TomTom to cut 10% of jobs due to improved automation

I used to work for TomTom maybe 10 years ago.<p>I was there when Google started offering turn by turn navigation for free. Other issue was live traffic information. As you might imagine all this caused some concern among employees because that was, I think, the main source of revenue for the company.<p>They were already doing some other stuff like fitness wearables but they didn&#x27;t seem to be leaning into it.<p>Main idea for staying in business, since you can&#x27;t compete with free, was to go deeper into cooperation with car manufacturers to provide builtin navigation in cars. They were already doing it back then, I think, but they&#x27;ve seen their salvation in capturing bigger part of that market.<p>I was a software developer there, employed in projects pretty far from their core business, but I learned there a lot about how companies become corporations why they can and do run like a headless chicken, spilling money left and right. It&#x27;s basically about survival. Company becomes a corporation when it randomly discovers a gold vein in the economy. For TomTom this gold vein was maps on portable computers. This gold vein brings in absolutely insane amount of money. Then this money needs to be spent on doing a lot of unrelated inefficient discovery work wasting huge amount of money so they have a chance of finding next gold vein before shifting sands of economy and human development burry the original one.<p>From what I see shared in this thread, TomTom still haven&#x27;t found their second gold vein.<p>Maybe I should get hired there again. A lot of my friends from other jobs work there now. I never seen from the inside how corporations die.

TomTom is such an interesting story in technology and finance. Went from zero to $ 10B+ between &#x27;05 - &#x27;07 [1]. Everyone you knew had one, used one, loved one. Then the sudden boom in mobile phones and mobile internet and the financial crisis. Total crash of the stock. Pretty much subsistence without any proper profits since &#x27;09-&#x27;10. Not enough IP to get bought, a few licensing deals here and there. Always falling revenue. No profits. Pretty much a zombie corporation employing 4500 people.<p>Perhaps I&#x27;m harsh. Reading the annual report [2]. It&#x27;s a great company! High management board remuneration. Great place to work. A minister on the supervisory board. Measures CO2 and environmental impact and water usage. And still... what does it say when 4400 people generate about 2 years of salary in total market cap? And where the only positive value is free cash flow (non-GAAP).<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;companiesmarketcap.com&#x2F;tomtom&#x2F;earnings&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;companiesmarketcap.com&#x2F;tomtom&#x2F;earnings&#x2F;</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;corporate.tomtom.com&#x2F;static-files&#x2F;8fd1d5d2-0ecb-47b6-97b7-9c8017df91c2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;corporate.tomtom.com&#x2F;static-files&#x2F;8fd1d5d2-0ecb-47b6...</a>

Maybe this is just my consumer perspective but I feel like TomTom really missed on a pivot to other GPS-related products that Garmin has successfully nailed. 10-15 years ago both companies were known mainly for car sat-nav systems but Garmin now has an incredibly diverse product line with well-liked fitness watches, bike computers, exploring&#x2F;off-grid satellite communicators, marine charts, aviation, etc. Whereas TomTom seems stuck still selling the same handful of automobile satnav products which are surely squeezed to a tiny consume base between smartphone apps and feature-rich car screens.<p>I know there is map IP as well and maybe that&#x27;s their only real business opportunity going forward.

&gt; Regrettably, this will have an intended impact on approximately 500 employees in our Maps unit, equivalent to around 10% of our total global headcount.<p>At least they are honest about it.<p>I am currently reading the first chapter of 21 lessons for the 21st century and it fills me up with a bit of dread. People having been losing jobs for a long time, but in the future it will get harder to get new ones due to the amount of specialization you need to acquire.

I know most people in the states think of them as the old Navi company but in europe they are the market leader in telematics (tracking driving)<p>Also up until 2020 they were supplying apple maps with map data.

I just saw a car with their logo and a couple roof mounted cameras driving around in my area last week.<p>Apparently doing a streetview kind of thing.

I worked for TomTom ~12 years ago, they had some of the best dev from all over the world. The one issue I found was they had all indpendent teams which are bit disconnected and not sure what everyone were doing in total.

Recent presentation about one of their automation tools <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Mh5fV8TVlSo" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=Mh5fV8TVlSo</a> Like other map providers they record where user actually drive and adjust the map. Steven Coast (founder of OpenStreetMap) explain how that is now sufficient to even start a map from scratch.

Using TomTom web map API for a project and they are really well developed. Great product that can compete with Google Maps.

Wouldn&#x27;t it be cool if everyone kept their jobs but only had to work 90% of the time?

&gt; Regrettably, this will have an intended impact<p>This reads weird to me (non-native English speaker). How can you regrettably reach your intended impact? Is that some kind of an idiom?

Sad to keep seeing automation get better and the headline not to be &quot;TomTom increases paid time off due to improved automation&quot;

My thoughts: Any middle or large company can fire off at least 20% without any negative impact to earnings.

Are announcements like this always done in this strange mixed-voice style? The first para reads like it&#x27;s a third party that&#x27;s reporting on the event, then in the third para they use the word &quot;our&quot;, and it&#x27;s on their website of course.

I thought TomTom was just another Kodak, Blockbuster, or RIM. Didn’t realise they were still trying to make things, surely Google and Apple own the car market now?

I get the feeling that the intended message is that there is a layoff and that the framing of the layoff being due to efficiency gains is largely bs.

From what I’ve seen of recent products, they should probably close up shop and just license patents and collect dues. Dead company.

WhoWho?

Damn. And instead of reinvesting and furthering R&amp;D, product lines, and more - they&#x27;re just chopping 10% (or 450 people).<p>That&#x27;s a hell of a lot of institutional knowledge just gone.<p>It also goes to show that when I automate, I should keep it hidden. That&#x27;s because I do not receive the gains of automation. Instead, I receive more work or get laid off.