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Since there is so much negativity in this thread, let me balance it with my take as someone who worked at Cruise for 5 years (left 3 years ago). Kyle is the sm

Since there is so much negativity in this thread, let me balance it with my take as someone who worked at Cruise for 5 years (left 3 years ago). Kyle is the smartest, most technically capable, driven person I have ever had the opportunity to work for. He had a deep technical understanding of the system, a great intuition for unnecessary complexity, and a constant desire to find and resolve engineering bottlenecks. And he was deeply motivated by a goal of safety and saving lives. After the GM acquisition, he could have enjoyed an early retirement. GM were eager to give us all Windows laptops and turn us into a San Francisco outpost, just as they had done with their Sidecar acquisition. But instead, Kyle worked tirelessly to ensure we had sufficient freedom and independence to build. I know this wasn't everyone's experience with Kyle. I know plenty of people he pushed too hard and who left much earlier than I did. But for every person who burned out, there were others motivated by his energy and loved who working for him. Is Cruise over? Probably not. There are still a ton of extremely smart people working there, and they are still in possession of a world-leading AV technology (probably second only to Waymo, who had a 5 year head start). But I hope they can maintain their Silicon Valley culture and not succumb to becoming a complete GM outpost.

xyst 3y ago
If Cruise is the amongst the “world leading AV technology”, we are truly f’d. As a person that had to deal with Cruise vehicles on the streets, they were by far the worst.
pc 3y ago
I knew Kyle in college. He was extremely smart, kind, patient, and friendly. (He was a few years ahead of me; I was a random Irish freshman who had just shown up.) Looking back, he's one of the people who inspired me to get into startups. While we never ended up working together, it wasn't for lack of trying on my side -- everyone said he was phenomenal, and I tried hard to persuade him to join Stripe in the early days.
- GlassOwAter 3y ago
  I have a company that makes terpene-infused hard candies (nothing illegal/gray area). When we started in 2016 we were soon kicked off of Stripe, because the candy was classified by them as a drug. I then learned about their strict views and how they also ban other legal products/services from using their service. That was very frustrating.
- exogeny 3y ago
  This is as good of an endorsement as you'll ever see. Also I am happy to be your next choice after Kyle. I'll join Stripe, Patrick!
- xstthr 3y ago
  Do you think the Kyles of today would join or excel in the politics at Stripe today?
  - fragmede 3y ago
    ask gdb
- sroussey 3y ago
  In the early days at Weebly, we decided to use Stripe. pc gave me his mobile number and answered at 3am when I was in a panic during our launch of e-commerce. Much respect.
- jamestimmins 3y ago
  MIT has no shortage of exceptional people; was there something that stood out about Kyle among even that crowd?
dmazzoni 3y ago
Honestly everything about Cruise seemed awesome until they pushed to start offering driverless rides at the same time as Waymo, when obviously they weren't as far along. Whose decision was that? I'm really curious if there were internal disagreements.
- minwcnt5 3y ago
  My theory is the Cruise leadership created an expectation that they were ahead of Waymo, based on focusing on SF rather than Phoenix suburbs. Then Waymo rolled into SF with their 5th gen platform and progressed faster than expected, and the heat was on.
pierrefermat1 3y ago
Could you speak to the unnecessary complexity a little more ? What were the design decisions to didn't agree with ?
Exoristos 3y ago
Not Windows laptops!
- amacneil 3y ago
  Not even kidding. They gave us a tour of their enterprise datacenter in Detroit and told us that cloud infrastructure was banned. At the time they had a plan to offer a complete in-house alternative to AWS. Meanwhile getting a single outbound port opened through their corporate firewall took several months.
  - boulos 3y ago
    Presumably you terrified them when you came to GCP :).
  - fma 3y ago
    Assuming you meant the GM data center in Milford & Warren... 1) There were ways around it via a secure proxy for outbound 2) If proxy was blocked because of your zone, you could escalate and get deviation. Just need the right security person to approve. I've definitely launched stuff in prod and it's like whoops didn't know that would be blocked or forgot to submit to be opened. 3) Maybe you encountered a power tripping "security architect"...gotta find ways to avoid those. 4) Unfortunately in non-IT corporate, you need to not just be able to be good at engineering but good at cutting red tape to keep your team moving. It's time consuming & frustrating. 5) The in-house alternative is PCF, which is phasing out for Azure. I thought PCF was a dumb idea to start. 6) Same red tape exists for Azure :( I'd say it's worse for security. Maybe this has changed...left GM 6 months ago. I actively refused to migrate to Azure till they worked out the kinks. I'd have to have a frankenstein solution to satisfy their policy. I.e, app is in Azure but dependent web services are internal... Azure is considered external even though it's walled off for us...but it's external and we can't connect internal stuff to it. We had actual products to deliver and didn't have time to be guinea pigs.
paul7986 3y ago
Really loathed the tech bros attitude that Cruise came off I.e. trying to rapidly expand while their cars were totally not ready for prime time and showing such often in San Francisco. Trying to win the market at all costs like Uber tried which their irresponsible trying to kill it (win the market at all coss) behavior killed a pedestrian. I was afraid Cruise's similar behavior (noted many times here on HN) would prompt something similar which it did but luckily and hopefully Cruise's victim makes a full recovery. This is not technology to ever be created and or operated with those who are tech bro minded or following tech bro mantras(i.e. fake it til u make it)! Innocent people lives are put in danger if so as we've seen with Uber and now Cruise!
- sroussey 3y ago
  You mean the victim that got hit by a human driver that sent her flying in the air. And that human fled the scene. Hit and run.
  - paul7986 3y ago
    And then what happened after she was hit via a hit and run? She was hit and lodged underneath one of Cruises's robot cars on training wheels who unlike what a human would do (stop the car & help the other human being) ..it's algorithm (there's no way these robot cars can account for all the million human scenarios that a human can) executed dragging the woman to the side of the road further mangling her body.
    - sroussey 3y ago
      And we know exactly who to blame. Unlike the human. And that human likely would have kept driving too. Clearly did not show the empathy that would suggest they would pull over. As an aside, I wonder if all Waymo and Cruise vehicles will include undercar cameras in the future.
      - paul7986 3y ago
        if another human is lodged under millions of drivers' cars ..you are saying 99 percent of them are going to run them over and flee? There's that many murders out there? Further you are saying what I detest about this dumb technology ..that being ..oh once we hurt someone or killed them we will have learned something from their death and push out a software update with each person we harm or kill. Thanks for sacrificing your life for technology progress and expanding tech bros wallets. As for Waymo they need to be strung up too if it's found out they learned something from cruise's incident and made changes. Which scarily shows they are learning as they go and more people are going to be harmed or killed. Love technology but love human beings more!
Rebuff5007 3y ago
> But I hope they can maintain their Silicon Valley culture and not succumb to becoming a complete GM outpost. Silicon valley has not shipped a successful product in the space that Cruise is in, and its quite possible no company ever will, so maybe "succumbing" to a different culture could be a good thing.
- fragmede 3y ago
  I mean, people are riding Waymos, and were riding Cruises, so while it's not broadly available, it's also not the case that nothing has been shipped. Hell, comma.ai just launched the latest version of their hardware. The future is here, just unevenly distributed.
patrick451 3y ago
This really seems like a rose colored glasses take. Kyle promoted a move fast and break things culture. When I have talked with Cruise engineers, many of them use that exact phrase, and they are proud of it. That culture ended up breaking a women's face. This in particular > But I hope they can maintain their Silicon Valley culture and not succumb to becoming a complete GM outpost. is the last thing Cruise or the AV industry needs. SV culture is suitable for cranking out CRUD apps. SV has no business trying to produce safety critical software.
- kiratp 3y ago
  But the likes of GM do? https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/no-accident-inside-gms-deadly-ignition-switch-scandal/ https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/no-accident-insi... > it meant GM had produced a part that failed to meet not only its own internal minimums for torque but also basic federal safety standards. For all safety-related defects, NHTSA requires auto manufacturers and part suppliers to notify the agency within five business days after learning of a flaw that could lead to an accident. GM had not. > The documents showed that engineers first noticed the engine stalling problem way back in 2001, four years before Brooke purchased her Cobalt. What’s more, the Cobalt wasn’t the first GM car with a defective switch; that would be the 2003 Saturn Ion. Despite internal probes over the following decade that recommended changes to the key system, no changes were made. Indeed, GM appeared to double down on the bad ignition switch, integrating it into other compact cars, including the Chevy Cobalt, Chevy HHR, Pontiac Solstice, and Pontiac Pursuit. > As it turned out, DeGiorgio’s 2006 order came four years after an email he wrote to the ignition switch manufacturer, in which he ordered the company, rather than fix the part and incur delays, to “do nothing.” The email was signed “Ray (tired of the switch from hell) DeGiorgio.” > The report also described the disturbing pattern of disregard for the defect. This could be witnessed in gestures such as the “GM Nod”—in which GM employees affirmed the need for a plan of action, but understood no one actually intended on following through—and the “GM Salute,” described by one employee as the “crossing of the arms and pointing outward towards others, indicating the responsibility belongs to someone else, not me.”
3seashells 3y ago
The tech is wasted on cars though, auto steering bikes, that's were the future is.
oldpersonintx 3y ago
[dead]
oldgradstudent 3y ago
He may be very smart and very nice, but the recent leaks from Cruise make it appear, in my opinion, closer to Theranos than to Apple. From the leaks it is clear that safety was never the top priority at Cruise. Few people were surprised that Cruise car seriously injured a pedestrian by unnecessarily dragging her screaming for 20' in a completely unnecessary maneuver. I'll stand by my opinion that Cruise is not long for this world.

xyst 3y ago

If Cruise is the amongst the “world leading AV technology”, we are truly f’d. As a person that had to deal with Cruise vehicles on the streets, they were by far the worst.

pc 3y ago

I knew Kyle in college. He was extremely smart, kind, patient, and friendly. (He was a few years ahead of me; I was a random Irish freshman who had just shown up.) Looking back, he's one of the people who inspired me to get into startups. While we never ended up working together, it wasn't for lack of trying on my side -- everyone said he was phenomenal, and I tried hard to persuade him to join Stripe in the early days.

GlassOwAter 3y ago
I have a company that makes terpene-infused hard candies (nothing illegal/gray area). When we started in 2016 we were soon kicked off of Stripe, because the candy was classified by them as a drug. I then learned about their strict views and how they also ban other legal products/services from using their service. That was very frustrating.
exogeny 3y ago
This is as good of an endorsement as you'll ever see. Also I am happy to be your next choice after Kyle. I'll join Stripe, Patrick!
xstthr 3y ago
Do you think the Kyles of today would join or excel in the politics at Stripe today?
- fragmede 3y ago
  ask gdb
sroussey 3y ago
In the early days at Weebly, we decided to use Stripe. pc gave me his mobile number and answered at 3am when I was in a panic during our launch of e-commerce. Much respect.
jamestimmins 3y ago
MIT has no shortage of exceptional people; was there something that stood out about Kyle among even that crowd?

dmazzoni 3y ago

Honestly everything about Cruise seemed awesome until they pushed to start offering driverless rides at the same time as Waymo, when obviously they weren't as far along. Whose decision was that? I'm really curious if there were internal disagreements.

minwcnt5 3y ago
My theory is the Cruise leadership created an expectation that they were ahead of Waymo, based on focusing on SF rather than Phoenix suburbs. Then Waymo rolled into SF with their 5th gen platform and progressed faster than expected, and the heat was on.

pierrefermat1 3y ago

Could you speak to the unnecessary complexity a little more ? What were the design decisions to didn't agree with ?

Exoristos 3y ago

Not Windows laptops!

amacneil 3y ago
Not even kidding. They gave us a tour of their enterprise datacenter in Detroit and told us that cloud infrastructure was banned. At the time they had a plan to offer a complete in-house alternative to AWS. Meanwhile getting a single outbound port opened through their corporate firewall took several months.
- boulos 3y ago
  Presumably you terrified them when you came to GCP :).
- fma 3y ago
  Assuming you meant the GM data center in Milford & Warren... 1) There were ways around it via a secure proxy for outbound 2) If proxy was blocked because of your zone, you could escalate and get deviation. Just need the right security person to approve. I've definitely launched stuff in prod and it's like whoops didn't know that would be blocked or forgot to submit to be opened. 3) Maybe you encountered a power tripping "security architect"...gotta find ways to avoid those. 4) Unfortunately in non-IT corporate, you need to not just be able to be good at engineering but good at cutting red tape to keep your team moving. It's time consuming & frustrating. 5) The in-house alternative is PCF, which is phasing out for Azure. I thought PCF was a dumb idea to start. 6) Same red tape exists for Azure :( I'd say it's worse for security. Maybe this has changed...left GM 6 months ago. I actively refused to migrate to Azure till they worked out the kinks. I'd have to have a frankenstein solution to satisfy their policy. I.e, app is in Azure but dependent web services are internal... Azure is considered external even though it's walled off for us...but it's external and we can't connect internal stuff to it. We had actual products to deliver and didn't have time to be guinea pigs.

paul7986 3y ago

Really loathed the tech bros attitude that Cruise came off I.e. trying to rapidly expand while their cars were totally not ready for prime time and showing such often in San Francisco. Trying to win the market at all costs like Uber tried which their irresponsible trying to kill it (win the market at all coss) behavior killed a pedestrian. I was afraid Cruise's similar behavior (noted many times here on HN) would prompt something similar which it did but luckily and hopefully Cruise's victim makes a full recovery. This is not technology to ever be created and or operated with those who are tech bro minded or following tech bro mantras(i.e. fake it til u make it)! Innocent people lives are put in danger if so as we've seen with Uber and now Cruise!

sroussey 3y ago
You mean the victim that got hit by a human driver that sent her flying in the air. And that human fled the scene. Hit and run.
- paul7986 3y ago
  And then what happened after she was hit via a hit and run? She was hit and lodged underneath one of Cruises's robot cars on training wheels who unlike what a human would do (stop the car & help the other human being) ..it's algorithm (there's no way these robot cars can account for all the million human scenarios that a human can) executed dragging the woman to the side of the road further mangling her body.
  - sroussey 3y ago
    And we know exactly who to blame. Unlike the human. And that human likely would have kept driving too. Clearly did not show the empathy that would suggest they would pull over. As an aside, I wonder if all Waymo and Cruise vehicles will include undercar cameras in the future.
    - paul7986 3y ago
      if another human is lodged under millions of drivers' cars ..you are saying 99 percent of them are going to run them over and flee? There's that many murders out there? Further you are saying what I detest about this dumb technology ..that being ..oh once we hurt someone or killed them we will have learned something from their death and push out a software update with each person we harm or kill. Thanks for sacrificing your life for technology progress and expanding tech bros wallets. As for Waymo they need to be strung up too if it's found out they learned something from cruise's incident and made changes. Which scarily shows they are learning as they go and more people are going to be harmed or killed. Love technology but love human beings more!

Rebuff5007 3y ago

> But I hope they can maintain their Silicon Valley culture and not succumb to becoming a complete GM outpost. Silicon valley has not shipped a successful product in the space that Cruise is in, and its quite possible no company ever will, so maybe "succumbing" to a different culture could be a good thing.

fragmede 3y ago
I mean, people are riding Waymos, and were riding Cruises, so while it's not broadly available, it's also not the case that nothing has been shipped. Hell, comma.ai just launched the latest version of their hardware. The future is here, just unevenly distributed.

patrick451 3y ago

This really seems like a rose colored glasses take. Kyle promoted a move fast and break things culture. When I have talked with Cruise engineers, many of them use that exact phrase, and they are proud of it. That culture ended up breaking a women's face. This in particular > But I hope they can maintain their Silicon Valley culture and not succumb to becoming a complete GM outpost. is the last thing Cruise or the AV industry needs. SV culture is suitable for cranking out CRUD apps. SV has no business trying to produce safety critical software.

kiratp 3y ago
But the likes of GM do? https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/no-accident-inside-gms-deadly-ignition-switch-scandal/ https://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/no-accident-insi... > it meant GM had produced a part that failed to meet not only its own internal minimums for torque but also basic federal safety standards. For all safety-related defects, NHTSA requires auto manufacturers and part suppliers to notify the agency within five business days after learning of a flaw that could lead to an accident. GM had not. > The documents showed that engineers first noticed the engine stalling problem way back in 2001, four years before Brooke purchased her Cobalt. What’s more, the Cobalt wasn’t the first GM car with a defective switch; that would be the 2003 Saturn Ion. Despite internal probes over the following decade that recommended changes to the key system, no changes were made. Indeed, GM appeared to double down on the bad ignition switch, integrating it into other compact cars, including the Chevy Cobalt, Chevy HHR, Pontiac Solstice, and Pontiac Pursuit. > As it turned out, DeGiorgio’s 2006 order came four years after an email he wrote to the ignition switch manufacturer, in which he ordered the company, rather than fix the part and incur delays, to “do nothing.” The email was signed “Ray (tired of the switch from hell) DeGiorgio.” > The report also described the disturbing pattern of disregard for the defect. This could be witnessed in gestures such as the “GM Nod”—in which GM employees affirmed the need for a plan of action, but understood no one actually intended on following through—and the “GM Salute,” described by one employee as the “crossing of the arms and pointing outward towards others, indicating the responsibility belongs to someone else, not me.”

3seashells 3y ago

The tech is wasted on cars though, auto steering bikes, that's were the future is.

oldpersonintx 3y ago

[dead]

oldgradstudent 3y ago

He may be very smart and very nice, but the recent leaks from Cruise make it appear, in my opinion, closer to Theranos than to Apple. From the leaks it is clear that safety was never the top priority at Cruise. Few people were surprised that Cruise car seriously injured a pedestrian by unnecessarily dragging her screaming for 20' in a completely unnecessary maneuver. I'll stand by my opinion that Cruise is not long for this world.