Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was no team without him, period.
on the other hand there was no stolen intellectual property without him either.
haha
Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight
201–210 of 224 posts
Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I've never seen anyone get a yes for money making side projects. For Open Source projects which uses a slightly different process I've seen people get permission to do them without an explicit CLA. It's pretty hard to find something on the internet or in commerce that isn't somehow competing with Google.
My co-worker worked on some games to sell on the android play market.
Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
From everything I've read, he didn't leave because of the money. He left because Google didn't ship. When you want to build a SDC future and that's what you're passionate about you go wherever will support that dream. Google started as that company and was overtaken by a company that was more supportive.
When seemingly conspiring with Uber to defraud Google to a nine-figure tune, ascribing his motivations to the latter's "failure to ship" is quite...generous.
Exactly. Given what he did, that just sounds wrong.
Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight
#204Worth remembering that Google paid this guy over $120 Million in compensation. He is a tech "1%"er, which really is saying a lot. That is hedge fund money. I'm not certain, but I think the average engineer would feel more loyalty to a company that has given them multi-generational wealth. 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 act…
I really don't understand how people get greedy after earning that much money. Is it just the high/excitement the comes from it? Seems like money would no longer be motivating.
The only thing that money changes is the size of your bills.
— Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)
Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or Larry simply tells the truth and doesn't hurt Waymo's position. The bias is dripping off your lips.
Again, lawyers don't ask questions that they don't already know the answer to. They wouldn't ask to depose him if they didn't think the answers would help their position. This is lawyering 101 level obviousness.
This is a deposition, not the trial. Lawyers ask as many questions as possible in the deposition and drill in on all problem areas looking for contradictions and undisclosed information. That's how the Waymo lawyers found out about Spider. "Waymo learned of Spider’s existence during the deposition of Asheem Linaval, an engineer Levandowski recruited from Google to join him at Uber..."[1]
In a trial, they only ask questions that whose answers are beneficial to their case. They know the answers are beneficial because they already asked the questions in deposition. If the answer is different at the trial, it is perjury. If the answer is the same, it helps their case.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/26/a-waymo-filing-leaks-lidar...
Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's one of the top experts in self driving technology, a motorcycle he and a team built in college is in the Smithsonian. I can see Uber wanting to keep him on unofficially.
"He and a team" - I'd be curious to see the extent of his technical contribution, given that he's billed as the team leader and seems to be taking a lot of the credit here. In my experience, 'team leaders' who end up with the credit for the finished product do so because they spent all their time self-promoting rather than actually, y'know, building the product .
While I've personally seen examples of the team leader getting credit for being a self-promoter, I'm not convinced. I've also seen groups where the team leader was the most passionate, and really was the driving force for the project.
I do not know which he is, but I'm not in a position to pass judgement.
Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love to hear more about this, including any specific examples if you can give them.
- When they acquired my little project (back in 2008) my co-founder and I were told point blank that if we didn't sell to them at a price of their choosing they would just outright copy our product and steal our ideas and do it themselves and we'd get nothing. I don't even think they meant it as much as it was a divide-and-conquer negotiation tactic (which unfortunately worked since my co-founder started to panic aft…
"Do we want to build this or buy this" is a pretty typical decision at all large companies, no? Wouldn't it be supremely strange if Google acquired something without at least considering building it internally?
Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's Keynes with another perspective: > When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to…
I like that quote, but I disagree with it. I don't think "love of money as a possession" is a good thing, but I think it's pretty rare compared to the "love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life." One of the most life-changing experiences I've ever had was swimming in a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico. I've never seen so many stars overhead in contrast to absolute darkness (you have to be in r…
Love of money as a possession: Warren Buffett was at a party where the wine they were serving to everyone cost about $150 a glass. When they came to him with a bottle, offering him a refill, he said "No thanks. I'd rather have the cash."
He didn't say: "No thanks. I don't like wine. I'd rather have a Cherry Coke." It wasn't an issue of taste preference.
People like Buffett love to play the game of maximizing return on a dollar invested, maximizing the quantity of dollars owned. Dollar accumulation is a game, a fascination, an obsession. For these people, the experience of having more dollars is not only the bioluminescent bay, it's every bioluminescent bay. There's nothing else that feels as great as increasing the dollar horde.
Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like that quote, but I disagree with it. I don't think "love of money as a possession" is a good thing, but I think it's pretty rare compared to the "love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life." One of the most life-changing experiences I've ever had was swimming in a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico. I've never seen so many stars overhead in contrast to absolute darkness (you have to be in r…
Love of money as a possession: Warren Buffett was at a party where the wine they were serving to everyone cost about $150 a glass. When they came to him with a bottle, offering him a refill, he said "No thanks. I'd rather have the cash." He didn't say: "No thanks. I don't like wine. I'd rather have a Cherry Coke." It wasn't an issue of taste preference. People like Buffett love to play the game of maximizing return o…
I take your point, but that story sounds really apocryphal. It's hard to imagine someone refusing wine like that. Why not just say, "No thanks!"?
Re: Uber’s Anthony Levandowski out as Advanced Technologies lead amid legal fight
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
That depends on the jury (and therefore the jurisdiction) actually. There have been several times when I made this argument in favor of removing some employee who was actively working to destroy a team and was made to jump through lots of hoops by corporate lawyers fearful of lawsuits.
Well, they would have to convince a jury that they were actually fired for one of the protected reasons. Often times lawyers will want you to document the reasons you are firing someone so that you can use them as a defense against a lawsuit claiming you fired them for a protected reason.
"I've never seen a trial I couldn't lose" - An attorney friend of mine.