came out. Its because unlike other disruptive forms of technology, there is no chance or opportunity for anyone to keep up with the sheer volume of rapid change. Entire careers are being made obsolete with every release.
Let me put it this way: If your current job requires interacting with a computer device…. your job is probably and eventually going to get impacted. If you are a low skilled employee working at a store, driving a Uber, preparing food etc… your job will be impacted. If you are an engineer whether its electrical, mechanical or based in software/// your job will be impacted.
I’ve spent my entire career in Silicon Valley and know a LOT of old timers. None of them have ever seen anything like this and they agree with the above sentiments.
My advice? Make plans now. I am fortunate that my wife and I saved. I was planning to retire at 55. But that will probably need to get updated. We will probably be fine. But for those who are in the thick of whatever this is? Good luck. This thing is like a 250 foot tsunami that’s about to take a wrecking ball to whatever was left of the middle and even upper middle working class.
To me, the big thing is what comes next with the social contract.
In 1800, the society outside of the UK was get up and dawn, work until dusk, repeat with a trip to church once a week. In the UK, it changed to wake up at 6, work until 8, go to bed and repeat, 6 days a week, with a day off on Sunday. By 1900, the efficiency of mass production was such that people were less interested in making more stuff, but in having more time to do something with their stuff. Work weeks went from 80+ down to 40 because we could make stuff 10 times as fast.
AI is changing our efficiency by a step change like the industrial revolution. IT’s going to be messy, just like the time from 1800 to about 1950. However, when the dust clears, there is no reason why we can’t move to a 20-30 hour work week with a completely different definition of what work is. We already see glimmers of this with people making a living “influncing” whatever the hell that is.
Well… I’ve been at 12 or 13 different companies so far and in that time I’ve learned that despite what they tell the employees, they will absolutely take advantage of anything that saves them money, even if the quality itself deteriorates. AI WILL replace most white collar work. It will likewise replace most blue collar jobs because its not just computer jobs. Robotics have also improved dramatically.
The industrial revolution was disruptive- sure. But it wasn’t an overnight thing. It unfolded as you mentioned- over the course of 150+ years. Ai is unfolding at a breakneck speed on an almost monthly basis. Its neither slow and gradual or static. It simply gets better and with better capabilities. Nobody has time to actually react to and adjust. You might be “safe” now but as soon as another Ai tool launches that can do what you do its over. And a lot of people are finding that out now.
My take is that this will lead to the destruction of the middle class that took all those years to develop and with it- possible political and societal violence. As in- any time people in large quantities either feel threatened or backed into a corner- they will react and often with the most guttural of human emotion. WW2 had its genesis in the fallout from the great depression. I suspect we are on the cusp of something potentially as catastrophic. The US is already very destabilized due to our current joke of a president. And at this point 50% of the US economy is tied to Ai while at the same time 10’s of 10000’s are getting laid off. And when the Ai bubble bursts? There will be many 1000’s, possible millions of layoffs. Except this time around nobody laid off will find new jobs.
Its going to get ugly and possibly pretty fast.
The industrial revolution got ugly really fast as well. Look at the Irish Potato Famine, the Boxer Rebellions, Company Stores, etc. I’d like to think we won’t get that bad again, but I already see some parallels.
I’d like to know when will AI will replace the upper executives, the board and the shareholders.
I’m retired so I’m not worried about the job. AI is vastly overhyped, like the first time (worked in that field back then) and like every other tech wunderwaffen will be proven that what’s advertised on the box is not what’s in the can. The crows will come home to roost on this as with all overhyped Silicon Valley miracles. I use AI regularly and while cool and gee wiz, it has its limits and the hype and overbuilding is going to go bang. I’ve been through a couple of dozen of the and it always ends the same.
I am close to semi-retiring and will probably do so if I get laid off. But I spent the majority of my career in tech and Ai is absolutely taking a wrecking ball to jobs within that industry. That and many others. None of the people I’ve known who have been laid off in the past 2 years have found new jobs. Enough to show me many will need to figure out what to do with their lives and how to pay for all of their shit. A lot of people I know got themselves leveraged out the wazoo with car, house and college tuitions for their kids. And I cannot imagine being in that situation. I and others like me feel like we are running away and getting out while we can. Everyone else who needs to have a income to exist? Good luck. It is going to get nasty.
I think it’s time for everyone to start writing out AI- Artificial Intelligence. This could remind them that it is “Artificial”, as in fake. It certainly has its place and can do some pretty amazing things in specific areas, but it doesn’t seem it can actually generate knowledge, just organize data.
Fauxrtificial Intelligence
What AI is really good at is pattern matching. That’s it.
My current engineering manager. He’s been with the company since the beginning of the company building cars here in the states. Started off on the line and worked his way into engineering despite not having a degree. One of the smartest men I have ever worked with. Has implemented millions of dollars of equipment he came up with himself, can ask him anything related to the process and he knows it. Yet as a manager, he lets us be creative and do things, then backs us up if we fail.
“Overpaid Asshole Executives Fuck Up Everything; Have to Spend Even More Money to Fix Problems They Created” is one of my favorite and least favorite headlines.
They will of course handsomely reward themselves for solving the crisis that only happened because of their stupidity and greed.
Geely making a dead ringer for the Bronco Sport called HORSE is a good summation of the legit concerns about Chinese car maker IP theft.
They have been doing it for decades, and they copy the factories, too.
Kind of like the Koreans and the Japanese and Germans before them, and then the Americans stealing from the Brits and the Brit’s stealing from the French and Dutch, and… economic history is interesting.
Back last century (I’m a graybeard now myself), my wife got hired at a small railroad parts supplier in KC. She was fresh out of tech school as a drafter (AutoCAD). She convinced them to hire me as general labor. As I learned the ins and outs of turning raw materials into railroad switch and signal equipment, I was taught by the company engineer, Dick Roberts. He was a mechanical engineer, but ALSO a qualified machinist. So he would test manufacturing practices of his designs himself. He was a B-25 pilot in Korea, and always had a good story. Unfortunately, he was starting to have memory/mental issues and had to retire a few years later. Things were never the same without him around.
I found out way too late that my back fence neighbor growing up had been a pilot of a B-24 based in Italy during the war. Most of his raids were on Romanian oil fields but he went into Germany too. His fighter escorts were the Tuskegee Airmen. He said those red tails were a beautiful sight and that their radio chatter was, well,…unique.
“Designed for extreme off-road vehicles and deep-water wading, the HORSE B20 …can operate up to depths of 1.1 meters….”
Lemme guess – Horse hired a bunch of JLR engineers?
Because this is something Land Rover have been able to do for decades.
This would also explain why a Sino-French tie-up is based in London.
Well it’s a good thing that other industries, and the US government too, aren’t also in the process of wholesale firing/retiring their entire experienced workforce. Good to know we’ll be in good shape and that nothing will fall apart.
The abandoning of succession planning is a blight across the modern world.
One of the Slack channels we have for our own internal use is “internal education”. Run across something that everyone in the group needs to learn about, post it. Something that few organizations do is to spread the tribal knowledge.
One of the reasons my current boss and their boss are great. Knowing when to just let us do what we need to do, encourage us to build and develop tools to help ourselves, and when needed step in and do the work themselves.
One of the toughest parts of my career when I was a Manufacturing Engineer was to extract the tribal knowledge of the workers in the shop and document it. Some of them held on to it like it was gold thinking that if they were invaluable, they would not be let go. All that did was to put a kink into the manufacturing timeline as the next worker learned it all over again.
No problem. Those fired employees aren’t going anywhere. They’ll just sit on the shelf waiting by the phone and IF the call comes they’ll take whatever shit contract work is offered for just long enough to get the problem solved. Then it’s back on the shelf.
Rinse, repeat.
(Or at least I’m pretty sure that how management thinks it works.)
“Poon in search of experienced Greybeards” is certainly not what I expected to read about today.
Yeah, didn’t have that on my bingo card.
Worst google search ever (this morning)
As an engineer heading toward the twilight of his career, there have been too many greybeards along the way to single out any one in particular.
I would like to comment on Ford’s situation. Letting go of experienced people is not necessarily a problem that AI or layoffs in general can cause. At my company, many of our products have but one expert, especially those that are not high-runners. One retired recently and I took over as the expert for that product. For about 6 months there was literally no one in this building that knew anything about it. I’ve got about 8-10 years left to go. I really hope that doesn’t happen again, but I’m not delaying my retirement to keep that from happening.
There’s a running joke where I work. When someone retires, we throw a party and say “see you in 2 weeks”. Nearly all come back as consultants to handle a transition to younger hands. We have several people that have worked longer as consultants than as regular employees. I can name 3 people over 75 that are here more than I am. I can name one that is 87 that is now just part time.
Same at my company. One guy recently came back after a few weeks because half his dept left after he announced his retirement date, and he felt bad for the remaining team.
He’ll be there for 10 more years.
Year 1. Since productivity is ok with the expert coming back, only 1 new hire is made.
Year 2. A second new hire is made, but one of the current ones gets a better job because they have more experience with more personal mentoring time.
Year 3. Same as year 2.
Year 4. Same, only now the new hire from year 1 is leaving after 3 years of mentorship.
Years 5-9. Keep repeating. Hire someone, lose someone, still need an expert.
Year 10. Health scare leads expert to ask to move to part time. Company cuts contract because the expert is unwilling to do a smooth transition.
Year 11. Massive scramble as they try to find someone that left that is willing to come back. They decide to bring back the old fart on a part time basis. Which goes back to full time within a couple months.
Which is how you end up with an 87 year old in the office.
That sounds about right. The guy in question has nearly 40 years under his belt and is an expert on quite a few subjects. Once he’s gone for good, and the rest of his contemporaries retire or leave, we won’t have any experts like that, and it’s likely we won’t ever again.
The younger guys have already learned that job hopping every few years is the way to go, loyalty is worth nothing.
I just hit year 26, I started when I was a kid. I wish I had been as smart as these new kids.
Job hopping until you are lucky enough to find a good company, anyway. I’m on year 24 with this place and I’m not sad about it. I’ve considered going elsewhere a few times, but I’ve been elsewhere before. The grass is not greener.
As an old fart, I always tell the young-uns who are looking to leave to make sure they’re doing it for the right reasons. If it’s because “I’m sick of the bullshit”, they’ll find out that there’s bullshit everywhere you go. It may be different bullshit, but it’s still bullshit. I mean, sometimes different bullshit is what you need, but don’t be under the impression that there won’t be any bullshit.
I think the biggest reason is pay. Loyalty really isn’t really awarded anymore, if anything it lets the company know who they can walk all over. From what I’ve been told, moving to a new company is the only way to get a significant bump in pay, otherwise it’s just small incremental raises till you max out.
I know this might not be typical, but a friend in the banking industry left one bank for another for a 50K salary bump for essentially the same job, PLUS it’s 100% remote. When he told them he was leaving, they offered him another 20K.
I do agree about the bullshit, every place is going to have its own type of BS.
Pay definitely. A yearly 3% won’t buy you loyalty. I’d sell my soul for an extra 50k + remote.
That’s basically where one of my friends is at. He took an early retirement package and is scheduled to leave in November.
Despite literal years of telling management that he needs to transfer his knowledge/skillset as part of succession planning, they ignored him.
Now, 2 months from when he’s leaving, the quiet panic is starting as they realise what leaves with him.
But he can’t come back as a regular employee, cause it’ll mess with his pension. Not that he would if they offered.
So they better sharpen their pencil on a consulting offer.
That’s what I did, lucrative couple of years at a tidy per diem.
Teaching part time at the local college is my plan. Their most recent posting was looking for 8 hours a week at $140/hr.
Perfect retirement gig
I did a similar gig once for $100/hr and found the hrs did not cover preparation, training, grading, etc. Once those were factored in it worked out to $33/HR which was a lot less awesome.
Thankfully, I’ve been working as an instructor/curriculum developer for the last 4+ years, and have 20 years to go to retirement.
The background work is nothing for me these days.
I would be willing to bet that in 5 years you’ll be telling us that VW’s new, new management is talking about how they need to hire and promote more graybeards since the 2026 cuts led to record-high warranty/recall costs and reputational damage.
“We realized that we needed some subject-matter experts in all of our key technology areas”.
You had to actually come to a realization that it’s good to have people working for you who know what they’re doing? Bravo, Ford. Maybe someday I too could be a VP.
tbq: waiting patiently for at least one ex-coworker to nominate me…waiting…waiting.
Wild coincidence—I’ve been listening to “Downtown Train” a lot lately, including this morning just a few minutes before opening this post. But Tom Waits is a taste I’ve never acquired, so if you’re like me and you’d prefer a cover but want to avoid Rod Stewart (for obvious reasons), Mary Chapin Carpenter did an excellent version on her first album back in 1987. I’d never listened to that record until recently; it’s definitely more uneven than the series of no-skip bangers she put out in the early ’90s, but there are also some interesting “roads not taken,” and hearing her do a Tom Waits cover in something much closer to an ’80s jangle pop vein than the country sound she’s known for is a major highlight.
I’m pretty sure I’ve got that MCC album on cassette somewhere. If only I had a functional tape player!
TBQ. Toss up. I consider 3 people to be my mentors: A quote from each.
My dad (retired high level engineering manager). “I’ve always had a very responsible position. If anything goes wrong, I was responsible”
Lesson learned, own mistakes and pass down praise. Dad told me sometimes the mistake was putting the wrong person in charge of a project, but since he made the assignment and didn’t check on him, it was still his responsibility.
An Old Swiss Engineer “All Roads lead to Rome, but only if you pick one!” and “It’s easier to steer a moving car than a stopped one.”
Lesson learned. Make a decision today based on what you know. Fix the decision tomorrow based on what you learn. A twisty path can lead to success quicker than the straight line, if you spent too much time finding it.
An old Machinist “I’ve got news for you Bubba, this sheet ain’t never gonna work.”
Lesson learned. Ask skill craft how to solve problems They’ve seen others try to solve problems like yours and know pitfalls you don’t see. More importantly, if you get their buy-in to a solution, it becomes their goal to make THEIR stuff work, instead of focusing on not caring if YOUR crap works or not.
I’m now the greybeard for my company. If my company wasn’t all greybeards, I would be telling the young kiddos stuff that I learned from my mentors.
BRAVO!!! This fully aligns with my career. Hired into a steel mill as a wet behind the ears engineering grad as a maintenance supervisor. They trained me enough to make sure I wouldn’t fall into a hole or get lost, then set me loose. I’m now a senior engineer at the corporate level (different employer)
Dad’s first advice was to always make a decision, right or wrong. I always listened to the factory floor in my 20+ years on it. The techs know more than you – and can shiv you without you even knowing.
Engineering’s refusal to ask a machinist if a part could realistically be made without insane setup before sinking too many hours into something is the biggest sin. There should be a college course where the professor is a retired machinist, and everything is graded on manufacturability.
I sort of had that with Machine Design in my late junior year. The professor came from manufacturing and he wanted essay answers, not math answers. He would say “I need a bearing to go at point X, tell me which one you would pick and why.” I excelled in that class. I would simply the problem to one that could be solved with a simple calculation or two and then pick one out of the “book” (a couple sheets attached to the test) that gave an acceptable life.
I had one that I was the only one to get right. The drawing was such that there was no way to put a bearing where the professor asked for it to go. I said so and why and said that I wouldn’t go with a ball bearing there but a journal bearing. Made my C+ average self the teacher’s pet.
I had that in my AutoCAD, CNC, and manufacturing design courses, but the professor was a machinist before becoming a professor.
I got a degree in engineering, but jobs were hard to find, so spent the following two years fixing machines in a factory and making spare parts myself.
Hands-on knowledge that I’m still using decades later to design stuff that machinists and fabricators don’t hate.
Mostly.
This is the same reason why Architects should work in construction 1st…
Likewise ‘Solution Architects’should start out as software developers…
Etc…
If you have zero hands on experience with what you are designing of course your designs are likely to be shit
Documentation of processes, procedures, best practices, etc… is key. No one person is indispensible. Knowledge should be shared, not hoarded.
It’s unfortunate that the most technically knowlegeable people often get ‘stuck’ and sidelined off the promotion and salary ladder. There need to be ways to get ahead besides just ‘managing people’. I’m struggling with this situation (again) right now. I applied internally for an engineering management job I’m qualified for but really don’t want – because I’m stuck otherwise. Interviews are tomorrow…
Document and make sure >1 person knows how to do a thing is definitely a core teaching of Brooks’ Mythical Man-Month and a guiding principle for me. It’s also fun to learn stuff from your peers!
I refuse to take any management positions until I’m within my last 5 years. No union protection in those spots, but my pension is indexed off my 5 best consecutive years, so I want to thumb that scale near the finish line.
I agree that knowledge shouldn’t be hoarded. But at least in my field (ux designer who works very directly with software engineers) I don’t think documentation can replace mentoring and training people properly-it’s there as a baseline, and everywhere I’ve worked invariably the documentation gets neglected because nobody likes maintaining it even if it isn’t a single SME hoarding the knowledge because they like feeling like the guru everyone has to come to.
Also good luck…this is an issue in design as well, I’m relatively new in my current career but am old enough to be looking for how to move up and not get stuck….without winding up doing nothing but attend work force allocation and project coordination meetings.
Thank you! I’m torn on the opportunity, but going to give it my best shot. The unfortunate truth of these technical/creative jobs is that you just hit a (fairly high) ceiling relatively early in your career unless on the management train or job hopping.
Yes, I have a MS in Business – I’m tilting towards the Dark Side.
Something I have seen is that companies reward hoarding of information. Or at least they did for decades.
I have an old hand that can do X. I’ll have that person train a new hire. Then when the next layoffs come, I can lay off the old hand and keep the cheaper new hire. That was the way a lot of companies worked for the 80s, 90s and 00s. Now they are all “We need someone to mentor people” and the old farts that grew up with that sense a trap.
I’m old enough to heed the advice of Admiral Ackbar – “It’s a trap!” Got laid off 10 years ago from an on-site engineering job and landed in a better place, but can’t count on lightning striking twice. Also I was more marketable at 40… I may consider consulting in 15 years or so.
I’m a programmer. I got the joyous experience of training the new offshore employees how to do my job.
I left before the axe inevitably fell. Our corporate overlord eventually reduced our footprint from roughly 400 to zero in our location (which admittedly took five years longer than the five years I was predicting) though a handful of people did have the option of relocating 200+ miles away.
Ten years farther down the road, and at least some of the remaining employees got “reassigned” to a contractor – one of those “agree or forfeit your job” kind of deals. So still gainfully employed, but all seniority went bye-bye, as did all hopes of a decent severance package when the next round of layoffs inevitably comes around.
As an experienced engineer, and one-time pseudo-data scientist, in a large manufacturing company that is currently downsizing to “capture value” of AI, what Ford is experiencing is my daily life. AI can do things with data, but is pretty useless for situations where there is no data or the data present is wrong or otherwise useless. Certainly, there are situations where AI can make correlations that humans may not, but there are also gaps where AI simply cannot replace an experienced human and their intuition. Perhaps that will change sometime in the future, but for now, many of the companies (like mine) getting rid of their expensive experienced personnel are likely to only see short-term personnel savings and long-term production issues (like my company currently is).
The wisest person I have ever worked with was an engineer-turned-business man that tried to teach people that shortcuts most often led to nothing more than perceived value gain and long-term losses. The older I get the more true that sentiment seems to be, but the harder it gets to articulate because most companies have no ability to look further into the future than the next quarterly report.
GIGO – garbage in, garbage out. And a whole hella lotta garbage is going in. I’m overall distrustful of AI as currently exists.
Pennywise and Pound foolish. Same Wall Street routine.
Bingo.
Plus, in some cases, there is no data in digital form for AI to ingest. Or, if there is, the data may not be contextualized enough to be useful. Just because ChatGPT or Claude can spit something out doesn’t mean it will be useful or should be trusted, no matter how confident it sounds.
I mean, we are currently adding garbage by constantly referring to Leon Musk of Telsa. Tiny, tiny, rebellions may add up.
You know – ’80s Sci Fi movies tried to warn us…
As a fellow pseudo data scientist in a company talking a lot about AI, my experience has been that AI can answer questions about the data, but only effectively when the person asking the question A) understands what the parts of the data actually mean, and B) knows which questions to ask in the first place. Both of those require a decent level of expertise. An expert can look at an AI response and gut check it, often spotting an error in logic that could come down to wording of a question skewing the result. A non expert in that same situation assumes the response is correct and moves forward in complete faith. Queue recalls.
Corporate America is perfectly fine with the (cheaper) non expert. Ford’s a bit of an outlier here, but for those of us at my point in one’s career hopefully it’s the start of a bit of a backtrack on the whole “AI will take over everything” notion. Won’t help the newbies who don’t have a greybeard’s experience, though.
Most American companies, anyway. The Harvard School of Business pretty much screwed the middle class with what they preached to their MBA students.
I had a research fellowship at intel in the mid 2000s. There were still some real OGs around at that point. Folks who did their training and early years in analog and grew old along side the IC. At that time I wondered how in the world would this knowledge be replaced? Computers, both in software and hardware, are so complex the people coming into the field overwhelmingly have their entry point on the tools and tech developed before them and never look under the hood, so to speak.
Anyway, those grey hairs were something else. They had such a deep and immediate understanding of the entire problem when one cropped up. But maybe the person who had them all beat for wisdom was Gordon Moore’s admin assistant. Getting to chat with her over lunch was a treat.
“Never trust an engineer or technician without some gray in his hair. You look OK.”
That’s the ‘Peter Principle’ or ‘Dilbert Principle’ depending on how you look at it.
The Peter Principle states that people often get promoted until they aren’t good enough at their job to be promoted anymore. Ending up with whole departments and upper management full of individuals who are mediocre at best in their position.
I propose a “Welch Principle”: The senior people that know what they’re doing get laid off to save money but ends up costing the company more money than they save.
The Dilbert principal is that the least productive person is put in the position that they can do the least amount of damage… management.
I’ve seen the Dilbert Principal more than the Peter Principal. An opening is available for a manager with a different group. The manager of a group can’t afford to lose workers X, Y, and Z, because those are productive and do the work. But A that is isn’t a hard worker or skilled or whatever. Good person, just not a critical piece. Since X,Y and Z are irreplaceable, this makes A the person to be recommended for promotion.
The bad part is that you end up with lots of very high potential that end up being trapped in fairly low end positions because they are too good at their job. The only way that they can move up is to leave. Which blows giant holes in productivity when that happens.
Oh yeah, the Dilbert principle is what I used to see a lot when I was in corporate finance. Not good at talking to customers or fixing issues? Management!
Promotion into administration is also the easiest way to get a problematic teacher out of the classroom.
So true – the engineering profession is cursed by this. We rise to a point based on technical chops – then are shut out from further rise unless magaging people (which most engineers loath). I’m now fighting this for the second time in my career.
The answer would be to pay X, Y, and Z more money in those positions – but apparently capitalism cannot function if that happens.
When I managed a restaurant I kept trying to pay the backwaiters more money – they were irreplacable, whereas servers were easy to find.
Ah, you don’t know what my manager’s know. The answer is actually C. Fire all 4, replace them with one new hire who is told if it fails it is all their fault and collect a bonus and get a new position before it all crashes and burns. Then rinse and repeat.
Well, until recently. In the last 4-5 years, companies have realized that they can’t run off everyone experienced and survive. Now, they are trying to find “greybeards” to hold the line and finding that between the random layoffs, outsourcing and generally BSery of the last 30+ years, there aren’t many left and the recent spat of “early retirement programs” have gutted what few remain.
There is no substitute for experienced eyes and sound judgment. None.
Any organization that is jettisoning experienced engineers and technical specialists in favor of AI is demonstrating a complete non-understanding of how products actually get made, and of how organizations maintain high standards over time.
But they perfectly understand what shareholders expect – 90 day numbers. Long term results and impacts are irrelevant to “activist” shareholders and private equity
I was at Lotus for long enough to see the same potential mistakes roll round again driven by continually replaced senior management.
Not least proposed cost-downs to a component that would have reversed the changes introduced to fix a recall.
…Charles Poon, Ford’s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering…
Are we sure that wasn’t Irwin Fletcher?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rIxuLPRqac
And this one’s for folks from the greater DC area…
When you’re talkin’ cars, you’re talkin’ Poons.
Can confirm, he said somewhat self-centeredly. 🙂
I’m a greybeard in a particular technology industry niche. The historical perspective and understanding do indeed help in the disaster-avoidance efforts.
It also helps from a big-picture view. Sometimes people will get very excited about a point solution (one that fixes a specific and narrowly-defined problem) without taking into consideration how that solution might affect other aspects of the environment. The additional perspective is helpful there as well.
tl;dr – every fellowship should have a Gandalf
I’m a greybeard engineer constantly dealing with trying to explain to others the second- or third-order effects of some idea someone cooked up. Every few years my company goes back and forth between highering what I call “specialists” and “generalists”, of which I fall into the former and most of the recent hires and managers fall into the latter.
The generalists seem to love to throw some nonsense into ChatGPT and come up with an idea that they know nothing about and toss it to me to implement. I then get to take the time to gently point out that while they fixed one problem they also created three new ones, typically far more complex and expensive to fix.
Worse, since the managers are generalists themselves, they consult AI on the ideas their teams got from AI, and the AI-fuel affirmation circle makes the ideas very difficult to squash.
But as I once learned from a greybeard, I am constantly asking for some junior engineers to mentor myself. Sadly, all I have received so far is an expanded CopilotAI license…
I’ve commented before of the culture at the US automakers being toxic.
But Ford publicly referring to a group of seasoned veterans as Grey Beards, rather than Grey Hairs speaks clearly to the male-dominance at that organization.
I’ll give that they’re the best of the “Detroit” three by a long shot, but there is not a lot of “outside the box” thinking going on in Detroit.
“Experienced engineers” would have worked perfectly well as a phrase.
Gray Pubes
COTD!
For engineers, greybeards still applies. SME’s have 30+ years of experience. In the 1990s, only around 10% of graduating engineers were women. In the last 30 years, there has been more focus in many companies to balance out the male/female ratio of management, many of these 10% or so have move out of engineering and into management. So, for the 30+ year old SME engineers, I would say that well over 90% are male, not female.
This is changing. I would say that the next generation of experts at my work are dramatically closer to 50/50 for male female, because women in engineers has dramatically increased since the 1990s.
I was working on projects with an engineering team 50:50 gender split in the 2000’s.
Per Women in engineering, new women engineers in 2024 were 20.4%. There are curveballs in this of course.
When I graduated (early 90s), computer engineers had many more women than mechanical engineers (like me), but the total number of graduates was significantly lower.
Also, I will say that women engineers in the 90s tended to dominate the GPAs. The drive they needed to overcome social pressures also showed up in their GPAs.
So, if you were at a big company that focused on computer engineering (for example IBM), then you likely saw a lot more women in your engineering group than I did in a smaller company that was full of mechanical engineers. I actually didn’t see a woman working as an engineer in my career until I was about 40 years old (I did see several working in management that used to be engineers).
I’m not in the US, the first one was a joint UK/Malaysian mechanical engineering team, with all the women being Malaysian.
The last one was in the late twenty-teens when Lotus Cars Powertrain Design was just me and a Spanish women, who left to work in F1.
None of the places I interviewed at last year had any women in the engineering teams, which makes me think the situation is way worse than I thought it was.
I do a lot of school outreach stuff, including decades of schemes to encourage women in engineering. One of the organisations stopped their scheme because they couldn’t get any volunteer engineers of the right gender to act as role models, which seemed particularly stupid, but also sad.
Anecdotal evidence from university students I know indicates the gender balance is pretty even, so that’s encouraging.
My dad was part of NSPE (National Society of Professional Engineers) back in the 70s. He pushed and pushed to do outreach towards women to get them into Engineering, against a lot of resistance. His argument was that the combination of math skills, focus, study habits and interest to make an engineer is exceedingly rare and we can’t as a nation ignore half (or more) of the population.
I think he would be proud of the current rate in the US being over 20%, but it still needs a lot of work.
It’s getting there, just really really slowly.
I’m somewhat encouraged that the very STEM oriented college I went to for a while was a 7 to1 male to female ratio back in the day, now it’s right about 50/50.
The 1990’s, where you indicate seeing increased women, are now 30+ years ago. Those engineers who started in 1990 would be in their mid-50’s now.
Yeah, you see a couple 50 year old engineers that are female today. Not many but some. However, SME’s are in their 60s+ in general, so graduates in the 80s. I’m doing the role of an SME right now. I’m late 50s and 10+ years younger than any of the other SME’s in the company. Many graduated in the late 70s.
In 10-15 years, grey hairs will be the right term (and I agree that calling them that now is good practice). But greybeards is still accurate today.
30+ years ago, greybeards wasn’t the right term BTW. Every SME I knew in the 80s and 90s was an Errol Flynn Wannabe. Pencil Stasch, shoe polish black hair and a combover to end all combovers. I remember one had a great line from ear to ear in the back where the part was in his hair and when it was hot, his collar would stain black from the gresian formula dripping off his head. It always reeked like a chemical factory around their offices, even drowning out the cigar smells.
> greybeards is still accurate today.
Hard disagree. It even more disparages those few women that, effectively, had to work uphill for any recognition.
Even if it is mostly correct, it may not make sense to use it. Of course, I think it is a Tolkien reference, gender statements being coincidental.
Accurate doesn’t have to be the right term. I agree Ford shouldn’t call them Greybeards, even though it is accurate and generally known as a term for expert in most companies.
Honestly, I would call them Old Farts.
The big thing to know is that Old Farts are a weird combination. It takes a ton of talent to be an old fart. It also takes a lack of ambition. Old farts end up doing the same job for 30+ years and are so darn good at it that they are passed over for promotions all the time because nobody can afford to lose the skillset. We become grumpy and end up acting just like a certain dwarf in Snow White (the OG Greybeard).
I worked for a company that had a group of them called “Codger’s Row” with warnings about being struck by walking sticks.
That bothers me less than the ‘scars on their backs’ thing. I understand what they are talking about, having been through the wars a few times myself, but what self-respecting organization would casually admit to the fact that their employees regularly have to struggle hard enough that ‘scars on their backs’ is a reasonable descriptor? (That’s even discounting the ‘slaves getting lashes’ visual that I am doubly and triply sure they don’t want associated with their workplace.)
When auto manufacturers started laying off their powertrain employees wholesale, I predicted they’d be begging them to come back and be re-hired in a few years when the folly became obvious. I hope those employees tell the company to add a zero to the end of their salary number or go to hell.
You’re absolutely right, that one doesn’t present well either.
Thank you for pointing this out. This is a simple “I” for inclusion that DEI stands for.