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Waymo’s Hiring Binge

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Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#101

Post by superfrank »

polishdude20 wrote: post #76
iamaelephant wrote: post #37

> Mawakana just hired a new head of fleet operations, Ryan McNamara, who previously worked on product quality for the Google Pixel phone As the previous owner of 2 Pixel phones, this man is the last person on Earth I want in charge of operations of a fleet of 2-ton automated vehicles. No offence.

I don't know man. My pixel 2 is the best phone I've ever had.

I'm not trying to argue with you, obviously everyone has different experiences, but that's such a funny thing to hear someone say. I had a Pixel 1, Pixel 2, and a Pixel 3a (current phone) and I feel the 2 was the worst of the bunch. I had mine replaced twice in the 18 months I had it due to crashing and overheating issues.

I would never in a million years recommend the Pixel 2 to someone, but I know there are plenty of people out there who love theirs.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#102

Post by riantogo »

rainyMammoth wrote: post #83
steelframe wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very, very few Googlers are "not up to snuff." As controversial as their interview process is, it does tend to let only highly capable people through. If a Googler is not meeting expectations, the vast majority of the time it's effectively remedied with the proverbial "new manager and 6 more months" treatment.

Disagree. I have worked at Google, other startups and middle sized companies. By far the least productive place per employee was Google. Not that the average employee was stupid but the average output per engineer was comically low. A lot of Googlers take it very easy there and work 10 to 5. And to be more on point, I met definitely more than a couple subpar employee that would be fired after a couple months in a sta…

Seems like your key metric is “hours spent at desk”. By that measure, you are probably correct.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#103

Post by megaframe »

bko wrote: post #38

This may seem like a stupid question, but why isn't there a company that just outsources driving to remote drivers? Imagine a car simulation in which someone in a low cost country sees what the driver in the car would see, including the surroundings (side mirrors, behind them, etc). She can look around, same way as someone in the car and that person can drive. And her actions gets sent to the car half way across the…

Among many other issues is connectivity, in the bay area on 280 or 101 there are dead zones and when there's heavy traffic all those cars/people/phones connected to the towers and swapping as they move along overload the connection at each transition point. It wouldn't be possible today to reliably maintain a connection for such a human critical situation. Even with 5G a small interruption would likely be too risky for consumer projects.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#104

Post by mc3 »

ttul wrote: post #34
ttul wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my thinking as well. The power and wealth of the big-five tech companies is staggering, with their smaller siblings (Uber, Cloudflare, AirBnB, Dropbox, etc.) trailing not far behind. It is very tough for startups to compete with public companies who can offer liquid RSUs monthly along with whatever salary is necessary to close the deal.

.. I should add: This is a great time to be an engineer. Enjoy it while it lasts. The time to be a founder will be after the next recession.

My non US experience is I have seen no correlation of the boom/bust cycles and "how good it is to be an engineer". I realize that FAANG employees are of course raking it in like never before. But I thought that was because of a lack of a salary cartel and general software eating the world.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#105

Post by pepicon »

superfrank wrote: post #101
polishdude20 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know man. My pixel 2 is the best phone I've ever had.

I'm not trying to argue with you, obviously everyone has different experiences, but that's such a funny thing to hear someone say. I had a Pixel 1, Pixel 2, and a Pixel 3a (current phone) and I feel the 2 was the worst of the bunch. I had mine replaced twice in the 18 months I had it due to crashing and overheating issues. I would never in a million years recommend the Pixel 2 to someone, but I know there are plenty…

But then you ended by three generations???

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#107

Post by rainyMammoth »

warent wrote: post #92
rainyMammoth wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to have achieved its goal on you.

Is there really so much need to take ourselves so seriously and simultaneously go out of our way to try and make others feel badly about the way they live their lives? It's unfathomable to me.

That was a bit snarky and didn't specifically meant it that way. Sorry if it was understood that way.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#108

Post by rainyMammoth »

riantogo wrote: post #102
rainyMammoth wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. I have worked at Google, other startups and middle sized companies. By far the least productive place per employee was Google. Not that the average employee was stupid but the average output per engineer was comically low. A lot of Googlers take it very easy there and work 10 to 5. And to be more on point, I met definitely more than a couple subpar employee that would be fired after a couple months in a sta…

Seems like your key metric is “hours spent at desk”. By that measure, you are probably correct.

No, my metric is output per engineer which losely correlates with hours spent at desk. The output quality and quantity was the lowest at Google

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#109

Post by dehrmann »

zelly wrote: post #9
mdszy wrote: post #5

>Waymonauts Weird-ass names for employees of a company is one of the weirdest "WE HAVE TO TRY HARD TO MAKE PEOPLE FEEL LIKE A PART OF THE CULTURE" things ever, honestly.

Credit Karma also apparently calls its employees "Karmanauts". Heavy duty cringe.

I'm sure that will be one of the first things Intuit drops.
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