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Waymo Layoffs

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Re: Waymo Layoffs

#121

Post by flutas »

JeremyNT wrote: post #116
TradingPlaces wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ri…

> But that's largely a sunk cost that (in SF anyway) has already been spent, right?

For mapping, no.

Waymo maps the city constantly with every car, and they have a mapping team that reviews those changes before they go to the other cars. So ongoing cost of the human side is a thing (for now?).

They also have a team of "remote operators" that watch the fleet in real time in case they have a panic attack over something, so more ongoing cost that's not just sensors/cars.

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#122

Post by flutas »

smcin wrote: post #63
mjr00 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And with all these restrictions on something as simple as intra-city transport, keep in mind the massive investment in autonomous vehicles 5-10 years ago was toward the ultimate goal of replacing humans in long-haul trucking and related logistics. Even if Waymo could place fully autonomous taxis into every city in America, that consolation prize wouldn't nearly make up for the shortfall of not taking over the logisti…

I haven't been following autonomous long-haul trucking, why is it "back to being a sci-fi pipe dream at this point"? Again, is that primarily a technology vs safety story, or is it a political issue due to organized pushback from sections that oppose it? (also does anyone have current data on the viable market size of driverless rideshare vs driverless delivery vs drone delivery vs helicopter taxis vs autonomous long…

> I haven't been following autonomous long-haul trucking, why is it "back to being a sci-fi pipe dream at this point"? Again, is that primarily a technology vs safety story, or is it a political issue due to organized pushback from sections that oppose it?

I think it's a mix.

Waymo cancelled their self driving truck division recently to focus on ride share[0].

They're most likely feeling push back from someone over self driving trucks, but I wonder if the bigger thing is liability and dangers around the weight it would be hauling. They already have had one of their trucks be ran off the road by another semi already and haven't released ANY statements about it.[1]

[0]: https://waymo.com/blog/2023/07/doubling-down-on-waymo-one.ht...

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/01/behind-the-scenes-of-waymo...

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#123

Post by TradingPlaces »

JeremyNT wrote: post #116
TradingPlaces wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ri…

There are substantial non-cash costs that go into cost-of-revenue. These come from amortizing assets like patents and the maps, and depreciation on all the equipment, including whatever backend servers there are. Share-based compensation is typically also a big one. They are "sunk costs" as far as pure cash accounting goes, but that’s not how GAAP accounting works.

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#124

Post by riku_iki »

2c2c2c wrote: post #86
riku_iki wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's worth a shot, though. waymo is 14 years old, maybe it is enough for a shot and time to move on something more proven? Like poor billions into smarter public transportation for example.

this comment would make sense if there werent a fleet of 100 cruise and 100 waymo sucessfully operating for months in SF now

for businesses, successfully means it is profitable and does not require layoffs.

But it sounds this kind of business may be not scalable.

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#125

Post by mountainriver »

duxup wrote: post #5

I can’t imagine three layoffs in a year is great for morale. Is there a reason they chose this sort of trickling layoffs approach?

It’s likely due to not being able to predict the economy, and progressively becoming more bearish based on the data

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#126

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #120
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, Op…

Folks that believe in the insane complexity of this have never been in management in my opinion. People really just don't put that much devious thought into that kind of plan.

Besides, it still doesn't make any sense. Having been at a company previously that had many layoffs over a series of years, a very common opinion was that it would be crazy to quit, and get no severance. Better to just hope you'd get laid off with a fat severance package, especially since most of the packages at the big tech companies over the past year and a half have been extremely generous.

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#127

Post by superfrank »

disqard wrote: post #106
superfrank wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was down in San Francisco a month ago and my friend has access so we took Waymo's everywhere. We took about 10 over the weekend and never had any issue, even when other cars were doing weird things. From my limited experience I felt like they're pretty solid in the city. The only hiccup I can remember was being in an intersection (past the crosswalk) to make an unprotected left and while we were waiting the light t…

> and there's something nice about not having to interact with a real person This is the end-goal, I guess? Not just avoiding a taxi/Uber driver, but avoiding as much human interaction as possible. Is it surprising that technology is (collectively) being evolved to isolate humans from each other? AFAICT, we can't have our cake and eat it too -- a completely frictionless life is a zero human-interaction life, which wo…

I don't mind interacting with people, but the vast majority of my interactions with ride share drivers are not meaningful interactions. I get in the car, say "hi" and then pull out my phone. A large portion of the time my drivers are on the phone or have airpods in.

I would gladly trade the 1% of rides where I had a decent conversation with the driver to remove the 99% where I we both try to make forced small talk or we both awkwardly sit in silence. Plus, not having to worry about me and my friends annoying our driver when we're drunkly coming back from the bars at 2am is such a win.

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#128

Post by wigglewoggle »

swyx wrote: post #80
wigglewoggle wrote: post #74

Not enough numbers to trigger disclosure laws? Previous round was dozens? So we're talking 15 employees?

in TFA: > Waymo employed around 2,500 employees at the start of the year, according to reports. More than 200 were axed in the two layoff rounds earlier this year, but the number of remaining Waymo staffers following this cut is unclear. make reasonable assumptions for natural attrition

That's talking about rounds earlier in the year. TFA mentions the numbers for this one are unclear.

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#129

Post by spiznnx »

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.

Mandatory speed governors would help.

Re: Waymo Layoffs

#130

Post by 2c2c2c »

jeffreygoesto wrote: post #98
2c2c2c wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this comment would make sense if there werent a fleet of 100 cruise and 100 waymo sucessfully operating for months in SF now

100 people is about one train carriage. That is not a lot of bang for the buck.

what is the point of this comment? if i need to get to an appointment im not going to go take the bart, risking missing the interval or delays + walk a mile to get to my destination

theres obvious value in last mile transportation that trains will never provide. please go outside

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