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Google claims Levandowski launched competing projects long before Otto
- itsmemattchung 10y ago> Levandowski was able to collect more than $120 million in incentive pay from Google, the complaint says, “all while he was breaching his obligations to Google and building a company that would compete with Google.” Uh.... that's a ridiculous amount of money to try and incentivize someone.
- meddlepal 10y agoApparently not enough to incentivize him to not steal.
- bitmapbrother 10y agoGreed knows no boundaries. This is a person that always wanted to be part of the three comma club.
- selimthegrim 10y agoHe's probably hoping now he won't end up stuck with the doors that only slide back and forth made of bars.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- wapz 10y agoTruthfully he might not even be scared of jail. He probably has the most power in uber right now in terms of negotiation and can probably get immunity for a full confession.
- brilliantcode 10y agoMaybe $100,000,000 USD is like pocket change over there. $100,000,000 USD is $133,855,000 CAD! Clearly, Google should've hired a Canadian, our country is paying smart people to leave our economy.
- sctb 10y agoCan you please not post unsubstantively, like we've asked?
- brilliantcode 10y agoNothing I wrote is false, so what is your problem? Who is this mysterious group known as "We"?
- tartuffe78 10y agoThere are two measurements of money, none and not enough.
- rory096 10y agoThose were presumably earn-outs from the companies Google acquired from Levandowski, not employee incentives. http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/the-unknown-startup-that-built-googles-first-selfdriving-car http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/artificial-intelligence/th...
- austenallred 10y agoAt the kind of scale Google operates on it's not crazy for one person (especially an executive) to drive $100m in value.
- M_Grey 10y agoIs it? It's understandable why they'd want to claim that, and why a culture might exist of mutually rewarding "brilliant leadership" with "competitive packages", but... come on. What do you think the ratio of people who are actually, individually responsible for $100m in value, to the people receiving compensation as though they were, might really be?
- austenallred 10y agoI think there are very, very few people who are worth $100m, but I absolutely believe that there are those people, especially within a company like Google. This isn't the first time Google tried to keep an exec by paying them $50m+ (nor is it the second) http://www.businessinsider.com/neal-mohan-googles-100-million-man-2013-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/neal-mohan-googles-100-millio... http://fortune.com/2016/03/29/googles-pichai-received-100-million/ http://fortune.com/2016/03/29/googles-pichai-received-100-mi...
- M_Grey 10y agoI hear you, but I still wonder what kind of evidence I'd want to see laid out in front of me before parting with a cool $100 mil, and I somehow doubt that's how these things work.
- maxerickson 10y agoI think the calculation is probably different when you are making "big bets" with other people's money.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pvelagal 10y agoMay be google or any other company should treat these new initiatives as a separate startup company to begin with, with seed money as the input. Engineers hired should have salaries/options just like founders/co-founders. If the company achieves its objectives, Google or any other company should buy them back at a certain price or let the highest bidder buy (like uber or any other company).No body loses. Giving 100 million dollars upfront without any sense of ownership/accountability to drive a startup like effort, looks silly to me.
- jonas21 10y agoThat's essentially what incentive pay is: payments tied to achieving particular objectives.
- cshenton 10y agoYeah Google has done this in the past. It's what they did with Google Wave. But Lazlo Bock has reflected that this caused the a lot of departures when the project failed. Not sure if they do that anymore.
- tsunamifury 10y agoThey got the leading self driving car out of it. It's a lot to pay if it failed, it's a great investment of it suceeded
- londons_explore 10y agoLeading a few years back. We haven't heard anything else apart from a Waymo rebranding in multiple years. My guess: The top people left, and the project lost momentum. I expect to see it grind on for a few years before being canned.
- tsunamifury 10y agoThis seems like a troll, since in no way would this be true to anyone who is even remotely paid attention to the space.
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- InclinedPlane 10y agoI find that sentiment laughable, to be honest. Would anyone blink an eye at a CEO earning that much or having that much in incentive pay over perhaps a number of years? Of course not. But the only reason to have such differing opinions is a classist attitude. Indeed, look how bizarre a world we live in has come to be. Nobody today would think it too ridiculous for an actor or entertainment figure to be paid so much. And yet a single engineer could easily have a much larger impact on the day to day life of millions of people or on the development of technologies spawning multibillion dollar industries.
- sushid 10y agoThe most eye-catching part of the article was the fact that "Levandowski was able to collect more than $120 million in incentive pay from Google." Wow! I knew that competition was fierce but not hundreds of millions of dollars fierce. That and his chunk of the $680MM acquisition price for Otto means his venture was well worth it as long as he can avoid jail time.
- arkitaip 10y agoEven with jail time it will be worth it for him personally.
- bitmapbrother 10y agoHow so? If he's found guilty the 680 million, he and his investors, received from Uber is obviously going to be rescinded. The 120 million he received from Google may also be challenged considering his deception and the side businesses he was running.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- firstpost1234 10y agothey still have to be able to collect. and knowing how profligate Uber is with spending, i wouldn't be surprised if a large part of the Otto acquisition was immediate earnout for Levandowski. frankly, if he comes out with $10MM after it's all said and done, he's still ahead. it's totally possible for this to happen.
- bitmapbrother 10y agoI'm sure he'll land on his feet. His reputation and trustworthiness, however, will forever be tarnished. And if he's convicted his career is pretty much over.
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- TYPE_FASTER 10y ago"Levandowski was able to collect more than $120 million in incentive pay from Google" lolwut
- firstpost1234 10y agoif you're going to commit a crime, always make sure it's a $50MM+ crime. that way you can squirrel away the money and pay for lawyers.
- tdb7893 10y agoAlso those crimes seem to often have less jail time
- dkarapetyan 10y ago$120M. Google basically paid this guy's lawyer fees and then some. They literally enabled and financed their own court case through this guy's salary. Since this is white collar crime this guy will not spend any time in jail, the lawyers will get rich, and either it will be settled or like Oracle case will be dragged out for a decade until Uber is out of business but since all the higher-ups are friends I'm guessing it will be settled.
- microtherion 10y agoWhile this is an extreme case, it seems to me that this highlights why aqui-hires may not be a good idea: The founders of aqui-hired companies may get compensation which is completely out of line with what engineers originally at the hiring company earn. Furthermore, it gives them both the means and the motivation to only stay in their new job until they've earned out their incentive pay, and then repeat the quit /found startup/get aqui-hired cycle. This basically teaches both the aqui-hired and the tenured engineers that the way to get ahead is to embark on a series of short term engagements. I'm sure that many consider this style of career the true magic of silicon valley, but to me it looks like companies are incentivizing disloyalty.
- lawnchair_larry 10y agoBut it's either that or nothing. These people are not offering to sell their loyalty for more than a few years. The market has plenty of takers.
- microtherion 10y agoBut is "that" truly a better deal than "nothing", once you factor in the effect on morale of your other employees?
- 013a 10y agoI'm not so certain. The alternative might be to double or triple the pay of ultra-high-performing employees. But, ultimately, your performance at your job is bounded by the responsibilities of your role. You can possibly have a 2x impact, but the only way to have a 10x impact is to quit and go your own until you build something good enough to deserve it. 10xing someone's pay does not 10x their performance. It probably wouldn't even 2x it, even in a new role. But you can derive that kind of value through an acquisition.
- ehsankia 10y agoEvery day we're finding out about new details of crazy things this guy did. Everyone's focusing on the $120M, but can we talk about the fact that he was connected to two other startups while working at Google, never disclosed it, and later basically acquired both of those?
- dkarapetyan 10y agoHow is that any different from VCs being board members of various startups and those same startups "magically" being acquired by the more successful one? Why is it OK when VCs do it and not OK when a rank-and-file engineer does it? I think you too are focusing on the wrong things. The startup and VC ecosystem is all sorts of retarded. This case blowing up just gives you a small glimpse into the startup shell game.
- magicalist 10y ago> * How is that any different from VCs being board members of various startups and those same startups "magically" being acquired by the more successful one? Why is it OK when VCs do it and not OK when a rank-and-file engineer does it?* Well it certainly doesn't sound like he was rank and file, but regardless I'd imagine the difference is that he had a contract that said he wouldn't.
- dkarapetyan 10y agoAnd I think board members are not supposed to have conflicts of interest through insider connections and yet the VC ecosystem mostly operates by insider connections. I'm not condoning what this guy did but the reason he was able to do all of that is not because he was being shady (although from a specific perspective he was being shady I think it is a matter of degrees when it comes to this stuff). It is because the system is set up to enable exactly this kind of behavior and he just happened to overstep a few too many boundaries whereas the people that have been playing this game for a while have a much more measured approach. So instead of jumping on the bandwagon and burning this guy maybe we should reflect on how the ecosystem operates as a whole and whether the rules are slightly rigged. He'll have his day in court but if the rest of us don't learn from the experience then not really sure if all the wasted bits on the matter are worth it in the end.
- sAbakumoff 10y agoLevandowski seems like one of those "Hustle" tv show characters who was able to collect money from everyone by using a sophisticated scheme and almost got away with it. Hope he will write a memoir one day called "if I did it" or something
- ChuckMcM 10y agoWow, this story just keeps getting better and better. It would be really interesting to see if Levandowski was able to get Google's employee agreement litigated in a California court.