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He was on the Berkeley team for the original DARPA Grand Challenge. Their team was notable for being a motorcycle while everyone else used a car, the complexit
by parsimo2010 7y ago
He was on the Berkeley team for the original DARPA Grand Challenge. Their team was notable for being a motorcycle while everyone else used a car, the complexity of using a motorcycle earned them big points with the higher-ups even though the bike didn't do very well on the course.
So if you were a CEO looking to hire a senior guy for autonomous vehicles, he was one of the most senior in years of experience, pretty much nobody was working on autonomous vehicles prior to the Grand Challenge.
- ehsankia 7y agoSure, but once it becomes clear that he doesn't fit in the culture and causes more issues than he solves, why does he keep getting promoted and his pay increased?
- thewhitetulip 7y agoBecause "results" matter more than culture. Just watch a TV series "Succession" to see how the upper echelons of people treat/think about ordinary engineers and senior engineer.
- parsimo2010 7y agoI suggest that wasn't as clear as you think it was to the right people (either through incompetence, ignorance, or bad leadership), or that if they did have some idea that he wasn't a great fit they were hoping that he would produce a miracle that would make all the pain worth it. Coming in with wunderkind status gives you a lot of leeway with some people, and things need to be pretty bad before the people that hired you will admit that they made a mistake, hired the wrong person, and paid them way too much. Admitting such a mistake does some damage to your ego and reputation of hiring problem solvers. Plus, by many accounts he was producing decent results- after all, he's led some pretty famous projects, and most of the projects weren't regarded as failures, so why should he be regarded as a failure? Other than stealing IP and being a dick, he's not usually called a loser or a failure.