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Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets

460 points by coloneltcb 7y ago

danso 7y ago
FTA, the significant aspect of this new twist in Levandowski's ongoing legal saga: > It is not uncommon for tech companies, which fiercely guard their intellectual property, to sue former employees or the firms they join after they leave. But criminal charges of a senior executive for theft is unusual.
- jerf 7y ago
  "According to the complaint, Mr. Levandowski, who worked on self-driving cars at Google, downloaded more than 14,000 files containing critical information about Google’s autonomous-vehicle research before leaving the company in 2016. He then made an unauthorized transfer of the files to his personal laptop, the complaint said." If the allegations are true (always important to bear in mind from a one-sided view of the complaint), I can see why they took that step in this particular case. Any "senior executive" should know that's illegal.
  - dekhn 7y ago
    levandowski never liked when rules got in the way of progress. his attitude was "whatever it takes to birth self-driving cars".
    - groundlogic 7y ago
      Interesting. Source?
      - dekhn 7y ago
        https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal-googles-intellectual-property https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal... The company was less than a decade old, but it had almost seventeen thousand employees, including a thick layer of middle managers. Levandowski recently told me, “One of the reasons they wanted us was because Larry Page knew we were scrappy—we would cut through red tape.” Page, Google’s co-founder and chief executive, often complained that the company had become bloated, and had lost the hacker mentality that had fuelled its initial success. By the time Levandowski arrived, Google’s apparatchiks were in ascent. “Hiring could take months,” Levandowski told me. “There was a program called WorkforceLogic, and just getting people into the system was super-complicated. And so, one day, I put ads on Craigslist looking for drivers, and basically hired anyone who seemed competent, and then paid them out of my own pocket. It became known as AnthonyforceLogic.” Around this time, Levandowski went to an auto dealership and bought more than a hundred cars. One of his managers from that period told me, “When we got his expense report, it was equal to something like all the travel expenses of every other Google employee in his division combined. The accountants were, like, ‘What the hell?’ But Larry said, ‘Pay it,’ and so we did. Larry wanted people who could ignore obstacles and could show everyone that you could do something that seemed impossible if you looked for work-arounds.”
        groundlogic 7y ago
        Hacking around internal bureaucracy in a smart way is one thing, stealing IP for your next gig is something else.
        r00fus 7y ago
        One could reasonably argue that one level of ignoring rules logically led to the next level - of ignoring laws.
    - michaelt 7y ago
      Or he never liked when rules got in the way of him selling his startup to Uber for $680 million.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - ChuckMcM 7y ago
      Sadly not an unusual attitude. I've known (and occasionally worked for) people who felt that rules were for chumps. Their reasoning was always a variation on; "winning is good", "chumps slow themselves down by following rules", "in your evaluation at the end of the year the bonuses go to 'winners' not losers." It is a rather narcissistic perhaps even sociopathic view of the world in my opinion, but it does exist.
      - Loughla 7y ago
        Isn't that attitude what 'disruption' culture is all about? Find a business that takes forever because of regulation, then ignore the regulation, and profit? Uber, that's an example of this. AirBnB in a lot of instances, too, I think.
        kragen 7y ago
        This is not a correct reading of Christensen, nor close to it.
        Loughla 7y ago
        Explain, please.
    - throwaway_law 7y ago
      >never liked when rules got in the way of progress. Yes, that seems to be the Silicon Valley Culture. "Move fast and break things" "Its better to apologize and seek forgiveness, than ask for permission" "Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter."
      - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
        “move fast and hurt people”
      - inlined 7y ago
        I used to go back to my university and speak at the ethics class in my recruiting trips. I stopped after people’s questions changed to “Uber, Airbnb, etc all succeeded because they broke the law. Why are ethics important?” and I had no real answer.
        teachrdan 7y ago
        What might your answer be now? Does commercial success necessarily mean that ethical violations are unimportant? (not trolling, just curious how you'd articulate the importance of ethics in the vacuum of legal or economic consequences)
        jfim 7y ago
        They succeeded at building companies, but they also externalized a lot of issues. Tenants being evicted to turn rentals into Airbnb hotels, additional traffic in cities, jobs turning into precarious gigs, etc. Ethics are important, because they change the criteria for decisions from being only dollars matter to "what's the right thing to do." A society full of ethically challenged dollar maximizers is not that good a place to be in.
        Judgmentality 7y ago
        Well, obviously this is a complicated subject, but if they're going to cherry-pick the offensive, you can cherry-pick the defensive. Theranos is an obvious counter-example where being unethical didn't really work out for anybody. uBeam will likely go the same route, and there are some other less well-known examples. A much more interesting debate is directly between Uber and Lyft, because most people (even many investors) would argue the main difference was that the founders of Lyft weren't as morally reprehensible as Kalanick. The sad reality is it seems like poor ethics is rewarded by those who know how to exploit it properly. What most people are really interested in is where is the line? Because let's be honest - most people aren't studying ethics in entrepreneurship because they care about ethics. Most people want to know what they can get away with and still get rich.
- stefan_ 7y ago
  Well, figuratively, anyways. > What Serge did not yet know was that Goldman had discovered his downloads just a few days earlier, months after he’d made the first of them. They’d called the F.B.I. in haste, just two days before, and then put their agent through what amounted to a crash course on high-frequency trading and computer programming. McSwain later conceded that he didn’t seek out independent expert advice to study the code Serge Aleynikov had taken. (“I relied on statements from Goldman employees.”) He himself had no idea of the value of the stolen code (“Representatives of Goldman told me it was worth a lot of money”) or if any of it was actually all that special (he based his belief that the code contained trade secrets on “representations made by members of Goldman Sachs”).
minimaxir 7y ago
Official filing: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-uber-self-driving-car-executive-indicted-alleged-theft-trade-secrets-google https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-uber-self-drivin... PDF: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991...
- dmix 7y ago
  > The prosecution is being handled by the Office of the U.S. Attorney, Northern District of California’s new Corporate Fraud Strike Force I'm curious if this explains the delayed timing... New agency team gets started and looks around for the biggest fish to fry. Everyone already dislikes Uber and AI is big right now so it's win-win. Smart move by the prosecutors if so. (Or it could just be a long process due to the other civil trial happening first or just the FBI criminal investigation taking long, and the new group simply took up the prosecution, I'm just speculating)
  - AndrewBissell 7y ago
    It's pretty common for the DOJ to take a very long time to get all its ducks in a row before bringing charges against very well-heeled defendants. Because there are so many avenues for the extremely wealthy & connected to escape legal accountability, the case needs to be as airtight as possible before filing charges. If anything this is actually pretty quick action relative to when news of the offense was made public.
  - sangnoir 7y ago
    IIRC, there was a criminal referral made by the judge during the (civil) Uber v Google proceedings. It probably took time for the grand jury to be set up and complete its investigations after that.
    - dmix 7y ago
      Interesting that would explain it. Thanks
leoh 7y ago
For more background, this New Yorker essay is useful. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal-googles-intellectual-property https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal...
- keithyjohnson 7y ago
  Great article, I liked that it illuminates the question--whats a trade secret vs knowledge from on-the-job-experience? And where's the line across which a company can say you've used a trade secret? It's scary to think that one of the outcomes of this case could be a precedent that allows companies to go after what's in your head.
  - compiler-guy 7y ago
    It's unlikely that this will be a precedent for companies "going after what is in your head." The accusation is that Levandowski downloaded numerous proprietary files and plans, which is very far from personal knowledge.
crappy-doo 7y ago
you guys all think you're special and the rules don't apply to you... just wait and see what the rest of the world has to say about that...
ummonk 7y ago
It doesn't change the criminality of his actions, but something I haven't ever seen any info about: were the designs he downloaded and took with him for LIDAR systems that he had played the primary role in developing while at Google or were the designs largely the work of other Googke employees?
- moftz 7y ago
  He stole schematics, does a senior executive draw schematics? Likely no. He probably considered it all his own and didn't think about how many people played a role in building this tech.
- bduerst 7y ago
  Definitely the latter. Hundreds of employees worked on the LIDAR designs that Levandowski downloaded and took to Otto and Uber.
- rhacker 7y ago
  That line of thinking may technically help him substantially. The actual document theft isn't something he can walk away from, but the amount of harm it caused can definitely be argued in court. It is public knowledge he worked on lidar systems prior to working at Google so the scope of the processes and ideas that went into the stolen documents may simply be refinements from his Darpa days. Those refinements could ultimately be argued to be worth a LOT, but it does help his case- IMHO.
- duxup 7y ago
  >downloaded more than 14,000 files containing critical information about Google’s autonomous-vehicle research before leaving the company in 2016 Just generally as the act has been described it sounds like the information downloaded was pretty massive and wide ranging. It seems unlikely he always "played the primary role in developing" all of it. And really you can debate what that quoted phrase means and what the legal ramifications of that are if you were to presume that he could take the things.
uuilly 7y ago
I used to work for Anthony at 510 systems. He tried to hire me for Otto as well. Watching this whole thing unfold from, obscure story in 2011 to the Waymo Vs. Uber trial to federal charges and national news is rather surreal. Anthony is one of the most creative, energetic thinkers I've ever encountered. If he stopped taking shortcuts he'd probably be the next Jobs or Musk.
- AndrewBissell 7y ago
  Musk will be the next Levandowski.
  - dmix 7y ago
    People have such an impetus for Musk's downfall but a few off colour or poorly thought out tweets is nothing compared to something as criminal as downloading everything from your company before starting a competitor. Or worse while you work on the competitor on the side even before leaving the company. Anthony should have known that files are easily tracked in a place like Google and that he'd put a giant spotlight on himself by competing with Google's future golden goose.
    - AndrewBissell 7y ago
      All pretty pale in comparison to a faked $75 billion buyout tweeted out during market trading hours. Or the blatant self-dealing and faked product unveil used to push through the SolarCity bailout.
    - whatok 7y ago
      I'm pretty sure people criticize Elon for more than just a few Tweets.
    - bduerst 7y ago
      Yeah, Musk never stole competitor IP, so the comparison is a bit banal. If anything, Musk's undoing will be how he has handled Tesla, such as his nepotist SolarCity acquisition.
    - 7y ago
tempsy 7y ago
Interesting this is only against Anthony and not Uber this time. The stakes seem much smaller here. I would be surprised if he actually goes to prison for this. And max fine of $8 million or so is small for him
- svd4anything 7y ago
  There have been a number of cases in the financial industry with trade secret theft and the perpetrator has been sent to prison. Why if he is convicted (likely imho) wouldn’t he also?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  The maximum penalty is 250k per count or twice the gross gain/loss, whichever is greater. So the financial penalty could be quite significant.
  - tyingq 7y ago
    Wouldn't a conviction open him up to a more costly civil suit? Harder to defend a civil suit if you're guilty in a related criminal charge.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
      Maybe so. At the time, everyone wondered why Google did not sue him, just Uber. Now I wonder if Google's legal team wasn't already in touch with the FBI/US attorney's office. It might be that the reason why they didn't pursue him in civil court was to leave the way open for the criminal procedure to blaze the trail. That would be sick, if so.
      - ksherlock 7y ago
        I got the impression that Google couldn't sue him, per se, because their employee arbitration requirements were working against them in this case.
    - sangnoir 7y ago
LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
Lesson learned- if you leave your company- blow up the last project, do something stupid. Unstar yourself.
unscrupulous_sw 7y ago
> It is not uncommon for tech companies, which fiercely guard their intellectual property, to sue former employees or the firms they join after they leave. Is it really that common? I feel like most software engineers don't really take intellectual property all that seriously. Most will not think twice about backing up emails when leaving the company which might contain code diffs, design docs, etc. Friends from different companies usually talk about internal system designs and technical problems pretty freely. One of the circles I hang out with even backup and share the interview question database from every company they've been at. So while it's probably crossing a line, it's still not something I expect they will ever get sued for, let alone criminally charged. (This is in contrast with friends from the finance industry who are a lot more tightlipped about everything and you do hear stories about regular employees getting sued)
- creato 7y ago
  > I feel like most software engineers don't really take intellectual property all that seriously. Most will not think twice about backing up emails when leaving the company which might contain code diffs, design docs, etc. You can't be serious. I would never think of doing this, and I can't imagine who would.
  - bifrost 7y ago
    You'd be a rare bird. Most employees don't even bother to not pirate software, look at porn or whatever on their work laptops. Its somewhat hilarious.
    - azylman 7y ago
      You're comparing apples to oranges. I know a lot of engineers at a lot of companies who look at porn on their work laptops (which isn't illegal). I don't know a single engineer who would take documents from their previous company to their new company (which is very illegal).
    - P_I_Staker 7y ago
      Not rare at all in the software industry, is very common. I'd say people are more split than OPs letting on, but plenty of software engineers are extremely serious about IP.
thenightcrawler 7y ago
Likelyhood he faces jail for this? What will become of his new company pronto.
kragen 7y ago
"Theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. Fairchild was "theft of trade secrets" from Shockley; Intel was "theft of trade secrets" from Fairchild. When Camenzind left Signetics and designed the 555 (under contract to Signetics), he was "using trade secrets" of Signetics; in today's legal environment, they could have just ordered him to stick around as an employee and work on a less risky project. MOSTek was built out of "trade secrets" of Motorola. Unix was only released under a source licensing agreement, and for decades the Lions book, the bible for Unix kernel engineering, was illegal and could not be printed legally, because it contained "trade secrets" (and copyrighted code!) of AT&T. (Or, rather, Western Electric.) Indeed, economists have published a number of papers arguing that that California's prohibitions on non-compete agreements and on employer ownership of private work product underpinned the 1970s–1990s shift from Boston to Silicon Valley. So this movement toward resolving such conflicts in the courts, instead of by companies competing to out-innovate one another, is very troubling. Investors, and in this case Google upper management, are killing the goose that laid the golden egg; they want to shift power from engineers, who make things, to lawyers and investors, who specialize in getting paid for them. This is probably a major factor in the widely-observed shift of the center of innovation from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen, where shanzhai ("theft of trade secrets") is a way of life. I live in a poor country which is poor mostly because the established economic powers are able to strangle new centers of wealth creation in the cradle, using the government and laws. Don't let that happen in your country. Engineers create wealth. Lawyers and investors just compete to privatize it.
- TheMagicHorsey 7y ago
  There's an element of truth in what you are saying. But in this case Lewendowski didn't build the stolen technology. He misappropriated the work of other engineers at Google. It would be one thing if he just left with his own work. That would be more understandable.
  - kragen 7y ago
    I agree that Levandowski didn't invent everything he "stole", but this is not significant from the point of view of legal precedent — whether you write code at work or your coworker writes the code, the law considers it to belong to your employer — and some of the cases I mentioned above also included the departure of executives, not just engineers. (Edited to clarify and correct spelling.)
TheMagicHorsey 7y ago
Most engineers I have met in Silicon Valley have a very high standard of personal ethics. For example, I have seen engineers risk their own careers to insist that their employers give back to open source projects when the employer is in violation of an open-source license's terms. But I've also seen a few, rare bad apples. There are some people who are borderline sociopathic, who don't think twice about theft, misdirection, misappropriation of credit, and throwing co-workers under the bus for personal gain. Usually, such people are not caught, and are not punished ... ever. People who learn about such sociopaths, just avoid them. But sometimes these sociopaths go too far. This seems to be one such case. This prosecution will discourage the very worst behavior and it will feel therapeutic for people that have felt victimized by various sociopaths who used them as ladders on the climb to fame and wealth ... but the less criminal kinds of sociopathy in the workplace is probably never going to go away. And there's no real way to stop it. I haven't been to Google or worked with Google in a long time, but for a while there, say between 2010 and 2015, I felt like it was chock full of sociopaths in mid-level management. I don't even think Anthony would have stood out as particularly sociopathic in that environment.
- 2sk21 7y ago
  Any thoughts about this article in Wired? https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery...
deleted 7y ago
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cletus 7y ago
The level of greed, hubris and stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me. Levandowski was paid a bonus of $120 million while at Google, which is more money than any reasonable person will need for several lifetimes. This was actually a running joke at Google (while I was still there) to describe $120M as "1 Levadownski". Like Sundar one year was described as earning "only 1.7 Levadownskis" (he got paid $200M one year). Why someone would risk jail time doing something so clearly wrong (taking material trade secrets from an employer) for even more money is just staggering to me. Even if he escapes prison time the stress and cost of a protracted criminal trial is huge. The loss of reputation is likely permanent. I get why some high fliers have big egos and they privatize their success (even when pure dumb luck can be a huge factor). This is the hubris part. Right or wrong, that belief in your own abilities is almost a prerequisite for disruption. The interesting part is how he "cheats". Like he clearly went to efforts to cover his tracks. Those aren't the actions of someone who felt they didn't do something questionable. So at this point, it's not about the hubris of the individual, it's about being perceived as being gifted, intelligent, a visionary and so on. Honestly it makes me glad when such charlatan have their almost inevitable fall from grace.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- gist 7y ago
  > Why someone would risk jail time doing something so clearly wrong (taking material trade secrets from an employer) for even more money In particular 'for even more money'. You are assuming that the motivating factor was money. People do all sorts of things when no money or financial gain is involved at all. Sometimes just to enjoy the pleasure of being aberrant. Take hacking as one example.
  - jonas21 7y ago
    Yeah, it's conceivable that his motivation was to make self-driving vehicles a reality at all costs (to save lives or something), and Google wasn't moving fast enough for him. That doesn't excuse stealing, but it might not be as simple as greed or hubris.
paul7986 7y ago
I use to feel bad for Google and wanted this thief to face justice. But umm he's just doing what he witnessed and was taught(told) to do while working for the big G. Google blatantly steals IP from the biggest fish to the little dreamers they inspire and such is well documented. See this popular HN thread... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929
- paul7986 7y ago
  Why is this point being downvoted? It is not relevant to this discussion or it's something else??? Again It's well documented the big G steals IP!!
  - pb7 7y ago
    Because you're letting your emotions get the best of you.
    - paul7986 7y ago
      You might too if the company who inspired you to dream and create tech invited you to demo and then treated you like a dog(possibly stole from u). I met with other names like Samsung, Intel, Black n Decker and no deal was made there too but I was treated respectfully with dignity! I told my story for years here then last December lo and behold Ji Qie of MIT tells the same story I've told for awhile but with emails/evidence clearly showing Google getting caught stealing IP. She met with Google ATAP too! Overall the narrative shouldn't be only about Anthony doing wrong rather he was mimicking what he witnessed and was taught (directly or indirectly) by his employer, Google to do; steal IP!
oneepic 7y ago
Can someone explain the difference between this situation and the following situation: - engineer at Company A has expertise in a certain field, and is really, really good at solving problems in this field and knowing what to do next at any point in time. They bring quality to Company A's systems. - engineer moves to Company B to do the same kind of work, and uses their expertise to bring Company B's systems up to high quality as well - Company A says that this engineer must have stolen trade secrets.
- tdb7893 7y ago
  He was caught with actual documents and designs. He took more than just his expertise from his previous employer.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Traster 7y ago
  In this case the engineer literally downloaded proprietary files and took them with. You're welcome to take your intelligence and experience with you, you're not welcome to take the work product that the company you're leaving was literally paying hundreds of millions for.
- greenyoda 7y ago
  "Must have stolen trade secrets" won't stand up in court. They'd have to enumerate which specific trade secrets were allegedly stolen, prove that they were indeed trade secrets and not something that lots of senior engineers could figure out on their own, etc. Levandowski was charged with stealing specific files and designs, not trade secrets in general.
- nwsm 7y ago
  Read the article and you'll know the difference.
- deleted_account 7y ago
  The indictment[1] sheds some light on the difference: "On or about December 11,2015, he downloaded approximately 14,000 files from SVN. These files contained critical engineering information about the hardware used on Project Chauffeur self-driving vehicles, including schematics for the printed circuit boards used in various custom LiDAR products." In other words, the accusation is that he stole technology that was the output of the entire Project Chauffeur team, not simply stuff of his own creation. Presumably, those materials were non-trivial and represent the combined effort of many engineers over many years. Imagine you're toiling on a team for years and your absurdly compensated boss decides they want the whole pie, clones the repo their laptop, and dips out to found their own start up based on everyone's work. [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991...
chkuendig 7y ago
He's already off the Pronto.AI about page, his current startup where he was the CEO until this news: (mentioned towards the end of the NYT article) https://pronto.ai/about/ https://pronto.ai/about/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:I7ifOuQOp-QJ:https://pronto.ai/about/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ch https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:I7ifOu...
- SahAssar 7y ago
  They do mention it on the homepage and link to this though: https://pronto.ai/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Pronto-Statement-Aug.27.2019.pdf https://pronto.ai/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Pronto-Statemen...
embedded 7y ago
Levandowski still lists his occupation on Linkin as "VP Engineering at Uber ATG". How the !!@ can that still be true? Hasn't Uber cut ties with him yet?
- OBLIQUE_PILLAR 7y ago
  because its not true anymore?
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hintymad 7y ago
Why did reporters keep calling Levandowski an engineer? He's really not, at least not for quite a number of years. Anyway, Levandowski was a lousy leader, and was really detrimental to Uber's ATG. He bloated ATG from fewer than 100 people to more than 2000 within less than a year, without paying the slightest attention to culture. As a result, the number of people grossly exceeded the quantity of work. Political infighting quickly became rampant. Chaos ensued. Morale nose dived. Worse yet, instead of aligning and uniting the teams in Pittsburg, he created a huge fight with the Pittsburg teams, so much so that Travis, then the CEO of Uber, had to fly to Pittsburg every few weeks to resolve the conflicts. It's sickening to even think about what he did in Uber.
- hintymad 7y ago
  P.S., Levandowski caused similar drama when he was in Google's self-driving car division too, per the book Autonomy by Lawrence D Burns.
  - meowface 7y ago
    It's baffling to me how everyone seems to hate the guy and say he was a terrible leader, employee, and person, and yet companies seemed to have been valuing him like a diamond. How did that work? Is he just good at duping and persuading and sweet-talking people? Does he have some past accomplishments that were respectable? Does he have some insight into autonomous driving no one else has? Why would Google and Uber bet so much on this guy?
    - brown9-2 7y ago
      The decision makers who hire people like this and decide their compensation aren’t dealing with the environment day-to-day.
      - mieseratte 7y ago
        Never underestimate the damage an absentee boss with no skin in the game can cause to the boots on the ground. Out of sight, out of mind is all too real.
keeptrying 7y ago
I really don't think it was about the money. He was making $120M a year at the time? He probably had a sense of ownership on that idea and wanted to see it through to economic viability. I don't know - thats the only way I can rationalize
rrss 7y ago
Is levandowski actually exceptionally talented, such that one of him is worth 120-600 other employees? What has he actually accomplished? All I've read is that he built a self-driving motorcycle for the Grand Challenge, but IIRC his motorcycle made it about 25 feet before falling over.
- johnsimer 7y ago
  talent != value created != compensation earned
  - rrss 7y ago
    Great, cool. Did he actually create value at Google or Uber, or is his primary skill just convincing Page and Kalanick to give him money?
tryitnow 7y ago
I would have a lot more sympathy for Levandowski if he had taken trade secrets and created his own company. But he didn't take the engineer/entrepreneur route. He took the corporate espionage route and just stole stuff from one company so that another company would profit, in the process further enriching himself. At one point he was a good engineer. Then he became just another greedy executive.
- denzil_correa 7y ago
  > But he didn't take the engineer/entrepreneur route. He took the corporate espionage route and just stole stuff from one company so that another company would profit, in the process further enriching himself. Levandowski actually had his own startup Otto which was acquired by Uber.
  - jonathankoren 7y ago
    It was acquired in eight months, and founded specifically after Levandowski and Kalanick had a meeting. Otto looks like a prearranged sham legal entity to justify a huge payout, than a bonafide startup.
    - sdan 7y ago
      "If you buy us, you'll also buy some Waymo code"
      - jonathankoren 7y ago
        I figure it was just two bros figuring out how to funnel a tens of millions dollars into Levandoski’s pocket.
        sdan 7y ago
        If I'm hearing this right, this is pretty much money laundering
crag 7y ago
I seriously doubt this will result in any jail time. Levandowski's lawyers will do everything they can to see to it no time is served. But he will probably pay a fine.. chump change to this man. And this pisses me off; people in America get thrown in jail for stealing chewing gum.
Animats 7y ago
This is Google harassing him. They can't sue him in a civil suit, because, as a Google employee, Google made him sign an arbitration agreement. There's already been an arbitration between him and Google, there was some settlement, and Google is now barred from suing him.
- mikejb 7y ago
  The judge from the Google vs. Uber litigation referred the case to the US attorney. Looks like they found enough evidence to charge him. Not sure how Google is involved in this "harassment".
ones_and_zeros 7y ago
I'm just here to thank whoever changed the title that used this as an opportunity to smear engineers. Levandowski was not an engineer. He was an executive and this type of behavior is completely in line with executive behavior.
khazhou 7y ago
I am going to admit out loud something that I suspect many people here also feel: I am envious of Anthony Levandowski Not his unscrupulous behavior, theft, and all that. But rather the fact that his confidence, swagger, and the ability to talk to Thrun and Larry and Sergei and Travis as equals (or as inferiors, actually, in this technical domain) gave people such a high impression that they bestowed him with $centi-million bonuses. I'm well-paid in silicon valley but my stock grants have been flat for years. I haven't been able to grow a large team (let alone 2000 people like Levandowski at Uber apparently). If I'm caught in an elevator with our Senior VP, I don't really know what to say (and I'm certainly not invited up to the executive floor to continue the conversation afterwards). And yet here we have a guy who did all this by orders of magnitude and at multiple companies. I don't want to be a dirtbag like him, but I will admit I am envious.
- draw_down 7y ago
  Seems like a weird reaction to hearing that a man has been indicted, but okay.
- bob33212 7y ago
  Not me, totally fine if I never have 2000 people working for me.
  - khazhou 7y ago
    Oh I know, me neither. But I've been denied headcount several times. I don't want 2000, but envy the magical ability to get at least a bigger number. Unfortunately, time and again I've seen that the person who grows that big team, etc, is an unqualified idiot asshole. Good guys don't frequently win.
    - kenneth 7y ago
      Nice guys finish last is a saying that rings true in multiple fields. It's also entirely within anyone's control to realize that and act accordingly. I'm less of a nice guy these days, and my life is better for it. Though I try to ultimately be very nice to the people I care about.
m0zg 7y ago
So I've been reading about this dude, and apparently he started _several_ technology companies _while working at Google_, and sold a couple of them back to Google. Clearly his Google employment contract terms weren't the same as mine. In fact "normal" employees would be fired the same day for some of the things he did even before he copied off a bunch of Google IP. I kind of wonder what's so special about the guy that Google wanted him so bad that they let him basically write his own employment contract, allowed him to have huge conflicts of interest, and then also paid like tens of millions in bonuses per year. I also wonder what else he wrote into that employment contract of his. You can charge anybody with anything, doesn't mean it'll stick.
- dannyw 7y ago
  Larry Page founded his own side startup while CEO. Levandowski worked on on Larry’s startup.
philshem 7y ago
Here's a nice write-up of the backstory, from 2018: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal-googles-intellectual-property https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal... and HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219612

460 points by coloneltcb 7y ago

FTA, the significant aspect of this new twist in Levandowski's ongoing legal saga: > It is not uncommon for tech companies, which fiercely guard their intellectual property, to sue former employees or the firms they join after they leave. But criminal charges of a senior executive for theft is unusual.

jerf 7y ago
"According to the complaint, Mr. Levandowski, who worked on self-driving cars at Google, downloaded more than 14,000 files containing critical information about Google’s autonomous-vehicle research before leaving the company in 2016. He then made an unauthorized transfer of the files to his personal laptop, the complaint said." If the allegations are true (always important to bear in mind from a one-sided view of the complaint), I can see why they took that step in this particular case. Any "senior executive" should know that's illegal.
- dekhn 7y ago
  levandowski never liked when rules got in the way of progress. his attitude was "whatever it takes to birth self-driving cars".
  - groundlogic 7y ago
    Interesting. Source?
    - dekhn 7y ago
      https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal-googles-intellectual-property https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal... The company was less than a decade old, but it had almost seventeen thousand employees, including a thick layer of middle managers. Levandowski recently told me, “One of the reasons they wanted us was because Larry Page knew we were scrappy—we would cut through red tape.” Page, Google’s co-founder and chief executive, often complained that the company had become bloated, and had lost the hacker mentality that had fuelled its initial success. By the time Levandowski arrived, Google’s apparatchiks were in ascent. “Hiring could take months,” Levandowski told me. “There was a program called WorkforceLogic, and just getting people into the system was super-complicated. And so, one day, I put ads on Craigslist looking for drivers, and basically hired anyone who seemed competent, and then paid them out of my own pocket. It became known as AnthonyforceLogic.” Around this time, Levandowski went to an auto dealership and bought more than a hundred cars. One of his managers from that period told me, “When we got his expense report, it was equal to something like all the travel expenses of every other Google employee in his division combined. The accountants were, like, ‘What the hell?’ But Larry said, ‘Pay it,’ and so we did. Larry wanted people who could ignore obstacles and could show everyone that you could do something that seemed impossible if you looked for work-arounds.”
      - groundlogic 7y ago
        Hacking around internal bureaucracy in a smart way is one thing, stealing IP for your next gig is something else.
        r00fus 7y ago
        One could reasonably argue that one level of ignoring rules logically led to the next level - of ignoring laws.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    Or he never liked when rules got in the way of him selling his startup to Uber for $680 million.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - ChuckMcM 7y ago
    Sadly not an unusual attitude. I've known (and occasionally worked for) people who felt that rules were for chumps. Their reasoning was always a variation on; "winning is good", "chumps slow themselves down by following rules", "in your evaluation at the end of the year the bonuses go to 'winners' not losers." It is a rather narcissistic perhaps even sociopathic view of the world in my opinion, but it does exist.
    - Loughla 7y ago
      Isn't that attitude what 'disruption' culture is all about? Find a business that takes forever because of regulation, then ignore the regulation, and profit? Uber, that's an example of this. AirBnB in a lot of instances, too, I think.
      - kragen 7y ago
        This is not a correct reading of Christensen, nor close to it.
        Loughla 7y ago
        Explain, please.
  - throwaway_law 7y ago
    >never liked when rules got in the way of progress. Yes, that seems to be the Silicon Valley Culture. "Move fast and break things" "Its better to apologize and seek forgiveness, than ask for permission" "Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter."
    - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
      “move fast and hurt people”
    - inlined 7y ago
      I used to go back to my university and speak at the ethics class in my recruiting trips. I stopped after people’s questions changed to “Uber, Airbnb, etc all succeeded because they broke the law. Why are ethics important?” and I had no real answer.
      - teachrdan 7y ago
        What might your answer be now? Does commercial success necessarily mean that ethical violations are unimportant? (not trolling, just curious how you'd articulate the importance of ethics in the vacuum of legal or economic consequences)
      - jfim 7y ago
        They succeeded at building companies, but they also externalized a lot of issues. Tenants being evicted to turn rentals into Airbnb hotels, additional traffic in cities, jobs turning into precarious gigs, etc. Ethics are important, because they change the criteria for decisions from being only dollars matter to "what's the right thing to do." A society full of ethically challenged dollar maximizers is not that good a place to be in.
      - Judgmentality 7y ago
        Well, obviously this is a complicated subject, but if they're going to cherry-pick the offensive, you can cherry-pick the defensive. Theranos is an obvious counter-example where being unethical didn't really work out for anybody. uBeam will likely go the same route, and there are some other less well-known examples. A much more interesting debate is directly between Uber and Lyft, because most people (even many investors) would argue the main difference was that the founders of Lyft weren't as morally reprehensible as Kalanick. The sad reality is it seems like poor ethics is rewarded by those who know how to exploit it properly. What most people are really interested in is where is the line? Because let's be honest - most people aren't studying ethics in entrepreneurship because they care about ethics. Most people want to know what they can get away with and still get rich.
stefan_ 7y ago
Well, figuratively, anyways. > What Serge did not yet know was that Goldman had discovered his downloads just a few days earlier, months after he’d made the first of them. They’d called the F.B.I. in haste, just two days before, and then put their agent through what amounted to a crash course on high-frequency trading and computer programming. McSwain later conceded that he didn’t seek out independent expert advice to study the code Serge Aleynikov had taken. (“I relied on statements from Goldman employees.”) He himself had no idea of the value of the stolen code (“Representatives of Goldman told me it was worth a lot of money”) or if any of it was actually all that special (he based his belief that the code contained trade secrets on “representations made by members of Goldman Sachs”).

minimaxir 7y ago

Official filing: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-uber-self-driving-car-executive-indicted-alleged-theft-trade-secrets-google https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/former-uber-self-drivin... PDF: https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991...

dmix 7y ago
> The prosecution is being handled by the Office of the U.S. Attorney, Northern District of California’s new Corporate Fraud Strike Force I'm curious if this explains the delayed timing... New agency team gets started and looks around for the biggest fish to fry. Everyone already dislikes Uber and AI is big right now so it's win-win. Smart move by the prosecutors if so. (Or it could just be a long process due to the other civil trial happening first or just the FBI criminal investigation taking long, and the new group simply took up the prosecution, I'm just speculating)
- AndrewBissell 7y ago
  It's pretty common for the DOJ to take a very long time to get all its ducks in a row before bringing charges against very well-heeled defendants. Because there are so many avenues for the extremely wealthy & connected to escape legal accountability, the case needs to be as airtight as possible before filing charges. If anything this is actually pretty quick action relative to when news of the offense was made public.
- sangnoir 7y ago
  IIRC, there was a criminal referral made by the judge during the (civil) Uber v Google proceedings. It probably took time for the grand jury to be set up and complete its investigations after that.
  - dmix 7y ago
    Interesting that would explain it. Thanks

leoh 7y ago

For more background, this New Yorker essay is useful. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal-googles-intellectual-property https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal...

keithyjohnson 7y ago
Great article, I liked that it illuminates the question--whats a trade secret vs knowledge from on-the-job-experience? And where's the line across which a company can say you've used a trade secret? It's scary to think that one of the outcomes of this case could be a precedent that allows companies to go after what's in your head.
- compiler-guy 7y ago
  It's unlikely that this will be a precedent for companies "going after what is in your head." The accusation is that Levandowski downloaded numerous proprietary files and plans, which is very far from personal knowledge.

crappy-doo 7y ago

you guys all think you're special and the rules don't apply to you... just wait and see what the rest of the world has to say about that...

ummonk 7y ago

It doesn't change the criminality of his actions, but something I haven't ever seen any info about: were the designs he downloaded and took with him for LIDAR systems that he had played the primary role in developing while at Google or were the designs largely the work of other Googke employees?

moftz 7y ago
He stole schematics, does a senior executive draw schematics? Likely no. He probably considered it all his own and didn't think about how many people played a role in building this tech.
bduerst 7y ago
Definitely the latter. Hundreds of employees worked on the LIDAR designs that Levandowski downloaded and took to Otto and Uber.
rhacker 7y ago
That line of thinking may technically help him substantially. The actual document theft isn't something he can walk away from, but the amount of harm it caused can definitely be argued in court. It is public knowledge he worked on lidar systems prior to working at Google so the scope of the processes and ideas that went into the stolen documents may simply be refinements from his Darpa days. Those refinements could ultimately be argued to be worth a LOT, but it does help his case- IMHO.
duxup 7y ago
>downloaded more than 14,000 files containing critical information about Google’s autonomous-vehicle research before leaving the company in 2016 Just generally as the act has been described it sounds like the information downloaded was pretty massive and wide ranging. It seems unlikely he always "played the primary role in developing" all of it. And really you can debate what that quoted phrase means and what the legal ramifications of that are if you were to presume that he could take the things.

uuilly 7y ago

I used to work for Anthony at 510 systems. He tried to hire me for Otto as well. Watching this whole thing unfold from, obscure story in 2011 to the Waymo Vs. Uber trial to federal charges and national news is rather surreal. Anthony is one of the most creative, energetic thinkers I've ever encountered. If he stopped taking shortcuts he'd probably be the next Jobs or Musk.

AndrewBissell 7y ago
Musk will be the next Levandowski.
- dmix 7y ago
  People have such an impetus for Musk's downfall but a few off colour or poorly thought out tweets is nothing compared to something as criminal as downloading everything from your company before starting a competitor. Or worse while you work on the competitor on the side even before leaving the company. Anthony should have known that files are easily tracked in a place like Google and that he'd put a giant spotlight on himself by competing with Google's future golden goose.
  - AndrewBissell 7y ago
    All pretty pale in comparison to a faked $75 billion buyout tweeted out during market trading hours. Or the blatant self-dealing and faked product unveil used to push through the SolarCity bailout.
  - whatok 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure people criticize Elon for more than just a few Tweets.
  - bduerst 7y ago
    Yeah, Musk never stole competitor IP, so the comparison is a bit banal. If anything, Musk's undoing will be how he has handled Tesla, such as his nepotist SolarCity acquisition.
  - 7y ago

tempsy 7y ago

Interesting this is only against Anthony and not Uber this time. The stakes seem much smaller here. I would be surprised if he actually goes to prison for this. And max fine of $8 million or so is small for him

svd4anything 7y ago
There have been a number of cases in the financial industry with trade secret theft and the perpetrator has been sent to prison. Why if he is convicted (likely imho) wouldn’t he also?
asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
The maximum penalty is 250k per count or twice the gross gain/loss, whichever is greater. So the financial penalty could be quite significant.
- tyingq 7y ago
  Wouldn't a conviction open him up to a more costly civil suit? Harder to defend a civil suit if you're guilty in a related criminal charge.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    Maybe so. At the time, everyone wondered why Google did not sue him, just Uber. Now I wonder if Google's legal team wasn't already in touch with the FBI/US attorney's office. It might be that the reason why they didn't pursue him in civil court was to leave the way open for the criminal procedure to blaze the trail. That would be sick, if so.
    - ksherlock 7y ago
      I got the impression that Google couldn't sue him, per se, because their employee arbitration requirements were working against them in this case.
  - sangnoir 7y ago

LifeLiverTransp 7y ago

Lesson learned- if you leave your company- blow up the last project, do something stupid. Unstar yourself.

unscrupulous_sw 7y ago

> It is not uncommon for tech companies, which fiercely guard their intellectual property, to sue former employees or the firms they join after they leave. Is it really that common? I feel like most software engineers don't really take intellectual property all that seriously. Most will not think twice about backing up emails when leaving the company which might contain code diffs, design docs, etc. Friends from different companies usually talk about internal system designs and technical problems pretty freely. One of the circles I hang out with even backup and share the interview question database from every company they've been at. So while it's probably crossing a line, it's still not something I expect they will ever get sued for, let alone criminally charged. (This is in contrast with friends from the finance industry who are a lot more tightlipped about everything and you do hear stories about regular employees getting sued)

creato 7y ago
> I feel like most software engineers don't really take intellectual property all that seriously. Most will not think twice about backing up emails when leaving the company which might contain code diffs, design docs, etc. You can't be serious. I would never think of doing this, and I can't imagine who would.
- bifrost 7y ago
  You'd be a rare bird. Most employees don't even bother to not pirate software, look at porn or whatever on their work laptops. Its somewhat hilarious.
  - azylman 7y ago
    You're comparing apples to oranges. I know a lot of engineers at a lot of companies who look at porn on their work laptops (which isn't illegal). I don't know a single engineer who would take documents from their previous company to their new company (which is very illegal).
  - P_I_Staker 7y ago
    Not rare at all in the software industry, is very common. I'd say people are more split than OPs letting on, but plenty of software engineers are extremely serious about IP.

thenightcrawler 7y ago

Likelyhood he faces jail for this? What will become of his new company pronto.

kragen 7y ago

"Theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. Fairchild was "theft of trade secrets" from Shockley; Intel was "theft of trade secrets" from Fairchild. When Camenzind left Signetics and designed the 555 (under contract to Signetics), he was "using trade secrets" of Signetics; in today's legal environment, they could have just ordered him to stick around as an employee and work on a less risky project. MOSTek was built out of "trade secrets" of Motorola. Unix was only released under a source licensing agreement, and for decades the Lions book, the bible for Unix kernel engineering, was illegal and could not be printed legally, because it contained "trade secrets" (and copyrighted code!) of AT&T. (Or, rather, Western Electric.) Indeed, economists have published a number of papers arguing that that California's prohibitions on non-compete agreements and on employer ownership of private work product underpinned the 1970s–1990s shift from Boston to Silicon Valley. So this movement toward resolving such conflicts in the courts, instead of by companies competing to out-innovate one another, is very troubling. Investors, and in this case Google upper management, are killing the goose that laid the golden egg; they want to shift power from engineers, who make things, to lawyers and investors, who specialize in getting paid for them. This is probably a major factor in the widely-observed shift of the center of innovation from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen, where shanzhai ("theft of trade secrets") is a way of life. I live in a poor country which is poor mostly because the established economic powers are able to strangle new centers of wealth creation in the cradle, using the government and laws. Don't let that happen in your country. Engineers create wealth. Lawyers and investors just compete to privatize it.

TheMagicHorsey 7y ago
There's an element of truth in what you are saying. But in this case Lewendowski didn't build the stolen technology. He misappropriated the work of other engineers at Google. It would be one thing if he just left with his own work. That would be more understandable.
- kragen 7y ago
  I agree that Levandowski didn't invent everything he "stole", but this is not significant from the point of view of legal precedent — whether you write code at work or your coworker writes the code, the law considers it to belong to your employer — and some of the cases I mentioned above also included the departure of executives, not just engineers. (Edited to clarify and correct spelling.)

TheMagicHorsey 7y ago

Most engineers I have met in Silicon Valley have a very high standard of personal ethics. For example, I have seen engineers risk their own careers to insist that their employers give back to open source projects when the employer is in violation of an open-source license's terms. But I've also seen a few, rare bad apples. There are some people who are borderline sociopathic, who don't think twice about theft, misdirection, misappropriation of credit, and throwing co-workers under the bus for personal gain. Usually, such people are not caught, and are not punished ... ever. People who learn about such sociopaths, just avoid them. But sometimes these sociopaths go too far. This seems to be one such case. This prosecution will discourage the very worst behavior and it will feel therapeutic for people that have felt victimized by various sociopaths who used them as ladders on the climb to fame and wealth ... but the less criminal kinds of sociopathy in the workplace is probably never going to go away. And there's no real way to stop it. I haven't been to Google or worked with Google in a long time, but for a while there, say between 2010 and 2015, I felt like it was chock full of sociopaths in mid-level management. I don't even think Anthony would have stood out as particularly sociopathic in that environment.

2sk21 7y ago
Any thoughts about this article in Wired? https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery-happiest-company-tech/ https://www.wired.com/story/inside-google-three-years-misery...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cletus 7y ago

The level of greed, hubris and stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me. Levandowski was paid a bonus of $120 million while at Google, which is more money than any reasonable person will need for several lifetimes. This was actually a running joke at Google (while I was still there) to describe $120M as "1 Levadownski". Like Sundar one year was described as earning "only 1.7 Levadownskis" (he got paid $200M one year). Why someone would risk jail time doing something so clearly wrong (taking material trade secrets from an employer) for even more money is just staggering to me. Even if he escapes prison time the stress and cost of a protracted criminal trial is huge. The loss of reputation is likely permanent. I get why some high fliers have big egos and they privatize their success (even when pure dumb luck can be a huge factor). This is the hubris part. Right or wrong, that belief in your own abilities is almost a prerequisite for disruption. The interesting part is how he "cheats". Like he clearly went to efforts to cover his tracks. Those aren't the actions of someone who felt they didn't do something questionable. So at this point, it's not about the hubris of the individual, it's about being perceived as being gifted, intelligent, a visionary and so on. Honestly it makes me glad when such charlatan have their almost inevitable fall from grace.

deleted 7y ago
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gist 7y ago
> Why someone would risk jail time doing something so clearly wrong (taking material trade secrets from an employer) for even more money In particular 'for even more money'. You are assuming that the motivating factor was money. People do all sorts of things when no money or financial gain is involved at all. Sometimes just to enjoy the pleasure of being aberrant. Take hacking as one example.
- jonas21 7y ago
  Yeah, it's conceivable that his motivation was to make self-driving vehicles a reality at all costs (to save lives or something), and Google wasn't moving fast enough for him. That doesn't excuse stealing, but it might not be as simple as greed or hubris.

paul7986 7y ago

I use to feel bad for Google and wanted this thief to face justice. But umm he's just doing what he witnessed and was taught(told) to do while working for the big G. Google blatantly steals IP from the biggest fish to the little dreamers they inspire and such is well documented. See this popular HN thread... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929

paul7986 7y ago
Why is this point being downvoted? It is not relevant to this discussion or it's something else??? Again It's well documented the big G steals IP!!
- pb7 7y ago
  Because you're letting your emotions get the best of you.
  - paul7986 7y ago
    You might too if the company who inspired you to dream and create tech invited you to demo and then treated you like a dog(possibly stole from u). I met with other names like Samsung, Intel, Black n Decker and no deal was made there too but I was treated respectfully with dignity! I told my story for years here then last December lo and behold Ji Qie of MIT tells the same story I've told for awhile but with emails/evidence clearly showing Google getting caught stealing IP. She met with Google ATAP too! Overall the narrative shouldn't be only about Anthony doing wrong rather he was mimicking what he witnessed and was taught (directly or indirectly) by his employer, Google to do; steal IP!

oneepic 7y ago

Can someone explain the difference between this situation and the following situation: - engineer at Company A has expertise in a certain field, and is really, really good at solving problems in this field and knowing what to do next at any point in time. They bring quality to Company A's systems. - engineer moves to Company B to do the same kind of work, and uses their expertise to bring Company B's systems up to high quality as well - Company A says that this engineer must have stolen trade secrets.

tdb7893 7y ago
He was caught with actual documents and designs. He took more than just his expertise from his previous employer.
deleted 7y ago
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Traster 7y ago
In this case the engineer literally downloaded proprietary files and took them with. You're welcome to take your intelligence and experience with you, you're not welcome to take the work product that the company you're leaving was literally paying hundreds of millions for.
greenyoda 7y ago
"Must have stolen trade secrets" won't stand up in court. They'd have to enumerate which specific trade secrets were allegedly stolen, prove that they were indeed trade secrets and not something that lots of senior engineers could figure out on their own, etc. Levandowski was charged with stealing specific files and designs, not trade secrets in general.
nwsm 7y ago
Read the article and you'll know the difference.
deleted_account 7y ago
The indictment[1] sheds some light on the difference: "On or about December 11,2015, he downloaded approximately 14,000 files from SVN. These files contained critical engineering information about the hardware used on Project Chauffeur self-driving vehicles, including schematics for the printed circuit boards used in various custom LiDAR products." In other words, the accusation is that he stole technology that was the output of the entire Project Chauffeur team, not simply stuff of his own creation. Presumably, those materials were non-trivial and represent the combined effort of many engineers over many years. Imagine you're toiling on a team for years and your absurdly compensated boss decides they want the whole pie, clones the repo their laptop, and dips out to found their own start up based on everyone's work. [1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991/download https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/press-release/file/1197991...

chkuendig 7y ago

He's already off the Pronto.AI about page, his current startup where he was the CEO until this news: (mentioned towards the end of the NYT article) https://pronto.ai/about/ https://pronto.ai/about/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:I7ifOuQOp-QJ:https://pronto.ai/about/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ch https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:I7ifOu...

SahAssar 7y ago
They do mention it on the homepage and link to this though: https://pronto.ai/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Pronto-Statement-Aug.27.2019.pdf https://pronto.ai/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Pronto-Statemen...

embedded 7y ago

Levandowski still lists his occupation on Linkin as "VP Engineering at Uber ATG". How the !!@ can that still be true? Hasn't Uber cut ties with him yet?

OBLIQUE_PILLAR 7y ago
because its not true anymore?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

hintymad 7y ago

Why did reporters keep calling Levandowski an engineer? He's really not, at least not for quite a number of years. Anyway, Levandowski was a lousy leader, and was really detrimental to Uber's ATG. He bloated ATG from fewer than 100 people to more than 2000 within less than a year, without paying the slightest attention to culture. As a result, the number of people grossly exceeded the quantity of work. Political infighting quickly became rampant. Chaos ensued. Morale nose dived. Worse yet, instead of aligning and uniting the teams in Pittsburg, he created a huge fight with the Pittsburg teams, so much so that Travis, then the CEO of Uber, had to fly to Pittsburg every few weeks to resolve the conflicts. It's sickening to even think about what he did in Uber.

hintymad 7y ago
P.S., Levandowski caused similar drama when he was in Google's self-driving car division too, per the book Autonomy by Lawrence D Burns.
- meowface 7y ago
  It's baffling to me how everyone seems to hate the guy and say he was a terrible leader, employee, and person, and yet companies seemed to have been valuing him like a diamond. How did that work? Is he just good at duping and persuading and sweet-talking people? Does he have some past accomplishments that were respectable? Does he have some insight into autonomous driving no one else has? Why would Google and Uber bet so much on this guy?
  - brown9-2 7y ago
    The decision makers who hire people like this and decide their compensation aren’t dealing with the environment day-to-day.
    - mieseratte 7y ago
      Never underestimate the damage an absentee boss with no skin in the game can cause to the boots on the ground. Out of sight, out of mind is all too real.

keeptrying 7y ago

I really don't think it was about the money. He was making $120M a year at the time? He probably had a sense of ownership on that idea and wanted to see it through to economic viability. I don't know - thats the only way I can rationalize

rrss 7y ago

Is levandowski actually exceptionally talented, such that one of him is worth 120-600 other employees? What has he actually accomplished? All I've read is that he built a self-driving motorcycle for the Grand Challenge, but IIRC his motorcycle made it about 25 feet before falling over.

johnsimer 7y ago
talent != value created != compensation earned
- rrss 7y ago
  Great, cool. Did he actually create value at Google or Uber, or is his primary skill just convincing Page and Kalanick to give him money?

tryitnow 7y ago

I would have a lot more sympathy for Levandowski if he had taken trade secrets and created his own company. But he didn't take the engineer/entrepreneur route. He took the corporate espionage route and just stole stuff from one company so that another company would profit, in the process further enriching himself. At one point he was a good engineer. Then he became just another greedy executive.

denzil_correa 7y ago
> But he didn't take the engineer/entrepreneur route. He took the corporate espionage route and just stole stuff from one company so that another company would profit, in the process further enriching himself. Levandowski actually had his own startup Otto which was acquired by Uber.
- jonathankoren 7y ago
  It was acquired in eight months, and founded specifically after Levandowski and Kalanick had a meeting. Otto looks like a prearranged sham legal entity to justify a huge payout, than a bonafide startup.
  - sdan 7y ago
    "If you buy us, you'll also buy some Waymo code"
    - jonathankoren 7y ago
      I figure it was just two bros figuring out how to funnel a tens of millions dollars into Levandoski’s pocket.
      - sdan 7y ago
        If I'm hearing this right, this is pretty much money laundering

crag 7y ago

I seriously doubt this will result in any jail time. Levandowski's lawyers will do everything they can to see to it no time is served. But he will probably pay a fine.. chump change to this man. And this pisses me off; people in America get thrown in jail for stealing chewing gum.

Animats 7y ago

This is Google harassing him. They can't sue him in a civil suit, because, as a Google employee, Google made him sign an arbitration agreement. There's already been an arbitration between him and Google, there was some settlement, and Google is now barred from suing him.

mikejb 7y ago
The judge from the Google vs. Uber litigation referred the case to the US attorney. Looks like they found enough evidence to charge him. Not sure how Google is involved in this "harassment".

ones_and_zeros 7y ago

I'm just here to thank whoever changed the title that used this as an opportunity to smear engineers. Levandowski was not an engineer. He was an executive and this type of behavior is completely in line with executive behavior.

khazhou 7y ago

I am going to admit out loud something that I suspect many people here also feel: I am envious of Anthony Levandowski Not his unscrupulous behavior, theft, and all that. But rather the fact that his confidence, swagger, and the ability to talk to Thrun and Larry and Sergei and Travis as equals (or as inferiors, actually, in this technical domain) gave people such a high impression that they bestowed him with $centi-million bonuses. I'm well-paid in silicon valley but my stock grants have been flat for years. I haven't been able to grow a large team (let alone 2000 people like Levandowski at Uber apparently). If I'm caught in an elevator with our Senior VP, I don't really know what to say (and I'm certainly not invited up to the executive floor to continue the conversation afterwards). And yet here we have a guy who did all this by orders of magnitude and at multiple companies. I don't want to be a dirtbag like him, but I will admit I am envious.

draw_down 7y ago
Seems like a weird reaction to hearing that a man has been indicted, but okay.
bob33212 7y ago
Not me, totally fine if I never have 2000 people working for me.
- khazhou 7y ago
  Oh I know, me neither. But I've been denied headcount several times. I don't want 2000, but envy the magical ability to get at least a bigger number. Unfortunately, time and again I've seen that the person who grows that big team, etc, is an unqualified idiot asshole. Good guys don't frequently win.
  - kenneth 7y ago
    Nice guys finish last is a saying that rings true in multiple fields. It's also entirely within anyone's control to realize that and act accordingly. I'm less of a nice guy these days, and my life is better for it. Though I try to ultimately be very nice to the people I care about.

m0zg 7y ago

So I've been reading about this dude, and apparently he started _several_ technology companies _while working at Google_, and sold a couple of them back to Google. Clearly his Google employment contract terms weren't the same as mine. In fact "normal" employees would be fired the same day for some of the things he did even before he copied off a bunch of Google IP. I kind of wonder what's so special about the guy that Google wanted him so bad that they let him basically write his own employment contract, allowed him to have huge conflicts of interest, and then also paid like tens of millions in bonuses per year. I also wonder what else he wrote into that employment contract of his. You can charge anybody with anything, doesn't mean it'll stick.

dannyw 7y ago
Larry Page founded his own side startup while CEO. Levandowski worked on on Larry’s startup.

philshem 7y ago

Here's a nice write-up of the backstory, from 2018: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal-googles-intellectual-property https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal... and HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18219612