My brother-in-law is pretty high up at a traditional manufacturing OEM. To be clear, they don't manufacture anything that has electronics or software in it (but there is a pretty decent chance your car has something they made). They have a Bay Area software office that does general tech stuff - manufacturing software, business software, etc. Internal things plus some B2C stuff for people buying/installing replacement equipment.

I asked how they liked the software and how the office was working out. The response: "Oh, we don't do it for the software. We can hire 100 people out of Ohio State or Michigan and pay them midwest wages and get the same quality. The SV office is for the connections and investors we get."

It's entirely possible that they know exactly what they are doing ;)

I know they're not stupid, but it's still very frustrating when you have to go and use anything such offices produce. So many unnecessarily cut corners and penny wise, pound foolish decisions.

That's quite the statement considering how many corners, to pick one examole, Tesla is cutting constantly.

> Oh, we don't do it for the software. We can hire 100 people out of Ohio State or Michigan and pay them midwest wages and get the same quality.

No they can't... or they would.

Deeds. Not words.

I’ve encountered a bunch of people with that sort of background working that kind of job, it’s a real thing.

I don’t know why this is hard to believe. Not everyone wants to “grind leetcode” 24/7.

Yeah, I know someone who works at GE (in more traditional engineering). They have masters degrees and when I compare my salary or even someone starting out at a FAANG or Web 2.0/3.0 SWE with theirs, I'm genuinely surprised.

They also tend to not be aware of the salary ranges out there and I think these traditional companies are exploiting them because most of the engineers really respect the companies and what they stand (or at least stood) for.

They can, and they do.

Or they understand it perfectly and have made a conscious choice to target a lower tier of talent.

In a way I'd love to be a fly on the wall in the boardroom when this is discussed.

Because really, it's sad. I would have taken a significant salary drop to go work on something like this because the Ford office was local to me and the work sounded interesting and potentially more impactful than what I was doing at the time.

Except it's so far below a reasonable rate... and you pretty much know the place would be a crappy workplace producing a substandard product...