Earlier quoted context omitted.
What shortcuts did they take? Maybe the key is knowing which shortcuts.
Ask the SEC.
Lame retort. Let's do better.
Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets
121–130 of 372 posts
Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets
#122Why did reporters keep calling Levandowski an engineer? He's really not, at least not for quite a number of years.
Anyway, Levandowski was a lousy leader, and was really detrimental to Uber's ATG. He bloated ATG from fewer than 100 people to more than 2000 within less than a year, without paying the slightest attention to culture. As a result, the number of people grossly exceeded the quantity of work. Political infighting quickly became rampant. Chaos ensued. Morale nose dived. Worse yet, instead of aligning and uniting the teams in Pittsburg, he created a huge fight with the Pittsburg teams, so much so that Travis, then the CEO of Uber, had to fly to Pittsburg every few weeks to resolve the conflicts.
It's sickening to even think about what he did in Uber.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets
#123"Theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. Fairchild was "theft of trade secrets" from Shockley; Intel was "theft of trade secrets" from Fairchild. When Camenzind left Signetics and designed the 555 (under contract to Signetics), he was "using trade secrets" of Signetics; in today's legal environment, they could have just ordered him to stick around as an employee and work on a less risky project. MOST…
> So this movement toward resolving such conflicts in the courts, instead of by companies competing to out-innovate one another, is very troubling. A lot of the things you cite were actually fought out in the courts. Motorola sued MOS Technology [1]. AMD and Intel have been in constant legal battles since their inception. The complicated question of Unix ownership started the famous SCO-Linux litigation. This isn't a…
> virtually no story about people who worked for him has been a positive one.
I am reminded of Bob Widlar, inventor of the op-amp
Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets
#124"Theft of trade secrets" is how Silicon Valley was built. Fairchild was "theft of trade secrets" from Shockley; Intel was "theft of trade secrets" from Fairchild. When Camenzind left Signetics and designed the 555 (under contract to Signetics), he was "using trade secrets" of Signetics; in today's legal environment, they could have just ordered him to stick around as an employee and work on a less risky project. MOST…
> So this movement toward resolving such conflicts in the courts, instead of by companies competing to out-innovate one another, is very troubling. A lot of the things you cite were actually fought out in the courts. Motorola sued MOS Technology [1]. AMD and Intel have been in constant legal battles since their inception. The complicated question of Unix ownership started the famous SCO-Linux litigation. This isn't a…
Do you think MOStek would have been able to survive in today's legal environment? I don't think so, and that's what worries me.
The SCO-Linux litigation wasn't complicated. It was just fraud on SCO's part, under copyright law that was well-established at the time. With the Google/Oracle precedent in place, SCO would probably win.
I agree that Levandowski, like weev, is profoundly unsympathetic, but we can't let that blind us to the precedents he is being used to set. If Levandowski wins his case, ordinary (and extraordinary) senior engineers will be safer from getting strangled by non-compete agreements; if he loses, they will be in more danger.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets
#125The level of greed, hubris and stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me. Levandowski was paid a bonus of $120 million while at Google, which is more money than any reasonable person will need for several lifetimes. This was actually a running joke at Google (while I was still there) to describe $120M as "1 Levadownski". Like Sundar one year was described as earning "only 1.7 Levadownskis" (he got paid $200M…
Can't wait for the Levandowski movie.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but the logical conclusion redefines 'severance' to mean leaving my head at the door on the way out. Or just leaving the industry, or lifetime employment with a single company — hardly unthinkable; in fact, it was the rule in the US within living memory, and I've worked at companies where the majority of engineers were lifers. This would be a very favorable outcome for investors in your company: they get the fruits…
> It's not such a favorable outcome for engineers It's a favorable outcome for people who want stability. There is huge value in knowing that you're not going to get fired unless you do something actively malicious. Some people aren't interested in climbing, have poor interviewing skills, and don't want to deal with the cognitive overhead of learning a different company's tech stack every two years. Plus, most compan…
I wasn't talking about a situation where the company can't fire you. I was talking about a situation where you can't quit the company. If the company has a credible legal case against any prior employee who works for a competitor, then firing you ends your career. That makes your job less secure, not more.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets
#127I used to work for Anthony at 510 systems. He tried to hire me for Otto as well. Watching this whole thing unfold from, obscure story in 2011 to the Waymo Vs. Uber trial to federal charges and national news is rather surreal. Anthony is one of the most creative, energetic thinkers I've ever encountered. If he stopped taking shortcuts he'd probably be the next Jobs or Musk.
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Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
The history of the US labor movement is not a history of American workers struggling hand in hand with the government against large employers like Peabody, GM, and Pullman. Rather, it is a history of American workers struggling against large employers who were backed by the government: police, imprisonment, and in some cases even military actions were used against strikers. The Post Office helped out Pullman by putti…
> American workers gained workplace protections through unions and the threat of a communist revolution, which forced the government to relinquish the use of its coercive powers against strikers
And gun battles[1][2][3][4][5]. But now we just commemorate by buying mattress on sale on Labor Days.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_strike [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herrin_massacre
Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Engineers create wealth. Lawyers and investors just compete to privatize it. That's a really naive and pretentious opinion
Would it be wrong to claim that sales, investors, and lawyers now generate more value than engineers? The market seems to reflect this in salary allocation
As I explained in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20813333, the division of spoils from a collective endeavor is largely a result of social norms and bargaining power, not disinterested justice.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Charged with Theft of Trade Secrets
#130Why did reporters keep calling Levandowski an engineer? He's really not, at least not for quite a number of years. Anyway, Levandowski was a lousy leader, and was really detrimental to Uber's ATG. He bloated ATG from fewer than 100 people to more than 2000 within less than a year, without paying the slightest attention to culture. As a result, the number of people grossly exceeded the quantity of work. Political infi…
P.S., Levandowski caused similar drama when he was in Google's self-driving car division too, per the book Autonomy by Lawrence D Burns.