He should go for far more. Someone stealing a car worth far less would go to prison for far longer!
Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed
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Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed
#112Why do we have laws for trade secrets? Seems like that lowers wages and decreases innovation. Really bad for majority of people. I understand they are fantastic for minority of people who are shareholders, but are there contrarians who think we should do away with legal protections for them?
Not sure if this comment is sarcasm, but if we didn't attempt to reasonably protect trade secrets the opposite of what you are saying would happen. If I invest billions in a form of technology or a superior product and it can just walk out the door to any competitor, I actually have a perverse incentive to milk my existing products as much as possible and AVOID innovation due to the lack of return on it and the abili…
> Not sure if this comment is sarcasm
No, I'm generally curious, why do we have trade secret laws? Seems anti-capitalist, anti-freedom, anti-equality to me. There must be people who question them and I'm curious to learn more.
> If I invest billions...
Yes, if you had billions to invest you should strongly dislike this idea. I'm saying that perhaps trade secret laws are good for billionaires, bad for everyone else. So removing them would be bad for billionaires, good for everyone else.
Shareholders have the government's help in preventing their employees from leaving to compete. Without that help, they'd have to treat their employees on a more equal footing.
> AVOID innovation
A freer market generally leads to more innovation, not less. Sure, a small number of billionaires may stop funding innovation, but that may be dwarfed by the rise of a number of innovative upstart companies made up of former employees.
Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed
#113here is how white collar crime is punished:
756k in restitution. 95k in fines. “theft” of 800k+. gets him a 1.5 year sentence
75% of robberies are for less than 10k. 3% over 250k. yet average sentence is ~10 years.
https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...
Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed
#114This guy had such a sweet deal at Google originally, it staggers me that he'd go to these lengths to steal even more. He was getting a massive salarY, bonuses in the millions, and he had persuaded Google to pay him even more money through a side-hustle company of his while remaining an employee. Then he quits and steals their stuff.
Corporate politics likely came into play - he was sidelined at Chauffeur and didn't show up to work, if you read the bloomberg articles. Likely he just wanted to make a difference and politics or corporate stupidity got in the way. The irony is that all these tech companies talk about changing the world. Reality is lawsuits and corporate politics.
Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quite a few. Levandowski is in California, where they're making a pretty big effort to get nonviolent criminals out of the prison system.
Levandowski was charged in the federal system, to which California state prison policy is irrelevant. (The fact that the particular federal court hearing the case was located in California doesn't change that.) OTOH, both delays in prison sentences and releases of current prisoners to home confinement are not uncommon due to COVID-19 in the federal system right now.
Good point, thanks for the clarification.
Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
For some people, it isn't ever about having enough. It's always about having more. It also might not have been entirely about the money: he could have craved recognition, more power or who knows what else.
No, it's about dominance and winning. It isn't about the reward. It's about the game.
On the money! and the game is like being in the matrix...you’re always trying to bend the spoon even though reality tell you otherwise...in the end, you start believing the spoon is bent, when it’s not
Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the worrying precedent engineers should be unhappy about here?
Getting sued / prosecuted for switching jobs.
Sounds like he stole a bunch of trade secrets and gave them to his new job, and he got the new job because of his ability to do this. This may not be completely accurate, I haven't been following it too closely, but broad strokes.
You must know this behavior is completely different than simply switching jobs?
Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed
#118This guy had such a sweet deal at Google originally, it staggers me that he'd go to these lengths to steal even more. He was getting a massive salarY, bonuses in the millions, and he had persuaded Google to pay him even more money through a side-hustle company of his while remaining an employee. Then he quits and steals their stuff.
Corporate politics likely came into play - he was sidelined at Chauffeur and didn't show up to work, if you read the bloomberg articles. Likely he just wanted to make a difference and politics or corporate stupidity got in the way. The irony is that all these tech companies talk about changing the world. Reality is lawsuits and corporate politics.
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Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed
#119It just proves that if you want to do a crime, do the white collar crime. White gloves treatment will ensue, if you get caught.
Re: Levandowski sentenced to 18 months in prison as new lawsuit against Uber filed
#120here is how white collar crime is punished: 756k in restitution. 95k in fines. “theft” of 800k+. gets him a 1.5 year sentence 75% of robberies are for less than 10k. 3% over 250k. yet average sentence is ~10 years. https://www.ussc.gov/sites/default/files/pdf/research-and-pu...
Murder might be for 0 money, but the sentences for that are even higher.
The harm of robbery greatly exceeds the monetary cost. It's right and proper that violent crime should carry much higher sentences than nonviolent crime (and that's before we get into how much less clear-cut these white-collar cases usually are).