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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 intellec

by 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”).

by danso 7y ago

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”).