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Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

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Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#31

Post by maverick_iceman »

Animats wrote: post #7
empath75 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did he have time to do his day job with all this scamming on the side?

I met him when he was doing a DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle in 2004. He was an undergrad at UC Berkeley then, was doing the self-driving motorcycle, and had a successful startup selling a large folding tablet computer for viewing engineering drawings at construction sites. He does seem to get a lot done.

Clearly he is a brilliant man. Too bad that he got so greedy. This is doubly sad when he was already a legitimate multimillionaire from his job at Google.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#32

Post by djsumdog »

jacquesm wrote: post #28
nostrademons wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They promote the use of 20% time to do projects that will be owned by Google . It's essentially giving you freedom to work on what you want, with the understanding that Google will reap the economic rewards (if any) from what you do. Google's not very tolerant of moonlighting. If you want to work on stuff and own it , quit.

> Google's not very tolerant of moonlighting. If you want to work on stuff and own it, quit. That goes for quite a few employers, especially if what you are doing is (1) competing with their products and (2) potentially successful or (3) both.

It's written into most peoples' contracts (in a way that isn't always obvious) but if you spend time at home working on stuff that's unrelated and then leave and found a company, if your employer tries to convince a judge they own your "on your own time, unrelated work," good luck with them not looking like shitheads.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#33

Post by ansy »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #18

I'm kind of stunned at the amount of side-hustling that Levandowski seems to have been doing while at Google. How could the Google not have been aware of it, and how could it let it continue for so long? If I were more conspiracy-minded, I'd think they let Otto happen in order to feed a poison pill to Uber... In reality, I think they were just complacent, but still :\

> If I were more conspiracy-minded, I'd think they let Otto happen in order to feed a poison pill to Uber...

That would be a very bad strategy if true so I highly doubt it. IANAL, but I believe under estoppel Google's knowledge of Levandowski's activity and implicit permission to continue would forfeit Google's right to sue later. Likely as soon as they came to know about it they took immediate action to prevent him from taking this defense.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#34

Post by Nelson69 »

What's Google's policy on side businesses? They're cool if you work on self-driving cars and start LIDAR and "self-driving truck" side projects?

Did Levandowski have some sort of special pass due to the unicorn nature of his experience and expertise?

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#35

Post by jacquesm »

Zigurd wrote: post #19
jacquesm wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does MEMS count as solid state or is it also seen as a moving part?

Probably depends if the service life is in practical terms limited. Offhand I'd guess it's probably very long. MEMS accelerometers in airbag sensors have to stay within tolerances for the life of a car.

For sensors I can see how you could do that (piezo with a small weight attached) and it will likely live a very long time. But for an MEMS actuator that would be driven to oscillate it would be a lot harder to make that long-lived.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#36

Post by valuearb »

empath75 wrote: post #5
ziszis wrote: post #2

Waymo's allegations now go much deeper and further back than just Otto: * "Levandowski was deceiving Google almost from the moment it hired him to work on the Street View maps project back in 2007." * "Levandowski controlled a company called Dogwood Leasing that hired ex-Google contractor and 510 Systems engineer Asheem Linaval to use Google’s secrets to develop self-driving car technology." * "Levandowski founded ye…

How did he have time to do his day job with all this scamming on the side?

I want time management coaching from him.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#37

Post by valuearb »

revelation wrote: post #16
arkitaip wrote: post #10

Levandowski has absolutely tarnished his own reputation. Sooner or later he will be abandoned by Uber - how could they possibly trust him if his thieving goes back a decade? - and finding employment or trust in the industry is going to be extremely difficult.

That decade of deception netted him >$100M. I don't think he's going to fill out some online job application form. Of course there is a pending civil suit from Waymo but what are the damages? Can't just make up a number based on the potential of self-driving cars and right now they are a mere money sink.

Didn't he make that $100M before he got to Google, i.e. from the company he helped start that was sold to Google? All he had to do was keep his nose clean at Google and let his stock vest.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#38

Post by probe »

Can someone (with hopefully a legal background) comment on what the judge will be looking at when deciding if there should be an injunction against Uber and stopping ALL their self-driving car work? What criteria are they specifically looking at/how much burden of proof do they need?

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#39

Post by elefanten »

empath75 wrote: post #5
ziszis wrote: post #2

Waymo's allegations now go much deeper and further back than just Otto: * "Levandowski was deceiving Google almost from the moment it hired him to work on the Street View maps project back in 2007." * "Levandowski controlled a company called Dogwood Leasing that hired ex-Google contractor and 510 Systems engineer Asheem Linaval to use Google’s secrets to develop self-driving car technology." * "Levandowski founded ye…

How did he have time to do his day job with all this scamming on the side?

I believe the commenters who say he's very smart and very driven.

But I'd also suggest that setting up small companies isn't THAT much work. Funneling other people's designs to those companies isn't THAT much work either.

Surely, the scheming took time and effort and I'm not saying he wasn't working hard. But the scheming described doesn't exactly sound like a superhuman feat for the ages.

Re: Things learned from Anthony Levandowski's deposition in Waymo vs. Uber

#40

Post by dragonwriter »

joering2 wrote: post #21
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #18

I'm kind of stunned at the amount of side-hustling that Levandowski seems to have been doing while at Google. How could the Google not have been aware of it, and how could it let it continue for so long? If I were more conspiracy-minded, I'd think they let Otto happen in order to feed a poison pill to Uber... In reality, I think they were just complacent, but still :\

Wait - aren't they supposedly promoting the idea of 20% of work time to be spent of your outside of work projects?? Or that's just bullshit PR propaganda, like "don't be evil" slogan, meanwhile taking money and being basically setup up by CIA's In-Q-Tel?

> Wait - aren't they supposedly promoting the idea of 20% of work time to be spent of your outside of work projects??

No, 20% time is, in principle, self-directed inside-of-work projects. Mostly, I see it as a community center for building in slack (which is desirable for a lot of reasons) in formal projects while getting a bunch of in-house speculative development which can be mined for commercializable work.

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