Live data from Hacker News

Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

techcrunch.com

41–50 of 166 posts

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#41

I’m guessing cruise is pretty much over. What’s really unfortunate is I worked with many people who worked with Kyle and no one had a single good thing to say about him. And I’ve often heard that before with people who knew other CEOs but they kinda grudgingly admitted they did what was needed to get it done. However over and over I just heard phrases like “lost” “aimless” and “confused mess” with Kyle and it never w…

> What’s really unfortunate is I worked with many people who worked with Kyle and no one had a single good thing to say about him. And I’ve often heard that before with people who knew other CEOs but they kinda grudgingly admitted they did what was needed to get it done.

I worked with Kyle at Justin.tv. He's great. A good guy and a tremendous engineer.

Now you know someone who does, so you can stop saying that.

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#42
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the situations similar at all. Cruise is an extremely tough spot right now after its handling of the San Francisco accident, and it's nationwide pause of testing. OpenAI has been extremely successful but is having strategic disagreements within its non-profit board.

Is this the SF accident you mean? I hadn’t heard of it, but this seems not at all worrisome: > At approximately 9:30 p.m. on October 2, a human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian while traveling in the lane immediately to the left of a Cruise AV. The initial impact was severe and launched the pedestrian directly in front of the AV. The AV then braked aggressively to minimize the impact. The driver of the other vehicl…

https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/24/dmv-immediately-suspends-c...

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#43
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the situations similar at all. Cruise is an extremely tough spot right now after its handling of the San Francisco accident, and it's nationwide pause of testing. OpenAI has been extremely successful but is having strategic disagreements within its non-profit board.

Is this the SF accident you mean? I hadn’t heard of it, but this seems not at all worrisome: > At approximately 9:30 p.m. on October 2, a human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian while traveling in the lane immediately to the left of a Cruise AV. The initial impact was severe and launched the pedestrian directly in front of the AV. The AV then braked aggressively to minimize the impact. The driver of the other vehicl…

You are missing what happened next, which Cruise tried to cover up.

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#44
post #41

I’m guessing cruise is pretty much over. What’s really unfortunate is I worked with many people who worked with Kyle and no one had a single good thing to say about him. And I’ve often heard that before with people who knew other CEOs but they kinda grudgingly admitted they did what was needed to get it done. However over and over I just heard phrases like “lost” “aimless” and “confused mess” with Kyle and it never w…

> What’s really unfortunate is I worked with many people who worked with Kyle and no one had a single good thing to say about him. And I’ve often heard that before with people who knew other CEOs but they kinda grudgingly admitted they did what was needed to get it done. I worked with Kyle at Justin.tv. He's great. A good guy and a tremendous engineer. Now you know someone who does, so you can stop saying that.

Good to know.

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#45
post #22

To the surprise of no one. This is on the back of GM appointing a Chief Administrative Officer to “work with” the CEO after their recent controversies. One unfortunate accident (though Cruise was at fault for making it worse) has put the entire company in disarray. I suppose it’s the result of accumulation of so many minor issues in San Francisco and a lack of a strict safety culture. It feels like a repeat of Uber f…

> One unfortunate accident

I think it was covering up for the accident that caused regulators to pull the plug.

If that were traced directly to the CEO, then he's out for good reason.

Otherwise, the CEO likely has to take the fall anyway to satisfy regulators who want consequences for executives who don't ensure regulatory submissions are credible.

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the SF accident you mean? I hadn’t heard of it, but this seems not at all worrisome: > At approximately 9:30 p.m. on October 2, a human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian while traveling in the lane immediately to the left of a Cruise AV. The initial impact was severe and launched the pedestrian directly in front of the AV. The AV then braked aggressively to minimize the impact. The driver of the other vehicl…

The accident was one thing, but Cruise's response to regulators about the accident escalated the heat. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/board-...

I don’t understand, but I suppose I’ll have to accept not understanding. The article vaguely gestures towards some sort of misrepresentation, but doesn’t elaborate. Thank you for pointing it out though.

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#47
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the situations similar at all. Cruise is an extremely tough spot right now after its handling of the San Francisco accident, and it's nationwide pause of testing. OpenAI has been extremely successful but is having strategic disagreements within its non-profit board.

Is this the SF accident you mean? I hadn’t heard of it, but this seems not at all worrisome: > At approximately 9:30 p.m. on October 2, a human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian while traveling in the lane immediately to the left of a Cruise AV. The initial impact was severe and launched the pedestrian directly in front of the AV. The AV then braked aggressively to minimize the impact. The driver of the other vehicl…

[deleted]

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#48

I’m guessing cruise is pretty much over. What’s really unfortunate is I worked with many people who worked with Kyle and no one had a single good thing to say about him. And I’ve often heard that before with people who knew other CEOs but they kinda grudgingly admitted they did what was needed to get it done. However over and over I just heard phrases like “lost” “aimless” and “confused mess” with Kyle and it never w…

I worked at Cruise (I left about 2.5 years ago) and I have the opposite impression about Kyle. Kyle was a very charismatic leader who was really in the trenches. Unlike a lot of CEOs he was really visible in the office, he would drop in on meetings if he had breaks in his calendar, he was active on Jira and Slack, etc. Even though I was just a rank-and-file engineer I was in a number of meetings with him and some of the engineers would meet with him often. It was pretty clear that he had his finger on the pulse of the company and understood what was going on in engineering in a pretty deep way.

Some of these are qualities that I could see leading to someone thinking he was "aimless" or a "confused mess", but these are also things that engender a lot of respect from employees. For better or worse his presence was very much felt by engineers, and I think everyone thought that he was very technical.

I think Kyle's departure is going to hit hard for a lot of the engineers working on onboard software. It's been reported that they are spending something like $250M/quarter so in order to keep the ship afloat they are going to need to raise funding soon. It's hard to think of a worse situation they could be fundraising in, which I assume is going to mean a massive down round, which is going to further dishearten the people working there.

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#49
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the situations similar at all. Cruise is an extremely tough spot right now after its handling of the San Francisco accident, and it's nationwide pause of testing. OpenAI has been extremely successful but is having strategic disagreements within its non-profit board.

Is this the SF accident you mean? I hadn’t heard of it, but this seems not at all worrisome: > At approximately 9:30 p.m. on October 2, a human-driven vehicle struck a pedestrian while traveling in the lane immediately to the left of a Cruise AV. The initial impact was severe and launched the pedestrian directly in front of the AV. The AV then braked aggressively to minimize the impact. The driver of the other vehicl…

Weird - this leaves out the most worrying part of the incident; the woman was pinned under the cruise vehicle and ended up being dragged under the vehicle as the vehicle started moving again.

Furthermore, Cruise attempted to cover up the fact that the car dragged the woman. Now that I refresh myself on the details of the situation, it seems you have the "cleaned" PR statement that was pushed by Cruise and had omitted the above details

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-10-26/cruise-rob...

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#50
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's a lot of selection bias in that. Hard to know what it means without a lot more information and comparison to other companies.

I’ve looked at plenty of glassdoor profiles. It’s low for a large company with as many ratings as it has.

Yes, this should not be discounted. Cruise has stunningly terrible reviews from verified employees. Based on my dataset from Blind, they were top 5% lowest ratings. Clearly morale there has been very bad, and at least since 2018.

https://www.teamblind.com/company/Cruise/

Post reply on HN