Coming from Stuttgart, Germany, it is well-known that if you get any position within the local automotive industry, it counts as making it. Doesn‘t matter what level, even if you work on the assembly line.
So I interpret this post as follows: HN discovers that building German cars is a very good business.
True, my uncle stayed his entire life and now got an insane amount for early retirement.
Myself on the other side worked 2 years as a software engineer and that's as much as I could taake:
* politics
* too many artificial restrictions
* worst management I've ever experienced
* Work doesn't get valued at all, cancelling so many projects and ideas amounting to nothing
* lower reputation than "real" engineers, they still don't
understand the value of software, like so many German companies, and treat us as necessary evil, which is also resulting in not competive salary
If you shut up and just come to work every day, you certainly "made it", but for me that's impossible.
Even with bikes there's still a lot of use cases for cars. With EVs, autonomous driving and current trends in urban mobility chances are high that automotive companies will become fleet management companies in 20-30 years (Uber has no chance to survive in the long term).
