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GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

reuters.com

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Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#281

Post by MiroF »

beefalo wrote: post #256
staticassertion wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand. There are self driving cars in SF. I saw one today. It is/ was raining. There was a driver, but I'm fairly certain that the drivers are not actively driving but are legally required to be there.

Last time cruise made a report about disengagements (where the safety driver had to take over) it was one every 5000 miles driven. That's 1 crash the car was prevented from every 5000 miles. Humans crash once per 70000 miles.

you don't know what a disengagement is.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#282

Post by rtkwe »

nabla9 wrote: post #108
rtkwe wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to be a bit weird because a lot of those should come back because the underlying business didn't suddenly become nonviable.

Jobs may come slowly back, but fraction of people and families will be permanently damaged in the process. People are not like rubber bands that return to where they were. The effects can be generational when families have children.

I get that and am personally for way more support than the paltry 1200 ea that has been sent out so far. I'm just saying the loss of jobs here was artificial where every other depress/recession it's come out of systemic reactions and problems. As this goes on longer it starts to act more like a normal one though I'll admit since businesses start to fold and go under based on their fixed costs meaning the jobs are actually lost.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#284

Post by mikepurvis »

mac01021 wrote: post #279
colechristensen wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not enough downward pressure on rents in general. Tax unoccupied space, and not a little. 10x property taxes for vacant units with real standards for what counts as occupied.

That might deter the creation of new housing supply.

Vancouver's been doing a 5x property tax for vacant units for the past few years, and it does seem to be putting some pressure on owners to get them occupied:

https://globalnews.ca/news/6523554/empty-homes-tax-results-2...

Vancouver's normal property tax rate is just 0.26%, and the vacancy surcharge is 1% per that article.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#285

Post by wutbrodo »

baddox wrote: post #248
wutbrodo wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, mythical man-month and all that. As always, the answer is somewhere in the middle, but I'd be surprised if most companies didn't see effects from median employee quality dropping.

That myth concerns adding more engineers to a project that is already started. Of course that doesn’t mean that 100 engineers can’t do more projects than 10 engineers.

Of course, but AV parallelization is limited by the fact that you're all working on a single, tightly-interconnected system. The reality is somewhere in between "do more (fungible, separable) total work" and "dump engineers into a single project". Onboarding costs are substantial for a fast-growing AV company.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#286

Post by eanzenberg »

ericd wrote: post #267
eanzenberg wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things are going back to how things were in March 2020 very quickly [1] [2] As an aside, I’ve stopped being surprised with how out of touch and in a bubble HN posts are. There’s so much understanding of human nature out there that is missing here. 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexandrasternlicht/2020/05/14/... 2. https://nypost.com/2020/05/09/carnival-swamped-with-bookings...

Have you watched Powell’s most recent remarks? He doesn’t seem to agree with your assessment.

These types of people predict the worst so that they are never wrong on the downside. That’s why the initial death projection was 2m people. Imagine if they instead predicted 1000 deaths.

Same stuff happens with global warming preds. You’re getting the worst case, x100, every time.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#287

Post by ulisesrmzroche »

dougmwne wrote: post #236
azinman2 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is when you're tired and just want dinner now-ish, you'll learn to value that nearby restaurant. It's not like restaurants are only viable because people don't know how to cook themselves.

You can quibble about a specific food, but I think the general point stands. Habits are powerful and they can change. Every adult in the country (world?) is now forcibly learning how to cook or practicing a few new recipes. It turns out that some of those recipes are delicious, dead simple and once you know how to do it, having someone else do it for you looses it's convenience factor. For myself: I love cappuccino a…

I already knew how to make coffee and cook already and I still went to to coffee houses and restaurants.

That’s like saying because I can drink at home I’m not going to bars.

Let me guess: everyone in the world is ditching Microsoft WORD for Emacs too.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#288

Post by sytse »

fingerlocks wrote: post #276
throwxmlphell wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been an interviewer at Cruise, including on panels where Kyle was part of the committee. Trust me, there are many employees who want to have a decent recruiting experience, and a lot of engineers who want to ask questions that are actually worth your time. The bullshit you experienced is 100% top-down from Kyle. For years there has been tremendous pressure to hit headcount goals and to throw money at the problem…

Who’s Kyle?

Kyle is referring to the Cruise founder, President, and Chief Technology Officer Kyle Vogt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyle_Vogt

BTW I don't have an opinion on parent comments.

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#289

Post by malandrew »

dougmwne wrote: post #236
azinman2 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is when you're tired and just want dinner now-ish, you'll learn to value that nearby restaurant. It's not like restaurants are only viable because people don't know how to cook themselves.

You can quibble about a specific food, but I think the general point stands. Habits are powerful and they can change. Every adult in the country (world?) is now forcibly learning how to cook or practicing a few new recipes. It turns out that some of those recipes are delicious, dead simple and once you know how to do it, having someone else do it for you looses it's convenience factor. For myself: I love cappuccino a…

I'll do you one better on the steaks. Buy a Beville Joule and a vacuum sealer. Season the steaks with salt and pepper and vacuum seal it. Heat with the sous vide to 110F for a 1" thick ribeye. 120F for a 1.5" cut. Preheat grill to 500-600F. Remove steak from water and bag, pat dry and re-season (most of the original season was absorbed into the steak). Then toss on the grill for 1-2 minutes each side depending if you like it done rarer or better cooked.

Adjust accordingly to your liking, but in general, you can easily achieve premium steakhouse quality with this approach with 30 min to 1 hour, start to finish. Mostly the sous vide as used here is about bringing the internal temperature up so that the steak cooks quickly and more evenly than a steak pulled right out of the fridge. This is even less cleanup than a foreman since the only thing getting dirty is the surface you season on (usually the paper the steak is wrapped in) and the grill you just need to brush with a wire scraper.

I recommend a VacMaster VP215, but I understand if that's way outside your budget. I personally use mine daily for lots of things besides sous vide like storing food, saving sauces

Re: GM self-driving tech unit Cruise laying off about 8% of staff

#290

Post by icedchai »

aaronax wrote: post #280
icedchai wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will be a long and slow ramp. I don't expect to sit inside a restaurant or go to the movies for the rest of this year, possibly most of 2021. Theaters were on the way out before any of this started. Movie ticket sales have been declining for years. That trend will only get worse.

This makes me ponder how fortunate I am (or dumb I am) to have eaten in a restaurant twice in the past week.

It depends where you are, really. I'm in the hot zone here (northeastern US...)
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