A lot of people are blaming Levandwoski for deceiving Google as though he were some sort of evil mastermind. Given the lack of care he's taken to hide from these inevitable accusations, one must question the intelligence of his actions. Instead, I think there might be a more simple explanation.

Levandowski is clearly a brilliant character. Is it possible that he's not trying to maximize monetary gain but is instead optimizing for power over the technology? I sense that he's good with technical implementation but possibly terrible at technical leadership/the politics necessary for seeing one's vision through in a larger organization.

If viewed in this light, it seems that Levandowski has constantly been frustrated by the direction (or lack thereof) within the organizations he's been a part of. Rather than starting side companies and jumping ship for profit, he's really just trying to maintain control over whatever vision he has for lidar-enabled self-driving technology.

Now this strategy for power breaks down a bit, because he keeps selecting the local maxima in terms of opportunity. When Google comes calling, he accepts. When Uber comes calling, he accepts. Constantly convinced that the next place will give him the power/respect he thinks he deserves.

In the end, rather than building up IP from scratch and making a good name for himself, he's stolen a bunch of work from other engineers while potentially building a patent-infringing product. (thoughts x-posted from the other thread)