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Waymo Layoffs

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Re: Waymo Layoffs

#111

Post by TradingPlaces »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #71
TradingPlaces wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely works. I was in one just yesterday for over a half hour and it’s a pretty smooth thing, and in some ways better than a human driver (e.g., always yields to pedestrians entering a crosswalk, never exceeds speed limit,etc.) But both Waymo and Cruise lose money on every ride. All the sensors and on-board compute are expensive, and also the R&D, and the 3D maps. Both services rely on detailed 3D maps of the…

>All the sensors and on-board compute are expensive, and also the R&D, and the 3D maps. Both services rely on detailed 3D maps of the areas they service, and are geofenced to that. I think we need to split this into fixed vs variable costs. It's hard for me to believe that the sensors+compute is more expensive than a human. Those sound like the variable costs. I'd be surprised if selling an additional ride causes e.g…

I have been told it loses money by Google employees. Not just sensors+compute. R&D and the map-making are substantial costs. Waymo is reported in “Other Bets” which had $1.1 billion in revenue in 2022 and $6.1 billion in operating losses.

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#112

Post by TradingPlaces »

gghffguhvc wrote: post #58
TradingPlaces wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely works. I was in one just yesterday for over a half hour and it’s a pretty smooth thing, and in some ways better than a human driver (e.g., always yields to pedestrians entering a crosswalk, never exceeds speed limit,etc.) But both Waymo and Cruise lose money on every ride. All the sensors and on-board compute are expensive, and also the R&D, and the 3D maps. Both services rely on detailed 3D maps of the…

If they could 100x the number of cars and trips in SF then the cost of maps per ride would be significantly lower.

There are only 808k people in SF https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/sanfranciscocit...

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#113

Post by TradingPlaces »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #71
TradingPlaces wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely works. I was in one just yesterday for over a half hour and it’s a pretty smooth thing, and in some ways better than a human driver (e.g., always yields to pedestrians entering a crosswalk, never exceeds speed limit,etc.) But both Waymo and Cruise lose money on every ride. All the sensors and on-board compute are expensive, and also the R&D, and the 3D maps. Both services rely on detailed 3D maps of the…

>All the sensors and on-board compute are expensive, and also the R&D, and the 3D maps. Both services rely on detailed 3D maps of the areas they service, and are geofenced to that. I think we need to split this into fixed vs variable costs. It's hard for me to believe that the sensors+compute is more expensive than a human. Those sound like the variable costs. I'd be surprised if selling an additional ride causes e.g…

And also, for whatever reason they decided to go with the Jag I-Pace, which starts at $72k

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#115

Post by up2isomorphism »

braza wrote: post #109
up2isomorphism wrote: post #76

Does it make money? No Does it make you drive your car safely while sleeping ? No Does learn to drive such a hard thing? No Then why do we need this kind of company? I don’t know.

> Then why do we need this kind of company? I come from a place that has in the last 13 years more than 500K people died, in almost 28% of the cases it happened roads/highways due to illegal overtaking and over-speeding. I would like to have in my lifetime a car that had some sort of technology that could prevent some of those accidents, and autonomous cars could help on it.

Except it does not.

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#116

Post by JeremyNT »

TradingPlaces wrote: post #111
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All the sensors and on-board compute are expensive, and also the R&D, and the 3D maps. Both services rely on detailed 3D maps of the areas they service, and are geofenced to that. I think we need to split this into fixed vs variable costs. It's hard for me to believe that the sensors+compute is more expensive than a human. Those sound like the variable costs. I'd be surprised if selling an additional ride causes e.g…

I have been told it loses money by Google employees. Not just sensors+compute. R&D and the map-making are substantial costs. Waymo is reported in “Other Bets” which had $1.1 billion in revenue in 2022 and $6.1 billion in operating losses.

> R&D and the map-making are substantial costs.

But that's largely a sunk cost that (in SF anyway) has already been spent, right? It's not like that cost goes up on a per-ride basis.

For places where that's already done, you only need to account for the cost of sensors/compute/maintenance of the vehicle themselves, which seem (intuitively) like they would be lower than the expense to users. Which would mean that a ride is net positive.

Maybe it's the case that configuring and maintaining the cars is incredibly expensive. That would be the only way I could envision actually losing money on a "per ride" basis.

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#117

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #56
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A friend of mine convinced me this was the FB strategy to get people to resign instead of needing to fire them (a costly, legal.minefield). It's a major pet peeve of mine when people's conspiracy theories don't even make sense even if you accept the theory at face value: 1. If you want to fire people for performance or other reasons, it's true that a great time to do it is during layoffs - there doesn't need to be…

User serf already covered, but I'll go into detail. 1 - because even during a mass layoff, theres always a threat of a lawsuit. Sure, it may not go anywhere, but as already mentioned, defending is costly. An employee that decides to leave on their own volition is no risk. Plus, laying off people has in some states some remuneration and compliance requisites. Unemployment hearings that tie up senior staff and can be a…

But your number 1 still makes absolutely 0 sense with this particular conspiracy theory, which premises that the goal is to get people to resign by having multiple rounds of layoffs.

That is, the conspiracy theory presupposes that the company is already going to have lots of layoffs. So you're saying it's arguing that companies want to avoid the negative consequences of layoffs - by having a lot of layoffs???

The whole idea is nonsense.

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#118

Post by jhp123 »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #71
TradingPlaces wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It definitely works. I was in one just yesterday for over a half hour and it’s a pretty smooth thing, and in some ways better than a human driver (e.g., always yields to pedestrians entering a crosswalk, never exceeds speed limit,etc.) But both Waymo and Cruise lose money on every ride. All the sensors and on-board compute are expensive, and also the R&D, and the 3D maps. Both services rely on detailed 3D maps of the…

>All the sensors and on-board compute are expensive, and also the R&D, and the 3D maps. Both services rely on detailed 3D maps of the areas they service, and are geofenced to that. I think we need to split this into fixed vs variable costs. It's hard for me to believe that the sensors+compute is more expensive than a human. Those sound like the variable costs. I'd be surprised if selling an additional ride causes e.g…

there is also a team of human remote operators.

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#119

Post by crazygringo »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #107
crazygringo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. According to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwestern_United_States#Reg... the southwestern US extends to the Sonoran and Mojave deserts on the west side. It lists the largest cities of the southwest as Phoenix, Las Vegas, El Paso, Albuquerque, and Tucson. SF is not in there...

Ah, thanks, I was misled by the graphic.

I was at first too. I'd like to update it to reflect the actual region, rather than merely highlighting all the states that contain parts of the region, but sadly don't have any kind of mapping tools to do so...

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#120

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #117
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User serf already covered, but I'll go into detail. 1 - because even during a mass layoff, theres always a threat of a lawsuit. Sure, it may not go anywhere, but as already mentioned, defending is costly. An employee that decides to leave on their own volition is no risk. Plus, laying off people has in some states some remuneration and compliance requisites. Unemployment hearings that tie up senior staff and can be a…

But your number 1 still makes absolutely 0 sense with this particular conspiracy theory, which premises that the goal is to get people to resign by having multiple rounds of layoffs . That is, the conspiracy theory presupposes that the company is already going to have lots of layoffs . So you're saying it's arguing that companies want to avoid the negative consequences of layoffs - by having a lot of layoffs??? The w…

I may not be expressing myself well. Sorry. I'll try again.

If the layoff announcement is t0, and every layoff round is t1, t2 ...t(n), the company is banking on:

-employees do not know n

-employees only have standing to sue (AND benefits) at T(n+1)

-employee anxiety level will not tolerate waiting to T(n)

- notice that even if n = 1, it still has the same effect as n=5 since (n) is unknown to employee.

Therefore, Opco announces layoffs, but to lower the t0 cost of terminations, it moves terminations to (n). Note t0 is most expensive scenario for the employer. This is the hard thing to accept because its counterintuitive, and does not generalize (I.e. cutting the cord now,and moving on).

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