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GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

reuters.com

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Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#231

Post by brown9-2 »

throwxmlphell wrote: post #219
iamleppert wrote: post #117

I went to a recruiting event that was put on by Cruise. It was disguised as a marketing "advisory board" where they asked us questions like "What motivates you as an engineer when looking for a new job? Would changing the world help?" "Would you like to be rewarded handsomely?" "Which of these statements most resonate with you?" They paid me $500 for about an hour to sit through their sales pitch. Then I finally cave…

I've been an interviewer at Cruise, including on panels where Kyle was part of the committee. Trust me, there are many employees who want to have a decent recruiting experience, and a lot of engineers who want to ask questions that are actually worth your time. The bullshit you experienced is 100% top-down from Kyle. For years there has been tremendous pressure to hit headcount goals and to throw money at the problem…

This comment is really confusing for anyone who doesn’t know who Kyle is

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#232

Post by wutbrodo »

deminature wrote: post #8
thoraway1010 wrote: post #2

"doubling down on our engineering work and engineering talent,” Cruise spokesperson Milin Mehta told Reuters. Do these folks even try to hide their lies? Doubling down = 2x the engineering staff. This is as they lay off in their lidar team. Can companies be sued for these types of basically false claims or are we just stuck commenting on what lies they seem come up with. Can you imagine if your day to day life involv…

They obviously don't mean it literally in terms of headcount, but more likely in terms of focus and determination.

> They obviously don't mean it literally in terms of headcount

In what way is this obvious? Per Techcrunch[1], they moved their Pasadena lidar team to SF[2], presumably parting ways with those not willing to relocate. The linked article has a quote from the CEO saying:

> The company will “continue to hire aggressively in the most critical areas within engineering, which right now means doubling down on senior leadership and senior IC roles to further support out improving core tech objective,” Ammann wrote in the memo. “From here we expect to recruit and grow across our engineering teams for the balance of the year.”

That seems pretty definitively contradictory to the claim that they're not hiring or expanding engineering.

This is from probably thirty seconds of Googling, but apparently that's far above the effort bar for topmost top-level comments on HN... (this is in reference to GP's moronic comment, not you).

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/cruise-lays-off-8-of-workf...

[2] I wondered why they had a team in Pasadena while headquartered in SF... it was an acquisition that they hadn't consolidated.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#233

Post by wutbrodo »

thoraway1010 wrote: post #23
tehjoker wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They mean they're increasing the workload of the remaining engineers, not that they're doing something to benefit or other wise honor them.

yep - the idea that they are doubling down on their engineering talent (2x headcount or 2x salaries or 2x resources) or whatever big bet they claim to be making seems like it might be a lie. The PR guy (Milin Mehta) used to work at Kraken Digital Asset Exchange. They are known for suing to identify ten reviewers on Glassdoor, claiming they are former employees in breach of their severance contract. Why work at compan…

Leaving aside your apparently poor reading comprehension skills ("doubling down" does not mean doubling), this explicitly contradicts an internal memo leaked to TC:

> The company will “continue to hire aggressively in the most critical areas within engineering, which right now means doubling down on senior leadership and senior IC roles to further support out improving core tech objective,” Ammann wrote in the memo. “From here we expect to recruit and grow across our engineering teams for the balance of the year.”

The worst I can say about this is that Cruise is bad at PR: the fact that people are dumb enough to so badly and confidently misread a message is something that comms people are supposed to plan for and mitigate.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/cruise-lays-off-8-of-workf...

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#234

Post by wutbrodo »

amacneil wrote: post #55
chris11 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full self-driving is a long way off, but GM can use Cruise to develop new active safety systems for their current cars. I don't think GM is doing as well there as Toyota or Honda, let alone Tesla.

Cruise (the SF company) doesn't do any work related to GM's current cars, we are focused 100% on full self driving. Note GM has another product called SuperCruise which is a totally different thing.

Huh, Cruise's work doesn't feed into Supercruise at all? That's mildly surprising

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#235

Post by vaidhy »

ABeeSea wrote: post #33
thoraway1010 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

doubling down is not about increasing focus. It is about increasing risk by making a BIGGER (not smaller) bet on something. This is in the original meaning in gambling (you are convinced you are right and so double your bet) and elsewhere. Only in PR land is a cash flow pullback and risk reduction step such as a headcount reduction called a doubling down. It goes to show how pernicious these types of intentional misw…

Amazon launched Fire Phone and Alexa months apart. They shit-canned the phone and doubled down on Alexa. It’s not just PR speak. Many of the phone people either left the company or went to work on Alexa. They also did a massive inventory write down for the phone in their quarterly report.

It seems to me like you are agreeing with the parent. Amazon increased their risk by closing the phone side and increasing the resources allocated to Alexa and hence the double down.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#236

Post by dougmwne »

azinman2 wrote: post #222
malandrew wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And some people will cook more. For example, we have a lovely little neopolitan pizza joint a block away, but two days ago I received an Ooni Koda 16 and have discovered how easy it is to make my own neopolitan pizzas. That's basically a permanent reduction in my spending on pizza if/when it does reopen.

My guess is when you're tired and just want dinner now-ish, you'll learn to value that nearby restaurant. It's not like restaurants are only viable because people don't know how to cook themselves.

You can quibble about a specific food, but I think the general point stands. Habits are powerful and they can change. Every adult in the country (world?) is now forcibly learning how to cook or practicing a few new recipes. It turns out that some of those recipes are delicious, dead simple and once you know how to do it, having someone else do it for you looses it's convenience factor.

For myself:

I love cappuccino and bought several per week from cafes near me. I was missing them, so did a bit of research into home espresso and bought a nespresso and semi-automatic milk frother. My homemade cappuccino is excellent. It takes 2 minutes to make with just about zero cleanup. I have had better cappuccino, but seriously the extra time, money and hassle are no longer worth it for me. I will make it at home. It's also 6x cheaper.

I like to treat myself to steak every now and then, but only ever at a restaurant. I recently bought a package of strip steaks and did some trial and error on a George Foreman grill I found in the back of the cupboard I hadn't used in years. I figured out a process that works with that piece of equipment, and now I can knock out an amazing steak in exactly 4 minutes. It's cooked exactly how I like it. Why bother with the hassle and expense of going out for one? Plus it's 4x cheaper.

I doubt I'll completely stop going out or getting delivery, but if I reduce by 10% and everybody else does too, we're talking a lot of businesses that will close.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#237

Post by wutbrodo »

baddox wrote: post #56
paxys wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that is ridiculous. There is absolutely no way to have those numbers without a major compromise in the quality of hires.

Note that the average or median “quality” of employees isn’t really that relevant if you just need more employees to do more total work.

Eh, mythical man-month and all that. As always, the answer is somewhere in the middle, but I'd be surprised if most companies didn't see effects from median employee quality dropping.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#238

Post by ashtonkem »

filoleg wrote: post #220
ashtonkem wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

60% of the 2019 road fatalities in Los Angeles were non-drivers. So drivers represent a good chunk, but not even a majority. Of course this statistic is going to very wildly based on which city we’re talking about. To be fair to my original point, we can also reduce driver fatalities by slowing down highways and offering non-car transit options. The lowest hanging fruit in this area is probably shifting cargo transit…

>60% of the 2019 road fatalities in Los Angeles were non-driver Non-driver != pedestrian. Non-drivers include car passengers.

In this case the statistics specifically refer to pedestrians and cyclists, I just shortened it to “non driver” here, which wasn’t an accurate way to summarize the stats.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#239

Post by throwawayjava »

cactus2093 wrote: post #5
thoraway1010 wrote: post #2

"doubling down on our engineering work and engineering talent,” Cruise spokesperson Milin Mehta told Reuters. Do these folks even try to hide their lies? Doubling down = 2x the engineering staff. This is as they lay off in their lidar team. Can companies be sued for these types of basically false claims or are we just stuck commenting on what lies they seem come up with. Can you imagine if your day to day life involv…

I never hear the phrase "doubling down" used to mean "doubling", except maybe in the original usage in gambling. But colloquially it just means "increasing focus on". In that use there is no inherent contradiction in downsizing + attempting to increasing focus. In fact that seems to be what almost all companies who downsize are attempting to do. Edit: In fact come to think of it, even in blackjack when you double dow…

Doubling down on the tech, no matter what that means quantitatively, would mean qualitatively increasing your bet on the actual product. E.g. you’d fire every last milin if that meant you could keep a LiDAR engineer on staff.

Cruise won’t work out. GM is dead.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#240

Post by dougmwne »

dv_dt wrote: post #92
rtkwe wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to be a bit weird because a lot of those should come back because the underlying business didn't suddenly become nonviable.

Looking at past economic studies, there is a long run hysteresis effect after depressions and while the jobs should come back it may be on a time frame of a decade or longer.

My grandparents spending habits were permanently affected by growing up during the great depression. They talked about their frugality in the context of the depression often. It anchored their entire concept of money. My parents were deeply affected too and often talked about their own childhood and how they were taught to handle money. I feel like I was brought up with a vestige of that great depression mentality and often actively challenge myself to be less frugal. That's 90 years of long run hysteresis right there.
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