4 ms·

I’m guessing cruise is pretty much over. What’s really unfortunate is I worked with many people who worked with Kyle and no one had a single good thing to say

I’m guessing cruise is pretty much over. What’s really unfortunate is I worked with many people who worked with Kyle and no one had a single good thing to say about him. And I’ve often heard that before with people who knew other CEOs but they kinda grudgingly admitted they did what was needed to get it done. However over and over I just heard phrases like “lost” “aimless” and “confused mess” with Kyle and it never was the “he’s an asshole but it makes the company work. It was just. He’s lost, distracted and constantly sidelined. I say all this because I actually feel for the guy. Because I know if I was CEO of a company going up against trillionare competitors I’d probably be the same way. Probably even worse. And that’s the state most CEOs are up against — completely unable no matter their skill to outmatch the largest monopolies the world has ever seen — who can simply outspend, outlast, and out do you with capital alone.

hra5th 3y ago
My impression is that most Cruise employees liked and respected Kyle a lot. I have seen external people with a negative opinion of him but I am surprised to see someone say they have never seen anyone with a positive opinion, I saw far more positive than negative.
- tempsy 3y ago
  Glassdoor has a 66% approval rating for the company and ceo not exactly a stellar rating
  - freddie_mercury 3y ago
    But there's a lot of selection bias in that. Hard to know what it means without a lot more information and comparison to other companies.
    - tempsy 3y ago
      I’ve looked at plenty of glassdoor profiles. It’s low for a large company with as many ratings as it has.
      - reducesuffering 3y ago
        Yes, this should not be discounted. Cruise has stunningly terrible reviews from verified employees. Based on my dataset from Blind, they were top 5% lowest ratings. Clearly morale there has been very bad, and at least since 2018. https://www.teamblind.com/company/Cruise/ https://www.teamblind.com/company/Cruise/
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  Those who have left might be a bias sample (in my data)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Seanambers 3y ago
Well, he could just execute you know.
someonehere 3y ago
I knew people who worked over there and didn’t have nice things to say about anyone in upper management. I actually had to tell a recruiter from Cruise who was actively trying to get me to interview, no thank you.
timr 3y ago
> What’s really unfortunate is I worked with many people who worked with Kyle and no one had a single good thing to say about him. And I’ve often heard that before with people who knew other CEOs but they kinda grudgingly admitted they did what was needed to get it done. I worked with Kyle at Justin.tv. He's great. A good guy and a tremendous engineer. Now you know someone who does, so you can stop saying that.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  Good to know.
eklitzke 3y ago
I worked at Cruise (I left about 2.5 years ago) and I have the opposite impression about Kyle. Kyle was a very charismatic leader who was really in the trenches. Unlike a lot of CEOs he was really visible in the office, he would drop in on meetings if he had breaks in his calendar, he was active on Jira and Slack, etc. Even though I was just a rank-and-file engineer I was in a number of meetings with him and some of the engineers would meet with him often. It was pretty clear that he had his finger on the pulse of the company and understood what was going on in engineering in a pretty deep way. Some of these are qualities that I could see leading to someone thinking he was "aimless" or a "confused mess", but these are also things that engender a lot of respect from employees. For better or worse his presence was very much felt by engineers, and I think everyone thought that he was very technical. I think Kyle's departure is going to hit hard for a lot of the engineers working on onboard software. It's been reported that they are spending something like $250M/quarter so in order to keep the ship afloat they are going to need to raise funding soon. It's hard to think of a worse situation they could be fundraising in, which I assume is going to mean a massive down round, which is going to further dishearten the people working there.
- kbenson 3y ago
  > Some of these are qualities that I could see leading to someone thinking he was "aimless" or a "confused mess", but these are also things that engender a lot of respect from employees. Respect from employees is a fickle thing. If someone can do all that you describe and still succeed as a CEO then power to them. When it comes time to choose between one or the other, I think most employees would rather an effective boss than one that seemed to understand them. Their opinion on the CEO might change rather quick were they to be laid off because the CEO just can't cut it. It's sort of like the cool parent that's also a friend. If they can do that and effectively parent, they're better at it than me. If it comes down to being a friend to your child or parenting them, one is nice and the other is a responsibility and has major repercussions when done wrong.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
    Isn't keeping your finger on the pulse of the company an important part of the CEO's job though?
conjecTech 3y ago
I just do not understand how people can look at a company that has achieved what Cruise has with such pessimism. Successfully completing 250k autonomous rides is an extraordinarily achievement. Yes, there have been problems, but the issues that Cruise is facing today are a world away from the kinds of problems autonomous vehicles were facing even 5 years ago. The fact that there is one major incident being discussed and not a pile of bodies indicates just how close we are to what will undoubtedly be the largest transformation in transportation, and human productivity, in our lifetimes. Saying that they are "pretty much over" when they are one of two organizations in the world with this level of capability makes no sense to me.
- tsunamifury 3y ago
  You would be surprised what corporate optics can do to override real achievements. I have always been a champion of Cruise and I think what happened to them is downright suspicious.
- Animats 3y ago
  For Cruise, manual remote takeover was more common than previously admitted.[1] "Every 4 to 5 miles". [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/06/cruise-confirms-robotaxis-rely-on-human-assistance-every-4-to-5-miles.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/06/cruise-confirms-robotaxis-re...
  - conjecTech 3y ago
    They aren't manual takeovers, Kyle already responded[1] to this himself and clarified that they are requests for input which themselves mostly autoresolve. This is closer to an active learning loop than humans taking over. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145062
    - Animats 3y ago
      It's remote takeover of the decision-making process because the automation failed. Despite how the CEO "clarified" it.
anon571984 3y ago
When I was in college in 2011 and was offered an internship to Justin.TV, Kyle had it rescinded without notifying me, almost leaving me without an internship for my junior year. After giving me the offer ("We would like to offer an internship position to you. I'll call you today with more details.") the recruiter emailed me that Kyle wanted to talk. Since I'd already been offered the internship, I took it as a sell call to learn more about the company. But shortly thereafter when I emailed to accept the position, the recruiter responded > After your conversation with Kyle, we felt that we will need a more experienced intern for the projects we have. So, we are not going to pursue your application any further. At no point had I been told—until I tried to accept the offer—that it had been rescinded. Thankfully, I hadn't yet reached out to the other companies who had given me offers and ended up at what turned out to be a much more successful startup. But if I had done it in the other order I would have been screwed. This was more than 12 years ago, and I still don't know what happened internally. Having worked in many startups since then, I can understand the level of dysfunction that can occur even with well-intentioned leadership. But in any case, Kyle clearly didn't care what happened to some random college student, and it's left a bad taste in my mouth for all of these years.

hra5th 3y ago

My impression is that most Cruise employees liked and respected Kyle a lot. I have seen external people with a negative opinion of him but I am surprised to see someone say they have never seen anyone with a positive opinion, I saw far more positive than negative.

tempsy 3y ago
Glassdoor has a 66% approval rating for the company and ceo not exactly a stellar rating
- freddie_mercury 3y ago
  But there's a lot of selection bias in that. Hard to know what it means without a lot more information and comparison to other companies.
  - tempsy 3y ago
    I’ve looked at plenty of glassdoor profiles. It’s low for a large company with as many ratings as it has.
    - reducesuffering 3y ago
      Yes, this should not be discounted. Cruise has stunningly terrible reviews from verified employees. Based on my dataset from Blind, they were top 5% lowest ratings. Clearly morale there has been very bad, and at least since 2018. https://www.teamblind.com/company/Cruise/ https://www.teamblind.com/company/Cruise/
tsunamifury 3y ago
Those who have left might be a bias sample (in my data)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Seanambers 3y ago

Well, he could just execute you know.

someonehere 3y ago

I knew people who worked over there and didn’t have nice things to say about anyone in upper management. I actually had to tell a recruiter from Cruise who was actively trying to get me to interview, no thank you.

timr 3y ago

> What’s really unfortunate is I worked with many people who worked with Kyle and no one had a single good thing to say about him. And I’ve often heard that before with people who knew other CEOs but they kinda grudgingly admitted they did what was needed to get it done. I worked with Kyle at Justin.tv. He's great. A good guy and a tremendous engineer. Now you know someone who does, so you can stop saying that.

tsunamifury 3y ago
Good to know.

eklitzke 3y ago

I worked at Cruise (I left about 2.5 years ago) and I have the opposite impression about Kyle. Kyle was a very charismatic leader who was really in the trenches. Unlike a lot of CEOs he was really visible in the office, he would drop in on meetings if he had breaks in his calendar, he was active on Jira and Slack, etc. Even though I was just a rank-and-file engineer I was in a number of meetings with him and some of the engineers would meet with him often. It was pretty clear that he had his finger on the pulse of the company and understood what was going on in engineering in a pretty deep way. Some of these are qualities that I could see leading to someone thinking he was "aimless" or a "confused mess", but these are also things that engender a lot of respect from employees. For better or worse his presence was very much felt by engineers, and I think everyone thought that he was very technical. I think Kyle's departure is going to hit hard for a lot of the engineers working on onboard software. It's been reported that they are spending something like $250M/quarter so in order to keep the ship afloat they are going to need to raise funding soon. It's hard to think of a worse situation they could be fundraising in, which I assume is going to mean a massive down round, which is going to further dishearten the people working there.

kbenson 3y ago
> Some of these are qualities that I could see leading to someone thinking he was "aimless" or a "confused mess", but these are also things that engender a lot of respect from employees. Respect from employees is a fickle thing. If someone can do all that you describe and still succeed as a CEO then power to them. When it comes time to choose between one or the other, I think most employees would rather an effective boss than one that seemed to understand them. Their opinion on the CEO might change rather quick were they to be laid off because the CEO just can't cut it. It's sort of like the cool parent that's also a friend. If they can do that and effectively parent, they're better at it than me. If it comes down to being a friend to your child or parenting them, one is nice and the other is a responsibility and has major repercussions when done wrong.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 3y ago
  Isn't keeping your finger on the pulse of the company an important part of the CEO's job though?

conjecTech 3y ago

I just do not understand how people can look at a company that has achieved what Cruise has with such pessimism. Successfully completing 250k autonomous rides is an extraordinarily achievement. Yes, there have been problems, but the issues that Cruise is facing today are a world away from the kinds of problems autonomous vehicles were facing even 5 years ago. The fact that there is one major incident being discussed and not a pile of bodies indicates just how close we are to what will undoubtedly be the largest transformation in transportation, and human productivity, in our lifetimes. Saying that they are "pretty much over" when they are one of two organizations in the world with this level of capability makes no sense to me.

tsunamifury 3y ago
You would be surprised what corporate optics can do to override real achievements. I have always been a champion of Cruise and I think what happened to them is downright suspicious.
Animats 3y ago
For Cruise, manual remote takeover was more common than previously admitted.[1] "Every 4 to 5 miles". [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/06/cruise-confirms-robotaxis-rely-on-human-assistance-every-4-to-5-miles.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/06/cruise-confirms-robotaxis-re...
- conjecTech 3y ago
  They aren't manual takeovers, Kyle already responded[1] to this himself and clarified that they are requests for input which themselves mostly autoresolve. This is closer to an active learning loop than humans taking over. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145062 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145062
  - Animats 3y ago
    It's remote takeover of the decision-making process because the automation failed. Despite how the CEO "clarified" it.

anon571984 3y ago

When I was in college in 2011 and was offered an internship to Justin.TV, Kyle had it rescinded without notifying me, almost leaving me without an internship for my junior year. After giving me the offer ("We would like to offer an internship position to you. I'll call you today with more details.") the recruiter emailed me that Kyle wanted to talk. Since I'd already been offered the internship, I took it as a sell call to learn more about the company. But shortly thereafter when I emailed to accept the position, the recruiter responded > After your conversation with Kyle, we felt that we will need a more experienced intern for the projects we have. So, we are not going to pursue your application any further. At no point had I been told—until I tried to accept the offer—that it had been rescinded. Thankfully, I hadn't yet reached out to the other companies who had given me offers and ended up at what turned out to be a much more successful startup. But if I had done it in the other order I would have been screwed. This was more than 12 years ago, and I still don't know what happened internally. Having worked in many startups since then, I can understand the level of dysfunction that can occur even with well-intentioned leadership. But in any case, Kyle clearly didn't care what happened to some random college student, and it's left a bad taste in my mouth for all of these years.