Thread regarding Ford layoffs

One of the primary snake oil salesmen for Data Center of the Future retired at the end of 2021. The tall tales have been unraveling ever since as his successor was left with a castle in the sky. While the castle is oh so nicely decorated, the successor made the mistake of opening the front door and taking a step outside. That first step was a b*tch.

They definitely should outsource the Ford mainframes to IBM IaaS zCloud.
The mainframe ITO team skill level, motivation level and attitude is bottom of the barrel.
Every mainframe issue that we encounter we have to bring in a team of IBM “experts” to investigate the issue, then tell the Ford ITO team exactly how to address the issue, then badger and beg the Ford ITO team to actually do some work. Invariably the work isn’t done correctly and we must bring IBM “experts” back in to determine what was done incorrectly. Meanwhile 9-12 months have gone by.
All this to say why not streamline the work and just let IBM do all the work.

And yes, we should migrate off the mainframe, especially the application presentation layer. In the meantime, let’s stop throwing good money after bad on Ford mainframes.

I think you underestimate the current IT management. This is a group of people with strong will to protect their own interests and their friends and family’s interests. They will make sure that whatever conflicts with their interests failing and therefore justify their existence. This group also employ many children of the management roles of other organizations. Growing organization size is their speciality.

Make no doubt the ITO outsourcing has begun. GCP

Everything is getting migrated to it. Ford may have small datacenters in the future, but that is it. This is going to end badly...........................

Google is going to eventually takeover everything. Ford's IT staff will shrink over the next 3-5 years until there is a skeleton crew.

The good news is that Google is going to hire.

@2yll+1fmuFs5W Agree much of Ford IT is a joke, particularly IT management.

Anyone recall all the hoopla and $$$$$$ spent on the Data Center of the Future?
Recall from day 1 senior well respected technical IT Ford employees advised Ford IT leadership of the major flaws in the plan?
Recall that highly paid consultants also advised Ford IT leadership the major flaws in the plan?
Recall that Ford IT leadership hired additional consultants to give them the results they wanted?

Cue the drum roll, Ford IT leadership now plans to decommission all but one of the data hauls in the Data Center of the Future. What a joke, from day 1 they knew of the issues and papered over it and continued to spend, spend, spend. Now we will spend, spend, spend to undo what was done.

IT outsourcing would be prudent, especially for ITO (IT infrastructure and IT operations).
Ford simply lacks the leadership and skills to make good decisions. They need to go to Infrastructure as a service.

Maybe Ford hired Goldman Sachs to tell them they can't compete in the EV realm. Put lipstick on the pig (that is the Ford EV business) and see if they can trick a real EV company into acquiring it.

IT Team at Ford is a joke, better to move it completely to India like BMW and Mercedes. Purchasing can follow them holding hands. IT represents a huge overhead w/no value added in the end when Ford ends up buying SW from other sources to fix what never worked in house.

It’s probably so far along they have come up with a new logo

Something like a green and blue oval with the acronym of Ford Understands Climate Knowledge

The company is doomed. It's been continually down hill since Alan Mulally left. He was very intelligent and a great person.

Mark Fields "The used car salesman"
James Hackett "The furniture man"
Jim Farley "I'm the smartest guy in the room just ask me"

Alan Mulally and Alex Trotman were the only decent/intelligent CEO's the company has had in the last 25years
Remember 1998 when Ford stock was almost $65 ??

It's sarcasm. Ford is late, really late, to enter the data harvesting market for anything not directly related to automotive. And the data being sold has to have sale value in excess of the harvesting and processing costs.

The only way this makes sense for the viable future of the Ford Motor company is to spin off separately both the ICE part and the EV stuff, in the same manner as Visteon was. Ford should become a sustainable stand alone data and analytics company. You know I'm right.

Can’t tell if @ezx+1fmuFs5W is being sarcastic or not.
The truth about Ford selling vehicle data, is that there is a limited consumer base (insurance companies, dealerships, auto shops, gas stations,). At first Ford thought they could make bank selling customer location data, but as it turns out cell phone location data is preferable data to the data purchasers (they did not want what Ford was selling). In some cases Ford needs to buy data from other sources to make the customer data they have useful.
Now the data Ford is successful at selling is financial data of its customers and employees. Ford also sells its employees names and addresses.

The partial EV spin off planning that was going on was purely an accounting game. Spin off EV sub component, claim it’s valuation is some insane amount of $, add that to FoMoCo 2022 revenue, then claim oh look FoMoCo made a huge profit.

"Visteon was a legacy business spin off from Ford of their components division" - Exactly - and the legacy ICE business spinoff will become second fiddle to EVs. If you are involved with EVs, you are golden.

Legacy/ICE will be very shaky ground and treated with less respect than it is now. I would not be shocked to see all legacy employees converted to contract or go under a new name with limited benefits and loss of years of service counting.

Very strange/scary times if you are a Ford employee!

@ezx
What data is being sold and who is buying it?

Visteon was a legacy business spin off from Ford of their components division (ACD). EV's are a new industry and has nothing in common with that event.

I told you m o r o n s before that Ford will be a data and software company. Vehicles will just be one of may ways we sell data and features using data. Data people!! That is where the money is going forward right now! Profits! Bonuses! Big money is in BIG DATA!!!!

The funny thing about this, if true, is that the ICE business will do better than the EV business will! Bank it!

I've heard that salary EV jobs will be going to India/Mexico. If you're in automotive watch out! You could be in trouble.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/18/ford-shares-pop-on-report-of-potential-spin-off-of-ev-business.html