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Apple Lays Off 200 Employees from Autonomous Car Unit
- PaulBGD_ 8y agoAny stats on how many employees they had to start with? If it was a team of 500 vs 2500 that changes how I'd view this heavily.
- saagarjha 8y agoRumors are that there are several thousand people disclosed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_electric_car_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_electric_car_project
- Fricken 8y agoApple accused a Project Titan ex-employee of trade secrets theft, and it was disclosed that there 5,000 employees "Disclosed" on Project Titan. https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-self-driving-car-project-details-fbi-stolen-trade-secrets-investigation-2018-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-self-driving-car-proje...
- rishav_sharan 8y agoOf course the most important comment is towards the bottom. If they laid off 200 out of 5000, then it really means nothing
- greedo 8y agoAnd they haven't laid off all 200; many will be moved to different assignments at Apple.
- cheeze 8y agoIt always seems odd that huge tech giants like this lay off certain sectors. Are they dumping them because they don't have anywhere else that they'd be useful to Apple? Surely recruiting is harder than moving someone laterally in the company.
- Despegar 8y ago>In August 2018, Apple enlisted a Tesla engineering vice president and Apple veteran, Doug Field, to lead the Titan team alongside Bob Mansfield. This week’s dismissals from the group were seen, internally, as anticipated restructuring under the relatively new leadership. >Other employees who were impacted by the restructuring of Project Titan are staying at Apple, but moving to different parts of the company.
- dehrmann 8y agoOften, they label culling the bottom 5% as "restructuring" or try to make sure the bottom 5% get included. It's easier to combine layoff events than have a steady stream of them. A lot of these companies also do layoffs, then pay severance, and possibly some time where you're technically an employee and are free to look around the org for a new job. But honestly, after being told you're laid off, your loyalty to that employers is pretty low, and you're better off looking elsewhere.
- C1sc0cat 8y agoA automotive engineer isn't going to be much help on ios mac and phones.
- robbrit 8y agoYou'd be surprised at how much of automotive development is just regular software engineering. Sure, the 5% of their skills that are automotive-specific aren't much use, but the rest of their skills are certainly useful - especially at Apple, who does actual close-to-the-metal coding.
- C1sc0cat 8y agoOk any software engineers want explain constant pressure and constant wear and which component of a cars drive train it applies to?
- pentae 8y agoWhen you can't make a laptop with reliable screens or keyboards, or an iMac lineup that has CPU's 2 generations behind.. Maybe it's time to shut down the stupid vanity projects and focus on your core business instead?
- saagarjha 8y ago> Maybe it's time to shut down the stupid vanity projects and focus on your core business instead? What is the "vanity project" in this case? I think it's pretty clear that Mac sales won't last forever, and it's not like Apple is strapped for cash and can't afford to pay for both teams.
- bonestamp2 8y agoI assume he's talking about the car project. It seems like they now have fewer than 1000 engineers on that project, so I can't imagine what they're doing with that few engineers. That would be pretty small scope in the auto sector. There's one large automaker I consult for and they've got more people than that just working on software they use internally. So, in scale, it might seem like a vanity project, but Apple obviously knows something we don't. For example, Tesla hired a couple of chip engineers from Apple and designed their own chip (to replace the NVidia gpu they were using). Maybe Apple has something unique in the pipeline that would be applicable to machine vision or something else useful to cars and it makes sense to market that to OEMs (I highly doubt they're building an entire car with so few engineers, makes more sense that they would be supplying a component and/or software).
- saagarjha 8y ago> It seems like they now have fewer than 1000 engineers on that project I believe Apple has significantly more employees disclosed on this project than that. This is clearly not a "vanity project".
- bonestamp2 8y agoI agree, like I said... even if it was less than 1000 they know something we don't (so I don't think it's a vanity project).
- Theodores 8y agoI wonder if this autonomous driving thing has gone off the boil across the industry. Years ago fully autonomous was only just around the corner - as in five years away - but now nobody is talking of much more than improved lane keeping assist grade safety features, stopping if someone walks in front of the car rather than navigating a whole city including small streets. The scale of autonomous has been misleading. Either something is autonomous or it isn't. 'Level x' autonomy is marketing speak. I am quite happy with incremental improvements in driving aids, e.g. how Intel MobilEye is advertised. Spaceboy Elon sold it all to us as an impossible future. I reckon that Apple probably got on board the electric autonomous driving bandwagon but can't perform the required magic. You can hire all the engineers you want to build magic things but after a while there is no point paying them if the magic is not going to happen. They may well have pivoted to a car type of thing that has great UX instead of 'magic'.
- johnrogers0 8y agoI never really understood how the industry was able to ensure, from a legal standpoint, the failsafeness of autonomous cars. There are bound to be errors, such as the incident last year with running over a homeless woman who was clearly visible to a real eye, but not detected. It’s simply impossible to account for all the corner cases, especially when you have to factor in manual drivers who can behave arbitrarily (what if they purposely drive weird just to mess with the autonomous cars?). In fact, autonomous cars may increase danger rates as human drivers become quite peeved at sharing the road with them, and try to derail them at all cost. Maybe these are the reasons they gave up.
- bonestamp2 8y ago> what if they purposely drive weird just to mess with the autonomous cars? I got a car about 6 months ago with Level 2 Autonomy and I'd say it's even more than just trying to mess with them. Now that I know the subtleties of how my car behaves, it's easy to spot other drivers who have theirs engaged too. I can use that to my advantage when appropriate and it takes some ethics not to abuse them. For example, if I have to merge I'll merge in front of one of those cars, purely from a safety standpoint -- I know that car is going to respond and give itself lots of space. Of course, people could use that much more maliciously to take advantage of those cars "niceness". I've never had anyone mess with my car just for the sake of it, but you can see the seasoned Tesla owners taking the opportunities that they spot. It changes the way other drivers drive if they can identify the behavior.
- bickepuff 8y agoIn what is being billed internally as a restructuring effort, Apple this week released more than 200 employees from its "Project Titan" group, a secretive branch of the company focused on developing self-driving car technologies.
- an4rchy 8y agoAlthough they aren't shutting down, I was thinking that even if they did, Apple can just wait for the dust to settle and buy one of the existing/growing players once the technology is proven out (they definitely have the cash to do it). Spending a lot of money and trying to catch up to Waymo/Zoox/Cruise etc is also kinda hard, even for Apple, because of all of the pieces of the stack they need to work on and access to a very competitive/small talent pool.
- npunt 8y agoThat is unless those newer co's are overvalued in the market. I imagine Apple would love to buy Netflix for 10-20bb but at 140bb that's a hard sell. Driverless is such a foundational tech it makes sense to have lots of efforts pursuing it.
- neya 8y agoI don't think Apple has advancements in machine learning tech as much as its competitors. For example, take a look at how primitive Siri is. It struggles a lot in comparison to its competitors even for some basic commands. Or, take a look at Apple Music's recommendation system in comparison to Spotify's discover weekly. Now, take a look at Amazon and Google. They both have their own cloud infrastructure (which ironically Apple uses) with machine learning built right into it. Both have state of the art image recognition systems (proprietary) for various applications (Eg. Google Image search, Amazon shopping, etc.) I am not saying Apple can't do it, I just think they're lagging behind and this move totally makes sense.
- dilyevsky 8y agoThey reason is because they don’t snoop on their users and so don’t have good training sets available. Training set for driving is more readily available.
- naaaaak 8y agoApple originally kept Siri audio for up to 2 years "for testing and product improvement purposes". I am not sure if that is still the case. https://www.wired.com/2013/04/siri-two-years/ https://www.wired.com/2013/04/siri-two-years/
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- tiew9Vii 8y agoFrom what I read Apple are taking a different approach? Google/Amazon are harvesting massive amounts of data and training against it and Apple are taking a privacy first approach saying you shouldn’t have to harvest lots of data for intelligent AI. Currently the harvesting data for models look to be working better for Google / Amazon with current technology. The question is how will Apple progress long term and given time can they achieve AI with some level of privacy. I don’t know enough to have any comments but like Apple’s public stance on this.
- iradik 8y agoDid they get laid-off or reassigned? The article is vague.
- chx 8y agoMaybe Apple doesn't want to pursue a dream which, as far as we know, can only have a limited outcome? They don't really like such compromises in products. Check this: https://medium.com/s/story/self-driving-cars-will-always-be-limited-even-the-industry-leader-admits-it-c5fe5aa01699 https://medium.com/s/story/self-driving-cars-will-always-be-... > Waymo’s CEO, John Krafcik, has admitted that a self-driving car that can drive in any condition, on any road, without ever needing a human to take control—usually called a “level five” autonomous vehicle—will basically never exist. At the Wall Street Journal’s D.Live conference, Krafcik said that “autonomy will always have constraints.” It will take decades for self-driving cars to become common on roads. Even then, they will not be able to drive at certain times of the year or in all weather conditions. In short, sensors on autonomous vehicles don’t work well in snow or rain—and that may never change. Or read https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/the-dream-of-driverless-cars-is-dying/ https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/07/the-dream-of-driverless-... or any number of "sobering up" articles from last year.
- no1youknowz 8y agoThis article is a bit sketchy, but serves my point-ish. They say Volvo is going to release a true self-driving car by 2021. But then it goes on to mention level 4. Let's pull it back a little and say by 2021, they release level 4. If any automaker is going to do Level 5 in the snow. It's going to be Volvo. Being a Swedish company (albeit owned by a Chinese firm now), they have a particular track record when it comes to prioritising safety in terrible driving conditions. I'm pretty sure that they are going to work it out. [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/26/volvo-self-driving-car-sleep-watch-movie-on-commute-by-2021.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/26/volvo-self-driving-car-sleep...
- mikehines 8y agoA lot of negativity here. Hey maybe Apple has figured out autonomous car and no longer needs that 200 employees!
- bunnycorn 8y agoAs usual. The truth is that Apple hasn't promised anything and delivered nothing. Google on the other side, has promised everything and delivered nothing. And they promissed it "in five years" in 2012...
- DeonPenny 8y agoAren't they running trials now
- robotnixon 8y agoWaymo have been operating on public roads since 2017. https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-driving-safety-driver-chandler-autonomous https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-drivi...
- bunnycorn 8y agoThat's just bull, it's on Arizona, on a closed circuit test track. > And starting very soon, the company plans to invite regular people for rides in these fully self-driving vehicles. What happened since 2017?
- robotnixon 8y agoThey invited regular people for rides in these fully self-driving vehicles. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-waymo-selfdriving-focus/waymo-unveils-self-driving-taxi-service-in-arizona-for-paying-customers-idUSKBN1O41M2 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-waymo-selfdriving-focus/w...
- WhompingWindows 8y ago
- ed_blackburn 8y ago> Of late, Apple CEO Tim Cook has touted his company's initiatives in health as the key to its future growth. "I believe, if you zoom out into the future, and you look back, and you ask the question, "What was Apple's greatest contribution to mankind?" it will be about health," Make sense, they'd rather concentrate on health. There's an obvious inroad there with wearables.
- rubidium 8y agoPlus AI is going to turn into a cash slugfest. Apple could afford it, but may be making the wiser move.
- zwendkos 8y ago"An Apple a day keeps the doctor away."
- oska 8y agoI really doubt that Steve Jobs would have bet the company on that.
- ei8htyfi5e 8y agoMaybe he would have. If you visualize technology progressing through time, there is an obvious merging of human and machine. Computers were large, now they are so small, you leave your Air Pods in your ears for hours because you forget they are still in. Imagine another 50 years. Computers will most certainly be seamlessly connected to us in some way. Imagine a device that can read your mind and give you what you want before asking? What if you're more intelligent just because you buy a specific product? What about a device that is proven to lengthen your life just by using it? Biological research and health are what's necessary to get there. The interesting things happen at the intersections. Who could compete? Steve seemed like a smart guy. Maybe if he saw things this way he would bet the company as you say.
- julienfr112 8y agoHow can 200 employees have any significance when talking about such a huge project as autonomous Car ?
- swarnie_ 8y ago200 is a pretty meaningless number unless someone has inside knowledge of Apple and know how large the project was. 200 out of 210 is a killer, 200 out of 4000 might just be a re-balancing of skills/priorities.
- jamisteven 8y agoMaking room for that TSLA acquisition..
- nkkollaw 8y agoLet's be honest, Apple hasn't been able to ship a decent, non-defective computer in many years, now. I would be extremely scared of driving a car where the steering wheel or breaks got stuck from dust particles like their keyboards (but the break pedal is over 85% thinner!). Apple is still able to sell stuff because they're milking the successful products of the last years when Steve Jobs was still alive, but the situation is quickly shifting. Personally, I switched from Apple to Linux and just bought an absolutely wonderful Surface Book 2 (yup, EUR 2000), and it's the best computer I've ever owned. Compared to my last, defective, keeeey-repeeeating MacBook Pro it has a detachable screen so that it can turn into a tablet or you can fold it for presentations, touchscreen, awesome design, and the screen is 3:2 so I can see more text. I had been a customer for over 10 years.
- hema_n 8y agoAll the best Apple for your future endeavors.!!
- trhway 8y agohaven't seen those cars in Sunnyvale for something like a couple months. The cars are really heavy on sensors, so Apple shouldn't have issues with detailed 3d scene acquisition, it is probably understanding of the scene is where they struggle - not surprising giving that they are hardware company and for example behind the likes of Google in the AI dept.
- dana321 8y agoI wouldn't trust an Apple self-driving car. If i saw one i would start running.
- smpetrey 8y agoWell, that was quick.
- imandride 8y agoI can only imagine Apple selling cars like they currently do their hardware. They ship a product that had multiple design defects. Then deny the claims or blame it on the users, until the users start suing them. Having people beta test your phones is one thing. But in no way do I trust a vehicle made by Apple on the roads.
- mtreis86 8y agoYou go in to the dealership because your three year old car needs repairs. They tell you its going to need a new engine and suspension and going to cost almost as much as a new car, and try to sell you on one instead of the repair. Mechanic down the street replaces your shocks and an intake manifold gasket for less than a tenth the cost of the dealer repair quote.
- yreg 8y agoDo you mean like the iPhone 4 antennagate? That shit was massively overblown. Apple did jack shit to fix it and the iPhone 4 was the world's best selling phone ever (at that time). When Apple sometimes ships a product with a design defect – like the current MacBook Pro keyboards — they usually know about it and do it consciously. As if other manufacturers didn't have problems of similar or greater scale.
- mrfusion 8y agoWelcome to the trough of disillusionment.
- code4tee 8y agoThe autonomous car community is learning the same lesson the aviation community found. Autopilot is a very powerful tool that increases safety, but it doesn’t replace pilots. Similarly car automation will increase safety but it won’t broadly replace drivers.
- samstave 8y agoIn dense urban environments, like say FiDi areas - why not have sensor and car-control infrastructure integrated into the city streets/curbs/sidewalks. One doesnt have to realy on the most amazing sensors in a car if the city can be responsible for driving the vehicles down its pathways. Let the car enter a given area and relinquish a certain amount of control from the car to the environment it is in. Let the traffic light system dictate what cars are movingg in which direction. Ensure that the cars never enter a crosswalk or bike lane etc. once you leave the area - you then have whatever control of the car you would normally.
- WhompingWindows 8y agoA nice idea in theory, however most cities are woefully behind on public infrastructure to begin with. They're going to be much, much slower to roll-out than any self-contained SDC by SV or Detroit makers.
- samstave 8y agoRecall that company that was installing parking spot sensors in SF? What happened to them? But a company could support making a "Smart Curb" which monitors all traffic infomation around it, acts as a beacon, and does other things... Lots of "iot" ideas could happen from that - like all the Scooters replying to the curbs stating their location. People could choose a ble beacon tag for their traditional bikes and could have it always visible. Effectively a BLE beacon fabric in an urban environment is an interesting idea to me.
- wasdfff 8y agoGo anywhere with winter and look at the state of the curbs. Its like eastern europe. In one season everything shifts several inches up or down or out or in, cracks and crumbles, and gets covered with dirt and debris until it is warm enough to begin street sweeping again.
- pureliquidhw 8y agoThis is a great idea! And the tech to do it is already available. So why isn't it implemented tomorrow? There are too many questions on where the liability lies. What city would take on the risk of their infrastructure failing causing economic, or even worse physical, harm? What balance of control do you allow? Can a driver still stop their car? If they can and fail to, are they liable? How much are the auto makers responsible for the behavior of the car? Will there be a universal standard of signals that yield similar behavior in all cars? Sam the other way, will all municipalities work the same with navigation systems in cars? I hope a city tries this, and I hope it goes well, and I hope it happens soon. But what I want to see most is answers to these concerns around liability. That's what will spur real progress.
- phillipcarter 8y agoI really wish companies chasing this far-fetched dream of an autonomous car instead invested in their local transit authorities to make public transit free for all.
- 0x262d 8y agothe sad reality is that public transit isn't very profitable and has been consciously sabotaged since the invention of cars.
- Consultant32452 8y agoRight now roads are designed for "human sensors." At some point we'll need to redesign the roads for new kinds of sensors. I have no idea what this will look like, maybe all the roads will have RFID in them or some other tech. I think that's the hurdle we haven't gotten past yet, recognizing we need new roads.
- greedo 8y agoConsidering we can't seem to pay for our existing road infrastructure, I don't think this will happen in the next 20 years.
- coryfklein 8y agoMy list so far: Apple, Tesla, Buzzfeed, Verizon/Yahoo/CNBC, HuffPost, SpaceX Doesn't look like the layoffs will be ending soon either. If it was just one or two that would be one thing, but this is forming a pattern. What do all these companies know? I keep hearing word of a potential recession or downturn. Is anybody here more keyed in than myself and can provide an explanation?
- strangegecko 8y agowithout having read the article: layoffs in preparation of an economic downturn would be unusual, especially when it's R&D in a cash rich company I don't think there's a pattern, companies lay off and rehire people all the time due to changed goals and/or requirements
- cco 8y agoI'm not sure I follow, you think that employment goes up during economic downturns?
- imtringued 8y agoWhat if the economic downturn has already started and it's just that these specific companies are feeling the effects sooner than others?
- WDCDev 8y agoLayoffs happen all the time so I am not reading too much into this re. macro economics. However, I firmly believe the autonomous driving bubble will pop eventually, and you will have layoffs across that entire segment of the tech industry.
- bondolo 8y agoThe couple of now former Apple Titan employees I know all took new jobs in the last six months. This has been coming for a while.
- crunkykd 8y agoAt the risk of offending some folks, let me offer some conclusions based on living near the Waymo facilities for 4+ years. Their autonomous cars are already driving better than about 30% of the licensed people on the road in my town.