Standard, big-company IT department
Standard, big-company IT department
I'm part of what used to be called "Connected Vehicle Cloud," but the name changes regularly. We work on services deployed in Google Cloud Platform, which broker messages between in-service vehicles and the FordPass mobile app. The domain is exciting, and there's a ton of room for learning.
Lots of good tooling has been built to help kickstart development. Many options for tech stack, at least on the cloud front. Benefits are among the best I've ever seen:
- 401k matching
- Time off policy
- Vehicle plan
- Etc.
If you get a good boss who understands your level of contribution, you're golden.
Management structure is opaque and not well understood by the higher-ups.
Your team will have a supervisor (a.k.a. People Leader), but you really work for the PM on your team.
Your "People Leader" will likely be stretched far too thin to make any real impact on your day-to-day, and they will most likely be unable to provide you any feedback on what you should be focusing/improving on.
The team's PM is god – and depending on the PM, your life can be heaven, or it can be hell.
Most individuals in management (both supervisors and PMs) have not built software in years.
On the technical front, there is no real design/architecture role.
As a result, there are a myriad of conflicting opinions on how applications and systems should be built.
There is no common understanding of what quality software development looks like.
Do not be surprised by the lack of automation in testing, devops, static analysis, performance testing, SRE, etc.
There are many options hosted by Ford to accomplish these kinds of things, but very few teams pursue them with any level of effectiveness.
Culturally speaking, at least within the department I'm part of, Engineering is seen as a means to an end, and there is a heavy bias toward "getting things done" vs. "getting things done RIGHT."
This has resulted in an absolutely overwhelming amount of technical debt, which will likely never be paid off.
Outsource software development completely, and lay off your engineers. It will be cheaper, and the quality will be the same.
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Ford Interview Experiences
Software Engineer
A brief phone screen with a recruiter, then another discussion with a manager, resulted in an on-site interview. This interview was with the hiring manager and two other engineers.
Mechanical Engineer
Applied through the University Careers portal. Invited for a panel interview at the Dearborn facility. It was an interview for a position through an agency hire. The interview was conducted by a group in the under-hood flow simulations team. Questi
Java Practitioner
Applied through a consultancy, and it was an in-person interview. The interview was for 1 hour with less complex questions from core Java and J2EE. Basically, the role is for support and not development.
Software Engineer
Dearborn, Michigan, United StatesJune 1, 2016A brief phone screen with a recruiter, then another discussion with a manager, resulted in an on-site interview. This interview was with the hiring manager and two other engineers.
Mechanical Engineer
Dearborn, Michigan, United StatesOctober 1, 2012Applied through the University Careers portal. Invited for a panel interview at the Dearborn facility. It was an interview for a position through an agency hire. The interview was conducted by a group in the under-hood flow simulations team. Questi
Java Practitioner
Dearborn, Michigan, United StatesApril 1, 2015Applied through a consultancy, and it was an in-person interview. The interview was for 1 hour with less complex questions from core Java and J2EE. Basically, the role is for support and not development.
