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"doubling down on our engineering work and engineering talent,” Cruise spokesperson Milin Mehta told Reuters. Do these folks even try to hide their lies? Doub

"doubling down on our engineering work and engineering talent,” Cruise spokesperson Milin Mehta told Reuters. Do these folks even try to hide their lies? Doubling down = 2x the engineering staff. This is as they lay off in their lidar team. Can companies be sued for these types of basically false claims or are we just stuck commenting on what lies they seem come up with. Can you imagine if your day to day life involved interacting with folks this dishonest?

tschwimmer 6y ago
The first amendment protects this type of speech.
- majormajor 6y ago
  One should question what interests we're protecting by allowing lying in various contexts vs having just a blanket "say whatever you want" default privilege.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    I don’t know if anyone is consciously protecting their right to lie, but we are via inaction allowing them to construct the language of lying. If I made a programming language that got rid a basic object maps for example, I’d eliminate the scenarios where one would use a lookup map. These people construct their own language, and so long as we speak their language, we can’t really speak against them. The words don’t exist by design.
- three_seagrass 6y ago
  First amendment only protects from government censorship, and SCOTUS has said that if the expression of the speech causes harm then first amendment doesn't apply. Also there are plenty of individuals and private organizations who can sue if they can prove damages.
deleted 6y ago
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cactus2093 6y ago
I never hear the phrase "doubling down" used to mean "doubling", except maybe in the original usage in gambling. But colloquially it just means "increasing focus on". In that use there is no inherent contradiction in downsizing + attempting to increasing focus. In fact that seems to be what almost all companies who downsize are attempting to do. Edit: In fact come to think of it, even in blackjack when you double down, it's as much about committing as it is the doubling of the bet. You have to take one and only one card and that ends your turn, so you're turning down all other options to do this one thing, and in exchange for taking that risky move you get to double your bet.
- thoraway1010 6y ago
  doubling down is not about increasing focus. It is about increasing risk by making a BIGGER (not smaller) bet on something. This is in the original meaning in gambling (you are convinced you are right and so double your bet) and elsewhere. Only in PR land is a cash flow pullback and risk reduction step such as a headcount reduction called a doubling down. It goes to show how pernicious these types of intentional miswordings are.
  - ABeeSea 6y ago
    Amazon launched Fire Phone and Alexa months apart. They shit-canned the phone and doubled down on Alexa. It’s not just PR speak. Many of the phone people either left the company or went to work on Alexa. They also did a massive inventory write down for the phone in their quarterly report.
    - vaidhy 6y ago
      It seems to me like you are agreeing with the parent. Amazon increased their risk by closing the phone side and increasing the resources allocated to Alexa and hence the double down.
  - 8note 6y ago
    Missing information: are they downsizing elsewhere as well, and the lidar folks are being downsized by less?
tehjoker 6y ago
They mean they're increasing the workload of the remaining engineers, not that they're doing something to benefit or other wise honor them.
- linuxftw 6y ago
  There's no better time to exploit your employees than when the job market is in the toilet.
- thoraway1010 6y ago
  yep - the idea that they are doubling down on their engineering talent (2x headcount or 2x salaries or 2x resources) or whatever big bet they claim to be making seems like it might be a lie. The PR guy (Milin Mehta) used to work at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange. They are known for suing to identify ten reviewers on Glassdoor, claiming they are former employees in breach of their severance contract. Why work at companies like this?
  - hckr_news 6y ago
    That’s quite incredible.
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    Leaving aside your apparently poor reading comprehension skills ("doubling down" does not mean doubling), this explicitly contradicts an internal memo leaked to TC: > The company will “continue to hire aggressively in the most critical areas within engineering, which right now means doubling down on senior leadership and senior IC roles to further support out improving core tech objective,” Ammann wrote in the memo. “From here we expect to recruit and grow across our engineering teams for the balance of the year.” The worst I can say about this is that Cruise is bad at PR: the fact that people are dumb enough to so badly and confidently misread a message is something that comms people are supposed to plan for and mitigate. https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/cruise-lays-off-8-of-workforce-to-cut-costs-and-put-resources-towards-engineering/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/cruise-lays-off-8-of-workf...
deminature 6y ago
They obviously don't mean it literally in terms of headcount, but more likely in terms of focus and determination.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Proof is in the pudding right? First to go.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Then it is mostly kumbaya.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  > They obviously don't mean it literally in terms of headcount In what way is this obvious? Per Techcrunch[1], they moved their Pasadena lidar team to SF[2], presumably parting ways with those not willing to relocate. The linked article has a quote from the CEO saying: > The company will “continue to hire aggressively in the most critical areas within engineering, which right now means doubling down on senior leadership and senior IC roles to further support out improving core tech objective,” Ammann wrote in the memo. “From here we expect to recruit and grow across our engineering teams for the balance of the year.” That seems pretty definitively contradictory to the claim that they're not hiring or expanding engineering. This is from probably thirty seconds of Googling, but apparently that's far above the effort bar for topmost top-level comments on HN... (this is in reference to GP's moronic comment, not you). [1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/cruise-lays-off-8-of-workforce-to-cut-costs-and-put-resources-towards-engineering/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/cruise-lays-off-8-of-workf... [2] I wondered why they had a team in Pasadena while headquartered in SF... it was an acquisition that they hadn't consolidated.
runawaybottle 6y ago
This is the kind of stuff I always advise people in long term careers to be privy of. First to go always means least cared about. Nothing wrong with it, but always know your place in a company. Don’t ever be lulled into rhetoric such as ‘doubling down on engineering’. ‘We care about code quality’ - code quality sucks at the company, ‘we care about work life balance’ - there is none at the company, ‘we value innovation’ - can’t even suggest anything to product, stay on spec.... ‘We care about future tech’ — lay off r&d at the first sight of a downturn. Just shut the fuck up already.
- thoraway1010 6y ago
  Somewhat true. My favorite: "We adhere to the highest ethical principles" - as they give you a 500 page ethics doc that no one reads or follows. But I've actually found it's a good / reliable tell. You just stay away from companies like this that can't talk straight and you end up a LOT happier. I don't mean they need to be nice - but just clear relatively honest normal English language communication. ie, "we're cutting back to reduce our burn rate." vs "we are doubling down on engineering talent." Some PR people actually get it I think and can basically be honest while adding some things you may not have thought of. Not in this case though!
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > My favorite: "We adhere to the highest ethical principles" - as they give you a 500 page ethics doc that no one reads or follows. That's just a translation error. "To adhere" means "to stick"; while the formalized version sounds like they stick to high ethical princilples, what they meant is they stick it to them.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    The new-speak of hypocrisy is utterly cemented in corporate and pseudo corporate businesses. Sadly, a requisite skillet now days is having to navigate all the bullshit.
    - thoraway1010 6y ago
monadic2 6y ago
This could just mean they aren’t developing lidar further. Because there is no retraining culture it’s difficult to tell.
aphextron 6y ago
>Doubling down = 2x the engineering staff. This is as they lay off in their lidar team. Self driving will be solved with computer vision. Lidar is an unnecessary technology even for full level 5 autonomy. Most self driving companies have come to this conclusion by now.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  Any data to back this up besides Musk saying his approach's the best?
  - aphextron 6y ago
    https://twitter.com/comma_ai/status/1197323020852793344 https://twitter.com/comma_ai/status/1197323020852793344
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/07/elon-musk-calls-lidar-a-fools-errand-other-autonomous-driving-experts-starting-to-agree/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/07/elon-musk-calls-lidar-a... https://youtu.be/fNgEG5rCav4 https://youtu.be/fNgEG5rCav4 > Anthony Levandowski, former Google/Waymo engineer, now backtracks on lidar and says, ”Elon is right.”
    - 8note 6y ago
      He might not be the most trustworthy source with the waymo thing.
    - FireBeyond 6y ago
      It also, conveniently, lessens the potential value of the data he took with him, to say this.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - three_seagrass 6y ago
      A quote from someone who stole trade secrets backtracking on the importance of said trade secrets is not exactly trustworthy.
baddox 6y ago
What tort would you claim they’ve committed? It’s not reasonable to interpret that claim as literally doubling the amount of engineering staff. No court would consider that for even a moment. And even if you could argue that a spokesperson is lying about fuzzy concepts like the amount of focus company places on engineering, who does that wrong?
sulam 6y ago
One thing you also have to understand here (other than the replies I've read) is that you can in fact lay off people and yet increase the percentage investment you are making in something. You have to cut your budget by 30% -- you can do this as a haircut everyone takes, or you can be selective, and ask one group to take less of a cut and other groups to take more. Your overall spend will be more heavily weighted towards groups that take less of a cut, obviously. You can also leave your overall budget for one team unchanged, or even grow it, and simply change your focus by putting more emphasis (and budget) on one set of activities vs another. In the Cruise case either scenario is possible. They can have decided that 3rd party LIDAR is good enough, and not strategic enough, that they should cut there. That could be the sum of it, while other groups like HR, Marketing, etc takes bigger cuts. Alternatively they could use the same logic to cut the LIDAR team and then take the savings generated to invest more heavily in (made up example) route planning or something.
Animats 6y ago
This is as they lay off in their lidar team. There are too many LIDAR startups chasing too little market for LIDARs. The delay in self-driving cars reaching the market means automotive LIDARs are only selling in sample quantities. GM/Cruise may not need an in-house LIDAR unit.
primrose 6y ago
“Anyone using Lidar is doomed, DOOMED!” Looks like GM is catching up to where the industry was a year ago, from A cofounder of Waymo. https://youtu.be/0w1G2GyPTUM https://youtu.be/0w1G2GyPTUM
- deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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renewiltord 6y ago
Honestly, I'd rather work with them than with people who wilfully misinterpret statements and just flip a shit constantly. "I think it's time to double down on email marketing" -> my teammates understand that means I'm going to switch where I put most of my effort. I can just imagine you saying "Yet you're not allocating 8 hours a day instead of 4 on this. I'm going to sue you" God, that would be exhausting.
- hckr_news 6y ago
  It’s just a weasel word that can mean anything. Avoid weasel words. In your situation, why not just say I’m going to put my current efforts and focus on X as you clearly meant.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Because human expression is cool, man. "You guys are killing it!" is way better than "You human beings are performing above average for this task. I appreciate this". Also it's not a weasel word. It's totally just an expression. I find it truly incredible that someone feels the way you do.
    - throwawayjava 6y ago
      If someone told me I were killing it, I would feel like a 22 year old engineer again and have flashbacks to that one PM who loved my work but who came to work still tripping some Mondays. Glad to be making a key stakeholder happy, but holy fuck am I glad we finally fired that tool. If someone told me I was doing above average and they appreciated my work, I would feel... appreciated and proud of my work. The world where killing and crushing are used in an unironic way is tiny and occupied mostly by people under 30. Can you retire at 30?
      - smabie 6y ago
        If you are killing and crushing it enough, then yeah, I guess.
      - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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rifflebutter 6y ago
You seem to have misunderstood what the lidar team refers to. The Lidar team laid off is not part of Cruise's essential engineering team. It belongs to a small, research/demo-focused company that Cruise bought a long time ago which claimed they would make solid-state Lidars that costs 99% less than currently available lidars, which would cut most of the cost to self-driving cars using lidars today. They function as a separate entity from Cruise and have very little to do with Cruise's core self-driving technology team on a day to day basis. As the article has made clear, within Cruise's engineering team, only the non-essential teams (i.e. not core self-driving technology) have been impacted by this layoff.

tschwimmer 6y ago

The first amendment protects this type of speech.

majormajor 6y ago
One should question what interests we're protecting by allowing lying in various contexts vs having just a blanket "say whatever you want" default privilege.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  I don’t know if anyone is consciously protecting their right to lie, but we are via inaction allowing them to construct the language of lying. If I made a programming language that got rid a basic object maps for example, I’d eliminate the scenarios where one would use a lookup map. These people construct their own language, and so long as we speak their language, we can’t really speak against them. The words don’t exist by design.
three_seagrass 6y ago
First amendment only protects from government censorship, and SCOTUS has said that if the expression of the speech causes harm then first amendment doesn't apply. Also there are plenty of individuals and private organizations who can sue if they can prove damages.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cactus2093 6y ago

I never hear the phrase "doubling down" used to mean "doubling", except maybe in the original usage in gambling. But colloquially it just means "increasing focus on". In that use there is no inherent contradiction in downsizing + attempting to increasing focus. In fact that seems to be what almost all companies who downsize are attempting to do. Edit: In fact come to think of it, even in blackjack when you double down, it's as much about committing as it is the doubling of the bet. You have to take one and only one card and that ends your turn, so you're turning down all other options to do this one thing, and in exchange for taking that risky move you get to double your bet.

thoraway1010 6y ago
doubling down is not about increasing focus. It is about increasing risk by making a BIGGER (not smaller) bet on something. This is in the original meaning in gambling (you are convinced you are right and so double your bet) and elsewhere. Only in PR land is a cash flow pullback and risk reduction step such as a headcount reduction called a doubling down. It goes to show how pernicious these types of intentional miswordings are.
- ABeeSea 6y ago
  Amazon launched Fire Phone and Alexa months apart. They shit-canned the phone and doubled down on Alexa. It’s not just PR speak. Many of the phone people either left the company or went to work on Alexa. They also did a massive inventory write down for the phone in their quarterly report.
  - vaidhy 6y ago
    It seems to me like you are agreeing with the parent. Amazon increased their risk by closing the phone side and increasing the resources allocated to Alexa and hence the double down.
- 8note 6y ago
  Missing information: are they downsizing elsewhere as well, and the lidar folks are being downsized by less?

tehjoker 6y ago

They mean they're increasing the workload of the remaining engineers, not that they're doing something to benefit or other wise honor them.

linuxftw 6y ago
There's no better time to exploit your employees than when the job market is in the toilet.
thoraway1010 6y ago
yep - the idea that they are doubling down on their engineering talent (2x headcount or 2x salaries or 2x resources) or whatever big bet they claim to be making seems like it might be a lie. The PR guy (Milin Mehta) used to work at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange. They are known for suing to identify ten reviewers on Glassdoor, claiming they are former employees in breach of their severance contract. Why work at companies like this?
- hckr_news 6y ago
  That’s quite incredible.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  Leaving aside your apparently poor reading comprehension skills ("doubling down" does not mean doubling), this explicitly contradicts an internal memo leaked to TC: > The company will “continue to hire aggressively in the most critical areas within engineering, which right now means doubling down on senior leadership and senior IC roles to further support out improving core tech objective,” Ammann wrote in the memo. “From here we expect to recruit and grow across our engineering teams for the balance of the year.” The worst I can say about this is that Cruise is bad at PR: the fact that people are dumb enough to so badly and confidently misread a message is something that comms people are supposed to plan for and mitigate. https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/cruise-lays-off-8-of-workforce-to-cut-costs-and-put-resources-towards-engineering/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/cruise-lays-off-8-of-workf...

deminature 6y ago

They obviously don't mean it literally in terms of headcount, but more likely in terms of focus and determination.

runawaybottle 6y ago
Proof is in the pudding right? First to go.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Then it is mostly kumbaya.
wutbrodo 6y ago
> They obviously don't mean it literally in terms of headcount In what way is this obvious? Per Techcrunch[1], they moved their Pasadena lidar team to SF[2], presumably parting ways with those not willing to relocate. The linked article has a quote from the CEO saying: > The company will “continue to hire aggressively in the most critical areas within engineering, which right now means doubling down on senior leadership and senior IC roles to further support out improving core tech objective,” Ammann wrote in the memo. “From here we expect to recruit and grow across our engineering teams for the balance of the year.” That seems pretty definitively contradictory to the claim that they're not hiring or expanding engineering. This is from probably thirty seconds of Googling, but apparently that's far above the effort bar for topmost top-level comments on HN... (this is in reference to GP's moronic comment, not you). [1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/cruise-lays-off-8-of-workforce-to-cut-costs-and-put-resources-towards-engineering/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/cruise-lays-off-8-of-workf... [2] I wondered why they had a team in Pasadena while headquartered in SF... it was an acquisition that they hadn't consolidated.

runawaybottle 6y ago

This is the kind of stuff I always advise people in long term careers to be privy of. First to go always means least cared about. Nothing wrong with it, but always know your place in a company. Don’t ever be lulled into rhetoric such as ‘doubling down on engineering’. ‘We care about code quality’ - code quality sucks at the company, ‘we care about work life balance’ - there is none at the company, ‘we value innovation’ - can’t even suggest anything to product, stay on spec.... ‘We care about future tech’ — lay off r&d at the first sight of a downturn. Just shut the fuck up already.

thoraway1010 6y ago
Somewhat true. My favorite: "We adhere to the highest ethical principles" - as they give you a 500 page ethics doc that no one reads or follows. But I've actually found it's a good / reliable tell. You just stay away from companies like this that can't talk straight and you end up a LOT happier. I don't mean they need to be nice - but just clear relatively honest normal English language communication. ie, "we're cutting back to reduce our burn rate." vs "we are doubling down on engineering talent." Some PR people actually get it I think and can basically be honest while adding some things you may not have thought of. Not in this case though!
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  > My favorite: "We adhere to the highest ethical principles" - as they give you a 500 page ethics doc that no one reads or follows. That's just a translation error. "To adhere" means "to stick"; while the formalized version sounds like they stick to high ethical princilples, what they meant is they stick it to them.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  The new-speak of hypocrisy is utterly cemented in corporate and pseudo corporate businesses. Sadly, a requisite skillet now days is having to navigate all the bullshit.
  - thoraway1010 6y ago

monadic2 6y ago

This could just mean they aren’t developing lidar further. Because there is no retraining culture it’s difficult to tell.

aphextron 6y ago

>Doubling down = 2x the engineering staff. This is as they lay off in their lidar team. Self driving will be solved with computer vision. Lidar is an unnecessary technology even for full level 5 autonomy. Most self driving companies have come to this conclusion by now.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
Any data to back this up besides Musk saying his approach's the best?
- aphextron 6y ago
  https://twitter.com/comma_ai/status/1197323020852793344 https://twitter.com/comma_ai/status/1197323020852793344
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/07/elon-musk-calls-lidar-a-fools-errand-other-autonomous-driving-experts-starting-to-agree/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/07/elon-musk-calls-lidar-a... https://youtu.be/fNgEG5rCav4 https://youtu.be/fNgEG5rCav4 > Anthony Levandowski, former Google/Waymo engineer, now backtracks on lidar and says, ”Elon is right.”
  - 8note 6y ago
    He might not be the most trustworthy source with the waymo thing.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    It also, conveniently, lessens the potential value of the data he took with him, to say this.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - three_seagrass 6y ago
    A quote from someone who stole trade secrets backtracking on the importance of said trade secrets is not exactly trustworthy.

baddox 6y ago

What tort would you claim they’ve committed? It’s not reasonable to interpret that claim as literally doubling the amount of engineering staff. No court would consider that for even a moment. And even if you could argue that a spokesperson is lying about fuzzy concepts like the amount of focus company places on engineering, who does that wrong?

sulam 6y ago

One thing you also have to understand here (other than the replies I've read) is that you can in fact lay off people and yet increase the percentage investment you are making in something. You have to cut your budget by 30% -- you can do this as a haircut everyone takes, or you can be selective, and ask one group to take less of a cut and other groups to take more. Your overall spend will be more heavily weighted towards groups that take less of a cut, obviously. You can also leave your overall budget for one team unchanged, or even grow it, and simply change your focus by putting more emphasis (and budget) on one set of activities vs another. In the Cruise case either scenario is possible. They can have decided that 3rd party LIDAR is good enough, and not strategic enough, that they should cut there. That could be the sum of it, while other groups like HR, Marketing, etc takes bigger cuts. Alternatively they could use the same logic to cut the LIDAR team and then take the savings generated to invest more heavily in (made up example) route planning or something.

Animats 6y ago

This is as they lay off in their lidar team. There are too many LIDAR startups chasing too little market for LIDARs. The delay in self-driving cars reaching the market means automotive LIDARs are only selling in sample quantities. GM/Cruise may not need an in-house LIDAR unit.

primrose 6y ago

“Anyone using Lidar is doomed, DOOMED!” Looks like GM is catching up to where the industry was a year ago, from A cofounder of Waymo. https://youtu.be/0w1G2GyPTUM https://youtu.be/0w1G2GyPTUM

deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
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renewiltord 6y ago

Honestly, I'd rather work with them than with people who wilfully misinterpret statements and just flip a shit constantly. "I think it's time to double down on email marketing" -> my teammates understand that means I'm going to switch where I put most of my effort. I can just imagine you saying "Yet you're not allocating 8 hours a day instead of 4 on this. I'm going to sue you" God, that would be exhausting.

hckr_news 6y ago
It’s just a weasel word that can mean anything. Avoid weasel words. In your situation, why not just say I’m going to put my current efforts and focus on X as you clearly meant.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Because human expression is cool, man. "You guys are killing it!" is way better than "You human beings are performing above average for this task. I appreciate this". Also it's not a weasel word. It's totally just an expression. I find it truly incredible that someone feels the way you do.
  - throwawayjava 6y ago
    If someone told me I were killing it, I would feel like a 22 year old engineer again and have flashbacks to that one PM who loved my work but who came to work still tripping some Mondays. Glad to be making a key stakeholder happy, but holy fuck am I glad we finally fired that tool. If someone told me I was doing above average and they appreciated my work, I would feel... appreciated and proud of my work. The world where killing and crushing are used in an unironic way is tiny and occupied mostly by people under 30. Can you retire at 30?
    - smabie 6y ago
      If you are killing and crushing it enough, then yeah, I guess.
    - 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rifflebutter 6y ago

You seem to have misunderstood what the lidar team refers to. The Lidar team laid off is not part of Cruise's essential engineering team. It belongs to a small, research/demo-focused company that Cruise bought a long time ago which claimed they would make solid-state Lidars that costs 99% less than currently available lidars, which would cut most of the cost to self-driving cars using lidars today. They function as a separate entity from Cruise and have very little to do with Cruise's core self-driving technology team on a day to day basis. As the article has made clear, within Cruise's engineering team, only the non-essential teams (i.e. not core self-driving technology) have been impacted by this layoff.