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Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

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Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#121

Post by modeless »

Cruise did exactly the wrong thing by folding under pressure and stopping all operations. Appeasing your critics simply doesn't work. The appeasement alienates your supporters while doing nothing to change the minds of your critics as is amply demonstrated in this thread and elsewhere. Cruise's cars were almost certainly not more dangerous than human driven cars. The CYA bureaucrats have taken over and there is no place for a founder at Cruise anymore.

IMO Cruise's fatal mistake was choosing San Francisco. It was hubris to think that they could change the minds of a populace and government clearly set on hating everything to do with tech. There are probably a bunch of cities that would be proud to host self-driving cars, rather than antagonistic. Things could have played out differently.

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#122

Post by dbt00 »

modeless wrote: post #121

Cruise did exactly the wrong thing by folding under pressure and stopping all operations. Appeasing your critics simply doesn't work. The appeasement alienates your supporters while doing nothing to change the minds of your critics as is amply demonstrated in this thread and elsewhere. Cruise's cars were almost certainly not more dangerous than human driven cars. The CYA bureaucrats have taken over and there is no pl…

Uber had huge supporters in Phoenix and that didn't save them there. Cruise did the wrong thing by lying to government regulators.

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#123

Post by hirsin »

dang wrote: post #75
Sebguer wrote: post #74

Why was the submission title changed from the much more descriptive actual article headline? I have no idea who Kyle Vogt is without the context of 'co-founder and CEO'.

Because readers can figure this kind of thing out. It's not hard.

Given all the random, ish, folks leaving openAI at the same time, understanding the context immediately is beneficial. I assumed this was a flamey post by a rando, not dang.

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#124

Post by modeless »

dbt00 wrote: post #122
modeless wrote: post #121

Cruise did exactly the wrong thing by folding under pressure and stopping all operations. Appeasing your critics simply doesn't work. The appeasement alienates your supporters while doing nothing to change the minds of your critics as is amply demonstrated in this thread and elsewhere. Cruise's cars were almost certainly not more dangerous than human driven cars. The CYA bureaucrats have taken over and there is no pl…

Uber had huge supporters in Phoenix and that didn't save them there. Cruise did the wrong thing by lying to government regulators.

Uber folded too. They lost their founder before that happened and the whole self driving division was probably running on inertia. Clearly the new management wasn't interested because they sold it soon after.

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#126

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

kbenson wrote: post #57
eklitzke wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Respect from employees is a fickle thing. If someone can do all that you describe and still succeed as a CEO then power to them. When it comes time to choose between one or the other, I think most employees would rather an effective…

Isn't keeping your finger on the pulse of the company an important part of the CEO's job though?

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#127

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #29

Not sure if it's a coincidence but I feel like a lot of companies are taking advantage of the OpenAI brouhaha to release their news of major exec firings/resignations with the thought that their announcements will get buried by that bigger story. Trying to remember but there was another big firing on Friday I believe, and it felt like all the tech companies were making big C-level changes now to lessen the impact.

Meta disbanded Responsible AI team: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=0xDEAFBEAD&next=3834...

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#128

Post by tsunamifury »

conjecTech wrote: post #67
tsunamifury wrote: post #11

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 just do not understand how people can look at a company that has achieved what Cruise has with such pessimism. Successfully completing 250k autonomous rides is an extraordinarily achievement. Yes, there have been problems, but the issues that Cruise is facing today are a world away from the kinds of problems autonomous vehicles were facing even 5 years ago. The fact that there is one major incident being discussed…

You would be surprised what corporate optics can do to override real achievements. I have always been a champion of Cruise and I think what happened to them is downright suspicious.

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#129

Post by bobsomers »

dbt00 wrote: post #122
modeless wrote: post #121

Cruise did exactly the wrong thing by folding under pressure and stopping all operations. Appeasing your critics simply doesn't work. The appeasement alienates your supporters while doing nothing to change the minds of your critics as is amply demonstrated in this thread and elsewhere. Cruise's cars were almost certainly not more dangerous than human driven cars. The CYA bureaucrats have taken over and there is no pl…

Uber had huge supporters in Phoenix and that didn't save them there. Cruise did the wrong thing by lying to government regulators.

> Cruise did the wrong thing by lying to government regulators.

This is exactly the core problem. It wasn't the crash. Regulators expect there to be problems with new technology, but they want to do deep investigations when they happen so everyone can learn from them. This could had been a great learning moment for Cruise, the regulators, the rest of the AV industry, and the general public.

But then Cruise lied to the regulators, which is a HUGE no no. They don't take kindly to industry trying to hide information like that.

Re: Kyle Vogt resigns from Cruise

#130

Post by 3seashells »

amacneil wrote: post #58

Since there is so much negativity in this thread, let me balance it with my take as someone who worked at Cruise for 5 years (left 3 years ago). Kyle is the smartest, most technically capable, driven person I have ever had the opportunity to work for. He had a deep technical understanding of the system, a great intuition for unnecessary complexity, and a constant desire to find and resolve engineering bottlenecks. An…

The tech is wasted on cars though, auto steering bikes, that's were the future is.
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