The company was less than a decade old, but it had almost seventeen thousand employees, including a thick layer of middle managers. Levandowski recently told me, “One of the reasons they wanted us was because Larry Page knew we were scrappy—we would cut through red tape.” Page, Google’s co-founder and chief executive, often complained that the company had become bloated, and had lost the hacker mentality that had fuelled its initial success. By the time Levandowski arrived, Google’s apparatchiks were in ascent.

“Hiring could take months,” Levandowski told me. “There was a program called WorkforceLogic, and just getting people into the system was super-complicated. And so, one day, I put ads on Craigslist looking for drivers, and basically hired anyone who seemed competent, and then paid them out of my own pocket. It became known as AnthonyforceLogic.” Around this time, Levandowski went to an auto dealership and bought more than a hundred cars. One of his managers from that period told me, “When we got his expense report, it was equal to something like all the travel expenses of every other Google employee in his division combined. The accountants were, like, ‘What the hell?’ But Larry said, ‘Pay it,’ and so we did. Larry wanted people who could ignore obstacles and could show everyone that you could do something that seemed impossible if you looked for work-arounds.”