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No, it was blatant theft of IP and some might consider corporate espionage. He was a high level exec at Waymo, who stole the IP which represented the core comp
by sadfev 6y ago
No, it was blatant theft of IP and some might consider corporate espionage.
He was a high level exec at Waymo, who stole the IP which represented the core competency just before he jumped ship to Uber.
- qppo 6y ago> some might consider corporate espionage I don't know about "consider," he plead guilty to theft of trade secrets and was charged with crimes defined by the Economic Espionage Act. But I think most engineers don't know that stealing IP from your former employer is a federal crime punishable up to 10 years.
- CydeWeys 6y agoIgnorance of the law is no excuse. Almost all engineers should at least know that doing so is wrong. And this guy was an executive, not just an engineer.
- qppo 6y agoI'm not suggesting that it's an excuse or that engineers don't know it's wrong, just that I'm guessing most of them don't know they can go to jail for pulling this shit. It's kind of like what happened with Aaron Schwartz (where the ethics of what he did might be more debatable than Levandowski). I don't think either of these smart people realized what they were doing could put them in prison.