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Waymo’s Hiring Binge

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Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#41
post #38

This may seem like a stupid question, but why isn't there a company that just outsources driving to remote drivers? Imagine a car simulation in which someone in a low cost country sees what the driver in the car would see, including the surroundings (side mirrors, behind them, etc). She can look around, same way as someone in the car and that person can drive. And her actions gets sent to the car half way across the…

Latency.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#42
post #38

This may seem like a stupid question, but why isn't there a company that just outsources driving to remote drivers? Imagine a car simulation in which someone in a low cost country sees what the driver in the car would see, including the surroundings (side mirrors, behind them, etc). She can look around, same way as someone in the car and that person can drive. And her actions gets sent to the car half way across the…

Bit scary due to latency and connection reliability. If the connection breaks you’re stuck, or worse. If it breaks when you’re on the highway at speed, or on a twisty road, or in a tunnel...

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#43
post #34
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was my thinking as well. The power and wealth of the big-five tech companies is staggering, with their smaller siblings (Uber, Cloudflare, AirBnB, Dropbox, etc.) trailing not far behind. It is very tough for startups to compete with public companies who can offer liquid RSUs monthly along with whatever salary is necessary to close the deal.

.. I should add: This is a great time to be an engineer. Enjoy it while it lasts. The time to be a founder will be after the next recession.

Quite a bold claim. Care to give reasoning?

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#45
post #19

Instructive the degree to which good HR, recruiting, and operational onboarding can create giant moats for these larger tech cos. Hiring 700 "mostly engineer" employees in a year! I pride myself as an "operator" and have worked in businesses that have scaled quickly but it is unimaginable how one doubles the highly compensated / hard to find employee count in a year at that scale. In an economy where excess labor of…

> but it is unimaginable how one doubles the highly compensated / hard to find employee count in a year at that scale.

You throw an EXCESSIVE amount of money at the problem and over-hire (and just naturally weed people out). Recruiting firms will gladly take anyones money to help solve this problem.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#46
post #38

This may seem like a stupid question, but why isn't there a company that just outsources driving to remote drivers? Imagine a car simulation in which someone in a low cost country sees what the driver in the car would see, including the surroundings (side mirrors, behind them, etc). She can look around, same way as someone in the car and that person can drive. And her actions gets sent to the car half way across the…

I would not get into a car driven by someone in a "low cost" country whose only incentive for not getting into an accident is getting fired.

They might also care about not killing people, but fair enough I guess.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#47
post #38

This may seem like a stupid question, but why isn't there a company that just outsources driving to remote drivers? Imagine a car simulation in which someone in a low cost country sees what the driver in the car would see, including the surroundings (side mirrors, behind them, etc). She can look around, same way as someone in the car and that person can drive. And her actions gets sent to the car half way across the…

The primary issues here are the latency, throughput, and availability of information to this remote driver.

* The remote driver is seeing things 10s-100s of milliseconds after they've happened * And somehow we're getting all of the data coming out of sensors on the car at high enough fidelity over the air * And we're not having connectivity blips that would result in loss of remote control for seconds

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#48
post #19

Instructive the degree to which good HR, recruiting, and operational onboarding can create giant moats for these larger tech cos. Hiring 700 "mostly engineer" employees in a year! I pride myself as an "operator" and have worked in businesses that have scaled quickly but it is unimaginable how one doubles the highly compensated / hard to find employee count in a year at that scale. In an economy where excess labor of…

They allow transfers from Google, rather than a full interview slate.

My bet is transfers outweigh anything you're praising here.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not get into a car driven by someone in a "low cost" country whose only incentive for not getting into an accident is getting fired.

They might also care about not killing people, but fair enough I guess.

Not as much as if they were actually in the car.

Re: Waymo’s Hiring Binge

#50
post #48
post #19

Instructive the degree to which good HR, recruiting, and operational onboarding can create giant moats for these larger tech cos. Hiring 700 "mostly engineer" employees in a year! I pride myself as an "operator" and have worked in businesses that have scaled quickly but it is unimaginable how one doubles the highly compensated / hard to find employee count in a year at that scale. In an economy where excess labor of…

They allow transfers from Google, rather than a full interview slate. My bet is transfers outweigh anything you're praising here.

Wow, that's clever. Also dangerous, of course. If I were at Google and had a direct report who was not up to snuff, I might point them at such a convenient option.
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