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It seems like Waymo is well ahead of everyone else, but they had a mass talent exodus 2 years ago (many went to Nuro, Aurora, Otto, Argo, etcetera). I can't im

It seems like Waymo is well ahead of everyone else, but they had a mass talent exodus 2 years ago (many went to Nuro, Aurora, Otto, Argo, etcetera). I can't imagine that many smart engineers, already making good money even by Bay Area engineering standards, would quit to compete unless they really thought they had a chance. There's just so much about the competition in this space I find fascinating.

londons_explore 9y ago
Many were bored - they'd been working on it 5 years already. Some thought the direction was wrong - not gathering enough test data (unlike Tesla). Some thought they didn't have a big enough slice of the pie, and by moving to a startup and replicating the work they could earn way more through an acquisition by a carmaker. Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend. Some saw the fundamental approach wrong. Why not use neural nets for path planning and decision making rather than hand coded rules which will never cover enough cases to be good enough? Some didn't want to be part of Googles risky approach. Too much pressure to get the cars on the road could kill people, and killing people, or the threat of it, is rather bad for morale. The leaders had this "even if it isn't perfect, it's better than current drivers" approach. Thats little comfort if it was your off by one error which caused the car to plough into a group of schoolchildren.
- Judgmentality 9y ago
  > Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend. There was a rumor that Urmson stole code from the Urban Challenge and took it to Google, but Carnegie Mellon and GM never pursued a lawsuit. Or were you just being lax with your timeline?
  - WillReplyfFood 9y ago
    In the eyes of FOSS everyone in a company is a codethief from the public so nothing to see here.
    - Judgmentality 9y ago
      This has nothing to do with FOSS, it's more akin to what Levandowski did when he left Google and ultimately went to Uber. It's just a rumor though (and a largely forgotten one at that). I just found it interesting that this person may have nonchalantly unearthed it.
- magicalist 9y ago
  Did you work at waymo or is this speculation? Some seems a bit like a Markov chain built from random self-driving objections ("never cover enough cases", "schoolchildren"), and some seems wrong (e.g. [1] mentions an expanding use of deep learning at waymo starting in 2013, well before Urmson left). The usual big corp objections -- unsatisfied with agility, level of control, level of payoff and recognition if it succeeds -- seems a lot more likely. [1] https://nytimes.com/2018/01/04/technology/self-driving-cars-aurora.html https://nytimes.com/2018/01/04/technology/self-driving-cars-...
  - asteli 9y ago
    you are correct. at least based on the dozen or so people i know that left chauffeur
- kajecounterhack 9y ago
  > Some thought the direction was wrong - not gathering enough test data (unlike Tesla). FWIW if you gather a ton of data and don't have simulation it's pretty much useless. Also it's expensive to keep around large amounts of data. Tesla didn't even have a simulation team until relatively recently. > Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend. Do you work in autonomous vehicles? Most teams are using C/C++. If you're not waymo you probably use ROS. If you've ever worked at Google you'd know their C/C++ stack is among the most pleasant to deal with because much of the bad cruft from those languages is abstracted away in stable libraries.
  - KKKKkkkk1 9y ago
    If you're not Waymo you probably use ROS. If you are Waymo, then what do you use?
    - agildehaus 9y ago
      I don't know if they've changed, but in 2013 they were using a modified Ubuntu: https://youtu.be/7Yd9Ij0INX0?t=9m25s https://youtu.be/7Yd9Ij0INX0?t=9m25s
  - vinn124 9y ago
    > If you're not waymo you probably use ROS. is this true? ros works well for prototyping, but is it actually used in prod?
- telltruth 9y ago
  Nah... Waymo internally had exponentially increasing bonus structure to achieving milestones [1]. This meant starting around 2012, lots of people got mind blowing bonus numbers. It was then soon become clear to top talent that they had enough money to either retire or self fund their own startups or join someone else’s without having to worry about meager salaries of startups. During same time brass decided to water down the bonus scheme and the party was over. Talent departed with their big money already in the bank. Much of the talent also knew that even bigger payouts was on the horizon with car companies buying up any ex-Google startups they can get their hands on. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/13/14599186/google-waymo-self-driving-salary-compensation-autonomous https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/13/14599186/google-waymo-sel...
smt88 9y ago
> would quit to compete unless they really thought they had a chance I disagree. Autonomous vehicles were/are a gold rush, and there are companies with lots of money willing to pay Waymo's engineers to... "replicate"... their success at Waymo. Many of them had an expectation to be acquired by a company with no software chops but a significant stake in self-driving, and that's proved to be a reasonable assumption over the past few years. For the engineers, it's kind of like chefs at restaurants leaving to start new restaurants that are the same concept, but don't have the same volume or brand recognition. Yes, you have to start from scratch at the new company, but you also stand to profit much more (and do interesting, early-stage work).

londons_explore 9y ago

Many were bored - they'd been working on it 5 years already. Some thought the direction was wrong - not gathering enough test data (unlike Tesla). Some thought they didn't have a big enough slice of the pie, and by moving to a startup and replicating the work they could earn way more through an acquisition by a carmaker. Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend. Some saw the fundamental approach wrong. Why not use neural nets for path planning and decision making rather than hand coded rules which will never cover enough cases to be good enough? Some didn't want to be part of Googles risky approach. Too much pressure to get the cars on the road could kill people, and killing people, or the threat of it, is rather bad for morale. The leaders had this "even if it isn't perfect, it's better than current drivers" approach. Thats little comfort if it was your off by one error which caused the car to plough into a group of schoolchildren.

Judgmentality 9y ago
> Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend. There was a rumor that Urmson stole code from the Urban Challenge and took it to Google, but Carnegie Mellon and GM never pursued a lawsuit. Or were you just being lax with your timeline?
- WillReplyfFood 9y ago
  In the eyes of FOSS everyone in a company is a codethief from the public so nothing to see here.
  - Judgmentality 9y ago
    This has nothing to do with FOSS, it's more akin to what Levandowski did when he left Google and ultimately went to Uber. It's just a rumor though (and a largely forgotten one at that). I just found it interesting that this person may have nonchalantly unearthed it.
magicalist 9y ago
Did you work at waymo or is this speculation? Some seems a bit like a Markov chain built from random self-driving objections ("never cover enough cases", "schoolchildren"), and some seems wrong (e.g. [1] mentions an expanding use of deep learning at waymo starting in 2013, well before Urmson left). The usual big corp objections -- unsatisfied with agility, level of control, level of payoff and recognition if it succeeds -- seems a lot more likely. [1] https://nytimes.com/2018/01/04/technology/self-driving-cars-aurora.html https://nytimes.com/2018/01/04/technology/self-driving-cars-...
- asteli 9y ago
  you are correct. at least based on the dozen or so people i know that left chauffeur
kajecounterhack 9y ago
> Some thought the direction was wrong - not gathering enough test data (unlike Tesla). FWIW if you gather a ton of data and don't have simulation it's pretty much useless. Also it's expensive to keep around large amounts of data. Tesla didn't even have a simulation team until relatively recently. > Some saw the tech as fairly old. Remember much of Waymo's code was written by Urmson 10 years ago. Probably all C/C++. Not very nimble and quick to extend. Do you work in autonomous vehicles? Most teams are using C/C++. If you're not waymo you probably use ROS. If you've ever worked at Google you'd know their C/C++ stack is among the most pleasant to deal with because much of the bad cruft from those languages is abstracted away in stable libraries.
- KKKKkkkk1 9y ago
  If you're not Waymo you probably use ROS. If you are Waymo, then what do you use?
  - agildehaus 9y ago
    I don't know if they've changed, but in 2013 they were using a modified Ubuntu: https://youtu.be/7Yd9Ij0INX0?t=9m25s https://youtu.be/7Yd9Ij0INX0?t=9m25s
- vinn124 9y ago
  > If you're not waymo you probably use ROS. is this true? ros works well for prototyping, but is it actually used in prod?
telltruth 9y ago
Nah... Waymo internally had exponentially increasing bonus structure to achieving milestones [1]. This meant starting around 2012, lots of people got mind blowing bonus numbers. It was then soon become clear to top talent that they had enough money to either retire or self fund their own startups or join someone else’s without having to worry about meager salaries of startups. During same time brass decided to water down the bonus scheme and the party was over. Talent departed with their big money already in the bank. Much of the talent also knew that even bigger payouts was on the horizon with car companies buying up any ex-Google startups they can get their hands on. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/13/14599186/google-waymo-self-driving-salary-compensation-autonomous https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/13/14599186/google-waymo-sel...

smt88 9y ago

> would quit to compete unless they really thought they had a chance I disagree. Autonomous vehicles were/are a gold rush, and there are companies with lots of money willing to pay Waymo's engineers to... "replicate"... their success at Waymo. Many of them had an expectation to be acquired by a company with no software chops but a significant stake in self-driving, and that's proved to be a reasonable assumption over the past few years. For the engineers, it's kind of like chefs at restaurants leaving to start new restaurants that are the same concept, but don't have the same volume or brand recognition. Yes, you have to start from scratch at the new company, but you also stand to profit much more (and do interesting, early-stage work).