Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 224 posts

Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight

#81

Post by rsp1984 »

sanguy wrote: post #52

Anthony is overrated and a complete psychopath. He doesn't understand it's basic right from wrong. In his mind IP is boundless and his, not Googles. This comes from 5 years of working in fairly close contact. Zero morals. He is what's wrong with Silicon Valley - on equal grounds to Travis from Uber. I can completely see this all being planned for years just like circumventing the iPhone App Store rules. As a Google s…

My impression from working at Google was that lack of respect for property is unfortunately part of Google's culture. I've met this mindset on many occasions, so this whole lawsuit, as well as the fact that Levandowski was allowed to rise high at the company, doesn't surprise me a bit. It's just that in this case it was one of their own engineers using it against them, for a change.

Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight

#82

Post by ianamartin »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #8
kaladaraos wrote: post #3

Is there any reason not to be suspicious that Levandowski will just work on them unofficially?

Presumption of innocence. You have to assume that the people are innocent until they are proven guilty. If you fired Levandowski and win the case, then he sues. If you leave him in place and you're found guilty, there are extra damages because you were "notified" and you still didn't stop his work. So you move him off to the side, wait for the trial to resolve. And then figure out what to do with him, which will be e…

Umm, that's a criminal rights issue. This is a civil case. The rules are quite different.

There is no assumption of innocence here.

Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight

#83

Post by jonknee »

metaphorm wrote: post #59
sanguy wrote: post #52

Anthony is overrated and a complete psychopath. He doesn't understand it's basic right from wrong. In his mind IP is boundless and his, not Googles. This comes from 5 years of working in fairly close contact. Zero morals. He is what's wrong with Silicon Valley - on equal grounds to Travis from Uber. I can completely see this all being planned for years just like circumventing the iPhone App Store rules. As a Google s…

litigation is a civil complaint not a criminal one. nobody goes to jail for that. you may have some justified reasons for disliking him but you sound unhinged in this comment. get a grip.

If just a portion of what is claimed comes out as true there will be a criminal case as well. This sounds orders of magnitude more serious than what Sergey Aleynikov was claimed to have done to Goldman Sachs and he is about ready to be put in jail.

Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight

#84

Post by raphlinus »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35
zaphar wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all the more interesting because Google makes it ridiculously easy to ask for that permission and get a legally unambiguous go or no go for any side projects. It's not like this would have been murky waters.

there was a joke posting on an internal alias that showed the internal /etc/aliases file for Google which had the mailing list going to '|/usr/bin/no'[1] :) I would be interested to know if anyone still there had ever tried that and gotten a yes answer. The three times I used the process it was always denied. [1] To understand the meta-joke there is actually a /usr/bin/yes program but in the standard distribution the…

From Google's official opensource documentation on IARC[0]: We don’t approve every project submitted through this process, but historically we’ve been able to rapidly approve the vast majority of them.

I personally have had one IARC approved and one denied (and something like a dozen opensource launches), but from what I've seen, the above statement is accurate.

[0] https://opensource.google.com/docs/iarc/

Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight

#85

Post by linkregister »

tarr11 wrote: post #80
sriram_sun wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anthony is overrated Maybe. He did this. http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah... . At least that's what Google tells me :). Given your history with him, do you know how much of this is true? > and a complete psychopath Whoa.. When you say psychopath, I'm translating that to 'ruthless without any morals.' Can you give any examples without giving away other people's personal details? > As a Go…

Here's an article with some more details on him from 2013. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/11/25/auto-correct

That really adds context about Levandowski's vision and engineering drive. I wonder if there are any articles about his reported confrontational behavior.

Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight

#86

Post by [deleted] »

Schwolop wrote: post #57
WillyOnWheels wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm all for engineers getting paid, but in this case the guy didn't even have to do what most wealthy engineers do: deliver an actual successful product to market. Anthony's efforts led to Streetview and Maps improvements. Waymo is still using his LIDAR research. I think Anthony is totally screwed with this lawsuit, but I wouldn't belittle his engineering accomplishments.

The guy built a self-driving motorcycle . I laughed at the first DARPA Grand Challenge when it travelled 30cm before falling over. I ate my words the next year when it made it most of the way. By comparison, after a year of learning to ride a motorbike I barely make it to work each day without shitting myself.

[deleted]

Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight

#87

Post by [deleted] »

virtuabhi wrote: post #56
sanguy wrote: post #52

Anthony is overrated and a complete psychopath. He doesn't understand it's basic right from wrong. In his mind IP is boundless and his, not Googles. This comes from 5 years of working in fairly close contact. Zero morals. He is what's wrong with Silicon Valley - on equal grounds to Travis from Uber. I can completely see this all being planned for years just like circumventing the iPhone App Store rules. As a Google s…

But he must be good. $120M+ in compensation.

[deleted]

Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight

#88

Post by Trundle »

sanguy wrote: post #52

Anthony is overrated and a complete psychopath. He doesn't understand it's basic right from wrong. In his mind IP is boundless and his, not Googles. This comes from 5 years of working in fairly close contact. Zero morals. He is what's wrong with Silicon Valley - on equal grounds to Travis from Uber. I can completely see this all being planned for years just like circumventing the iPhone App Store rules. As a Google s…

Nothing about IP is basic right from wrong. He might have zero morals, you're the one that's worked in close contact with him not me, but it's entirely possible to have a strong moral compass and ethical framework and not care for IP at all.

Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight

#89

Post by ganoushoreilly »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #63
virtuabhi wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he must be good. $120M+ in compensation.

Yep. That's Juicero level money.

I'm stealing this as my new expensive / large sum replacement
Post reply on HN