Ford CTO Paul Mascarenas On Bridging The Worlds Of Silicon Valley And Motor City [TCTV]


When you think about Detroit, you don’t often think first about the technology industry; you think about automobiles. But the reality is that nowadays, the two industries are more intertwined than ever. Indeed, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that, as Marc Andreessen likes to say, “software is eating the world” and becoming more central to the future of many traditionally non-techie companies.

Ford Motors is no exception to this trend. Ford’s CTO Paul Mascarenas was in San Francisco recently, so we were pleased that he took some time to swing by TechCrunch’s offices and talk a bit more about what’s happening on the tech side at Ford and what his job is like on a day-to-day basis.

Watch the video embedded above to hear about why Mascarenas has been spending more and more time in Silicon Valley, how consumer electronics and automotive electronics are coming to a point of “convergence,” what Ford’s close partnership with Microsoft means for the its rep among Apple fans, what he looks for in engineering hires, and more.