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Waymo filing says Travis Kalanick knew engineer had Google info

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Re: Waymo filing says Travis Kalanick knew engineer had Google info

#51

Post by djb_hackernews »

Why does the media keep calling Levandowski a plain old engineer? If Levandowski qualifies as a nameless engineer the title should read "Waymo filing says engineer knew engineer had Google info." Levandowski is a well known tech entrepreneur and was before this case, he wasn't just some worker bee Uber hired to sling code that stole IP from Google before leaving.

It sort of feels like the VW emissions scandal being blamed on "engineers". No, in both cases they were well compensated, well connected, seasoned tech executives and knew what they were doing and thought they could get away with it because of their position (and likely also from experience.)

Re: Waymo filing says Travis Kalanick knew engineer had Google info

#52

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

djb_hackernews wrote: post #51

Why does the media keep calling Levandowski a plain old engineer? If Levandowski qualifies as a nameless engineer the title should read "Waymo filing says engineer knew engineer had Google info." Levandowski is a well known tech entrepreneur and was before this case, he wasn't just some worker bee Uber hired to sling code that stole IP from Google before leaving. It sort of feels like the VW emissions scandal being b…

Yeah, I always do a double-take when I read engineer, because I take it to mean that it was some other engineer, because obviously if it was Levandowski, they'd have mentioned him by name.

He's literally the protagonist of this whole drama, and they keep referring to him as 'engineer'. WTF.

Re: Waymo filing says Travis Kalanick knew engineer had Google info

#53

Post by skellera »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #49
digi_owl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically my impression since i first heard about them. But many pushed them as just good old American "disrupters" of a "stale" market. That is until the first dirty underwear regarding office shenanigans were aired, and then the twittering classes did a one-eighty in their view of Uber. And from that point on the company has been circling the drain.

The myth that you can build a billion-dollar business without some shady dealings needs to die. Startups are usually faced with hard choices if they want to survive. Pretending like Kalanick himself endorsed sexual harassment is ridiculous. We don't know whether he knew, how much he knew, or how involved he was. All evidence points to "the trail of information stopped at HR." I think we like to pretend that startups…

Sorry Travis. I don't think he meant it personally.

Kidding aside, at those levels you have to manage all of that. PR is probably just as important as the tech.

Re: Waymo filing says Travis Kalanick knew engineer had Google info

#54

Post by ethanhunt_ »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #49
digi_owl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically my impression since i first heard about them. But many pushed them as just good old American "disrupters" of a "stale" market. That is until the first dirty underwear regarding office shenanigans were aired, and then the twittering classes did a one-eighty in their view of Uber. And from that point on the company has been circling the drain.

The myth that you can build a billion-dollar business without some shady dealings needs to die. Startups are usually faced with hard choices if they want to survive. Pretending like Kalanick himself endorsed sexual harassment is ridiculous. We don't know whether he knew, how much he knew, or how involved he was. All evidence points to "the trail of information stopped at HR." I think we like to pretend that startups…

Ironically the sister-post to your parent post complains about a vampire being killed in the 19th century, when it's the same mindset that caused that and that wants to crucify Kalanick.

The five-minutes-of-hate culture and public lynching culture is dangerous and has to end. In a year some contrarian will post an article on Medium with the title "Kalanick was unfairly ousted" and it'll be posted on reddit/r/TIL and the tide will turn as all the people whose opinions are an expression of whatever made it to the frontpage of their favorite aggregators reverse their opinion to fit the status quo.

Re: Waymo filing says Travis Kalanick knew engineer had Google info

#55

Post by bshimmin »

throwaway29292 wrote: post #5

I count 4 Uber stories on the front page today. There have been a few every week since the past few months. Will this sordid saga ever end? I feel this is like watching a newsreel about the same topics every few days.

Theranos had a similar treatment a month or two back. News and sordid sagas (and many things in life!) are all rather cyclical.

Re: Waymo filing says Travis Kalanick knew engineer had Google info

#57

Post by abakker »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #52
djb_hackernews wrote: post #51

Why does the media keep calling Levandowski a plain old engineer? If Levandowski qualifies as a nameless engineer the title should read "Waymo filing says engineer knew engineer had Google info." Levandowski is a well known tech entrepreneur and was before this case, he wasn't just some worker bee Uber hired to sling code that stole IP from Google before leaving. It sort of feels like the VW emissions scandal being b…

Yeah, I always do a double-take when I read engineer, because I take it to mean that it was some other engineer, because obviously if it was Levandowski, they'd have mentioned him by name. He's literally the protagonist of this whole drama, and they keep referring to him as 'engineer'. WTF.

Antagonist?

Re: Waymo filing says Travis Kalanick knew engineer had Google info

#58

Post by zer00eyz »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #49
digi_owl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically my impression since i first heard about them. But many pushed them as just good old American "disrupters" of a "stale" market. That is until the first dirty underwear regarding office shenanigans were aired, and then the twittering classes did a one-eighty in their view of Uber. And from that point on the company has been circling the drain.

The myth that you can build a billion-dollar business without some shady dealings needs to die. Startups are usually faced with hard choices if they want to survive. Pretending like Kalanick himself endorsed sexual harassment is ridiculous. We don't know whether he knew, how much he knew, or how involved he was. All evidence points to "the trail of information stopped at HR." I think we like to pretend that startups…

Here is the problem, because there is only one of two arguments you can make.

1. He was so inept as CEO that he was unaware of all (it is a big list) the shady things putting the company he was the majority share holder of at risk that he deserves to be fired and have it crash and burn.

2. He was aware of the bulk of the shady things, that makes him complicit. As an endorser of Ubers lager pattern of behavior and over all toxic culture, he deserves to be fired.

There is NO way to defend Kalanick without sounding like a shill.

Re: Waymo filing says Travis Kalanick knew engineer had Google info

#59

Post by aresant »

Headline choice is editorializing - the actual quote "Mr.Kalanick conveyed to Mr. Levandowski in response that Mr. Levandowski should not bring any Google information into Uber and that Uber did not want any Google information. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Levandowski communicated to Uber that he had destroyed the discs"

Re: Waymo filing says Travis Kalanick knew engineer had Google info

#60

Post by _jal »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #38
_jal wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps for the same reason you didn't mention the possibility of contempt mentioned in the Bloomberg article? There are multiple ways to tell a story. I realize partisans have discovered that yelling at journalists is a great way to distract from the underlying story, but it works better on Sunday shouty shows and swampy blogs.

That is less material to the story than the idea that Kalanick wasn't involved in some conspiracy to steal Waymo's tech. The media wants to propagate the story that Uber and Levandowski were conspiring to steal Waymo's technology, but this makes it clear that it wasn't the case, and if there was theft of secrets, it was Levandowski on his own.

The media wants to tell any story that gets attention. Complaining about the media is a distraction, but at least here there's the amusement of accusing the media of conspiring to tell the story of a conspiracy that doesn't exist.

The contempt charge is less material to the story you are interested in talking about, but looks rather important to me. And we don't have proof of anything - Maybe Kalanick got cold feet partway through. We don't yet have sufficient detail to know what this means.

Although now that you shine a light on this, it does seem to demonstrate is that Kalanick went ahead with a key hire who was anteing stolen IP. Call that what you will, but I wouldn't hire a janitor who did that, nor would knowingly I work for anyone who would do that. And it is also further recklessness - even putting aside ethics and legality, who is to say Levandowski wouldn't do the same thing to Uber if he got a better offer?

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