Volkswagen Guns After Tesla With Homegrown Software Developers

German car giant Volkswagen is investing billions to boost its software prowess, where it lags behind Tesla. The strategy involves hiring the best minds, but software talent is hard to come by. VW believes it has a solution.

Photo Insert: Faculty 73 is inspired by Sheldon Cooper's love for the number 73 in the sitcom "The Big Bang Theory."

Three years back, Rene Körner took a job as a shift leader at a restaurant in the German town of Magdeburg after the illness of a family member derailed his plans to pursue a career in informatics.

Just as Körner, a gaming enthusiast who loved assembling personal computers as a kid, was settling in his job, a little nudge from a friend set off his career on a completely different path.

"The restaurant job was fun, but it was not fulfilling," Körner told Deutsche Welle (DW). "A friend, who was writing her doctoral thesis at Volkswagen, told me about this new programming school in Wolfsburg, Faculty 73. It offered a great opportunity: a chance to work for VW and do things that I really enjoyed doing."

Faculty 73, the name inspired by Sheldon Cooper's love for the number 73 in the sitcom "The Big Bang Theory," is a crucial part of VW's multi-billion-euro push into software as it gears up to knock electric car market leader Tesla off its perch.

The programming school is meant to help the carmaker maneuver through a paucity of IT professionals amid an intense battle for talent with not only its auto peers but also the likes of Apple and Google-owner Alphabet, which are also developing electric vehicles.

Located across the Mittelland Canal from Volkswagen's global headquarters in Wolfsburg, Faculty 73 trains basic software developers within two years. It plans to train around 600 IT specialists by 2024, the majority of them from among existing VW employees looking to switch roles.

The earn-while-you-learn program culminates with a VW job on successful completion. "More than 70% of the students we enrolled last year came from within Volkswagen and most of them had worked on the assembly lines," Ralph Linde, head of Volkswagen Group Academy and the carmaker's chief learning officer, told DW.

"The switch from a blue-collar job to a white-collar one means a huge change. You can also see it in their eyes that it's one of the biggest opportunities they've ever had."

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