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Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

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Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#111

Post by tssva »

p1esk wrote: post #9
roseway4 wrote: post #6

Not mentioned here, but in this Techcrunch article, is Ford’s expensive flip-flopping on AV: https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/02/ford-forms-automated-drivi... > Argo AI burst on the scene in 2017 stacked with a $1 billion investment from Ford — and Iater an investment from VW. The startup shuttered suddenly in October 2022 after Ford and VW determined they would no longer pursue AV technology, at least not under the Ar…

Wait, so they killed the 550 person AV startup they were funding, took 2.7B loss, and 4 months later hired those same 550 people to resume the same work? Something looks seriously wrong here.

According to the article they will be working on assisted driving technologies for the immediate future and not autonomous vehicles, so not the same work.

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#112

Post by eganist »

smcl wrote: post #110
eganist wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

700k total comp, so probably between 150-300k base salary, 50k bonus, and the rest in stock comp, usually vesting in batches over four years. Anecdata just means anecdotal data, i.e data points I know from people personally but not a representative sample.

Ahhh thanks! I figured "TC" was "total compensation" but wasn't sure how to interpret 700 since $700k/yr seemed enormous, but if it's salary for a year plus a chunk of stock that vests over a few years that makes more sense.

Well..... It's still an enormous chunk. Assume you're making 350 cash comp (300+50 bonus), that's another 1.4m in stock vesting over 4 years (350/y)

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#113

Post by smcl »

eganist wrote: post #112
smcl wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahhh thanks! I figured "TC" was "total compensation" but wasn't sure how to interpret 700 since $700k/yr seemed enormous, but if it's salary for a year plus a chunk of stock that vests over a few years that makes more sense.

Well..... It's still an enormous chunk. Assume you're making 350 cash comp (300+50 bonus), that's another 1.4m in stock vesting over 4 years (350/y)

Oh they're getting the stock yearly? Yeah that's a lot. Well, good on them I suppose!

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#114

Post by vsareto »

eganist wrote: post #109
smcl wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that mean?

700k total comp, so probably between 150-300k base salary, 50k bonus, and the rest in stock comp, usually vesting in batches over four years. Anecdata just means anecdotal data, i.e data points I know from people personally but not a representative sample.

That’s fucking ludicrous

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#115

Post by hd95489 »

dmix wrote: post #45
bwhitty wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, another anecdote to add to this thread of anecdotes is that my HI5 with HDA2 is stellar. I do hours at a time on highways in CA without a disengage.

Does it follow the car in front's speed on the highway while keeping you in the lane? I would absolutely love a car that could do that well while I still paid attention while listening to podcasts/audiobooks. I haven't tried any newish midtier cars, only been in a friends Tesla which is beyond my needs. These niche applications are 100% what car companies should have focused on from the beginning rather than robotaxi…

Yes for the most part. It’s good enough to say look around and enjoy the view off a bridge or check a text message but not enough to write a long text or read an article

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#116

Post by hd95489 »

rnk wrote: post #82
a_t48 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Jetta GLI can do this. ACC is good, if there’s a hard stop it will beep at me to brake, or brake itself hard later. The lane centering worked great in WA (with a tweak to the options to enable stronger centering) and works pretty good in CA (lane lines aren’t always as clear). Basically I only have to give a very light touch on the steering wheel, the car mostly just follows the road. The system overall is not per…

Recent Toyotas like a Corolla can do this.

Yep you can rent any modern Corolla and test the feature out. Most rental cars have this

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#117

Post by joadha »

modzu wrote: post #107

how many engineers does it take to unscrew a lightbulb? aka could we solve the blinding headlight problem first? and eliminate touchscreen controls for essentials second?

I would support an all-hands-on-deck response to the blinding headlight problem. Incident declared!

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#118

Post by astrea »

modzu wrote: post #107

how many engineers does it take to unscrew a lightbulb? aka could we solve the blinding headlight problem first? and eliminate touchscreen controls for essentials second?

A mile or so away from Argo’s former location in Pittsburgh, there’s the national robotics engineering center: a commercial unit within Carnegie Mellon University. Rotting away amongst all their other former creations is a truck with special headlights. They solve the issue of snow blindness by only shining light where the falling snow isn’t, cut out a nice silhouette of oncoming drivers so as not to blind them, and are also capable of projecting driving directions onto the street ahead of the driver.

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#119

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #105
p1esk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so they killed the 550 person AV startup they were funding, took 2.7B loss, and 4 months later hired those same 550 people to resume the same work? Something looks seriously wrong here.

They killed the 1700 person company they part owned/controlled with VW and then hired 550 engineers directly. If Argo.ai wasn't going in the direction they need for Fords products they could either get full control or kill it and hire the engineers. The latter might be more risky but is probably cheaper than buying, reorganising and making people redundant. The 2.7B was already spent - they've just moved it from 'inv…

And you can also take a loss on it to avoid paying taxes on $2.7B of profits.

And you can also hire those engineers back probably with a discount given the current environment.

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#120

Post by notimetorelax »

gwd wrote: post #93
notimetorelax wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen this happen at a big corp. One group of leaders decides to kill a product, takes the first steps, then the other group of leaders overrules them and restores the efforts. This can be driven by a pressure from the clients or partners, etc. Think of it as a rollback of a buggy release.

It doesn't even need to be a big corp. At some point, within a product group I was working with, two factions developed, one of which was championing technology X (which the product was already using), and another championing the idea of moving to technology Y. The messaging out of the product group seemed schizophrenic -- one time they's say, "We're moving to technology Y soon", and another time they'd say "No, we'r…

Ha, this is fascinating. Seems like a leadership failure as someone should have got them into one room and forced to come up with a shared engineering vision.
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