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CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

blog.waymo.com

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Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#201

Post by ChuckMcM »

mohon wrote: post #143
ChuckMcM wrote: post #102

Having read hundreds of these sorts of CEO leaving letters I'm a bit jaded and cynical. If you're interested in what I see when I read that message, I rewrote it[1] in more plain language. Google demands a lot of its "other bets" companies. Some might say it asks too much. Mostly it seems to me that they want a 'moonshot' company that has the original profitability of search advertising, full stop. And while it would…

Could you also translate the last section too? Would love to read that as well

"Please don't hate me." ?

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#203

Post by ryandrake »

KirillPanov wrote: post #190
snide wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking with a friend who worked at IBM in the heyday. He mentioned that a lot of the time, it wasn't so much that talent got used, it was that talent was not used elsewhere. Stiffing innovation is just as effective as breeding it when you're already on top.

Bell Labs was pretty explicit about this being the reason they existed. It was also the reason they filed patents. Like the answering machine patent: to prevent it from existing (commercially) for as long as possible.

I'm almost convinced many huge tech companies have massive staff simply to keep everyone else from hiring them. They do these "senior software engineer retention programs" paying employees to stay busy on insignificant projects. If none of the smart people are working for scrappy startups, nobody is going to invent something that disrupts the industry.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#204

Post by chambers »

tmsh wrote: post #139

Just wanted to say, from the outside, John Krafcik seemed to me like a strong leader. I used to live in Mountain View and at one point I saw a few Waymo vans (this was 3-4 years ago when they were more active) speeding on El Camino (just barely, and being manually driven at the time, but even though I work for a competitor I was concerned if an accident happened it'd be a bad publicity event; i.e., Waymo vehicles sho…

From the outside, he doesn't seem like a strong leader at all.

Besides him not leaving a clear successor[1][2], I think his communication is disingenuous. The kind of management-speak that aims to hide poor decision-making behind a facade of cheer and care.

People are scared of "might makes right", but I've found "nice makes right" to be far more insidious and pernicious in our society.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26674228

2. https://a16z.com/2013/07/03/shared-command-2/

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#205

Post by astrange »

ubercore wrote: post #118
mrshadowgoose wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the methodology I've described (whole brain emulation/WBE) is the worst-case, brute-force, but guaranteed approach. The following diagram captures the expected growth rate of computing power, and contrasts it with several thresholds (in blue) for emulation fidelity ultimately required: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading#/media/File:Who... The human brain works, therefore this technique will work, i…

This sounds bonkers to me. We don't even understand fully what it would take to emulate a brain right now. I don't believe this for one second.

Emulating a brain doesn't necessarily mean you can tell it what to do. After all, you can't always tell humans what to do, and this might somehow be a necessary component of human-level intelligence.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#206

Post by rsj_hn »

dealforager wrote: post #131
ChuckMcM wrote: post #102

Having read hundreds of these sorts of CEO leaving letters I'm a bit jaded and cynical. If you're interested in what I see when I read that message, I rewrote it[1] in more plain language. Google demands a lot of its "other bets" companies. Some might say it asks too much. Mostly it seems to me that they want a 'moonshot' company that has the original profitability of search advertising, full stop. And while it would…

I understand the sentiment, but $20M/year really is a waste of time for a $200B/year business. I have a hard time thinking of a way it wouldn't be a loss given the added organizational complexity having those kinds of projects would bring. I thought the entire purpose of "other bets" was to pursue ideas that have the potential to become $XXB/year revenue streams. So of course they want 'moonshot' companies.

I think this is the wrong approach. If you don't want to deal with an X$M/year company, you can sell it. Google isn't too big to sell stuff are they? They still sell advertising space, afterall. So take it to an IPO, collect the proceeds and use them to re-invest in more moonshots.

There is as much reason to shut down a profitable company as to throw away gold. That's literally what you are doing, and no one is too big to throw away money.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#208

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

csours wrote: post #182

Disclaimer, I work for GM, not on SDC; anything expressed here is solely my opinion. I think SDCs (self driving cars) are great, and will be available in some capacity in the very near future, BUT I think we are at least one more paradigm change away from the dream of SDC. Take for instance liability. It seems quite likely that manufacturers will want to disclaim liability for SDCs. It is easy to see the roots of tha…

> It seems quite likely that manufacturers will want to disclaim liability for SDCs.

Why though? They could just accept the liability, charge an insurance premium slightly lower than legally mandated liability insurance for human drivers and then self-insure (and potentially re-insure against bigger risks).

This would not only solve the liability problem, but also allow them to make a nice profit because the car presumably gets into at-fault accidents much less often than the human drivers.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#209

Post by ChuckMcM »

pembrook wrote: post #175
ChuckMcM wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $20M/year really is a waste of time for a $200B/year business. That's the thing though, it isn't a waste of time. One can hear very similar logic from people with investments. They will say "The stock market is returning X% / year and is way better than those bonds with only 3%/year. Investing in bonds is a waste of time." They say that because they have yet to internalize the value of having a diversified their in…

Do you have any idea how insanely hard it is to create 30 separate $30M businesses from scratch? Even with the weight of the Google brand, creating new businesses is HARD. It'd be roughly 1,000X easier to squeeze an extra $900M in revenue out of search than it would be to incubate 30 new mid-size companies. Instead of going on an insane boondoggle where your brand image is trashed by creating literally thousands of f…

I am aware of the difficulty. Google X is hardly "from scratch" however.

First, you have all of the infrastructure for a business already in place. Even when I was there it was straight forward to get resources allocated to a project.

Next, you have billions of "seats" in that users the world over are already using Google branded services every day, have a reasonably good impression on the brand, and typically a low barrier to "trying out something new."

Finally, you have a tremendous amount of smart, experienced, people you can call on for advice for free! I know a lot of people have left but when I was there it wasn't uncommon to have the argument about a thing settled by the person who invented the thing weighing in on the argument. While it became clear to me that Google and I were not compatible long term, it was still intoxicating to walk around bounce ideas of some really really sharp people who could trim months off idea research and development.

As a result of that, starting businesses within Google was akin to scoring in baseball where you got to start at third base (or maybe second base if it was a longer stretch). That is significantly easier than starting from scratch.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#210

Post by recuter »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #200
recuter wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gainfully unemployed and like Luke you can't make me go back! I've job hopped looking for a place where people don't engage in the Kabuki but apparently all the worlds a stage. Maybe I'll make one of those lil ships in a bottle this year.

Perhaps you will find, as I did, that the secret here is having a purpose. I know a number of people in the same situation, they don't "have" to work but when they don't have full time employment they just kind of wander this way and that. This becomes a problem when they realize that there is no 'win' in life, you just die. So the time wasted wandering is just that, time they never had to truly live. Given my experi…

Thank you.
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