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Comment by SilasX | Hacker News Reader

What's sleazy about hiring people away from a university research job? Why does it merit the "poaching" appellation?

If making competitive bids for labor is "sleazy poaching", god help us all.

Is the problem that they hired "too many" people? Is there some maximum rate at which you're supposed to hire employees at another organization before you're the bad guy?

People here rant about the anti-competitive no-poach conspiracies, and we're supposed to compartmentalize that away while we get outraged at the exact opposite?

Sorry if I'm missing the point here; I just don't get it.

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I'm not in favor of the line which the grandparent is arguing but perhaps there's an argument to be made that Uber is, in effect, "eating the seed corn" of the industry and valuing private gains over public losses.

Universities like CMU are responsible for recruiting and training the next generation of great roboticists and there's a difference between responsibly harvesting researchers from an institution in a way that allows the lab to maintain its culture and bounce back vs plundering it in such a way that would take many years to recover from.

It's a prisoner's dilemma style situation where all companies involved in robotics would benefit from a thriving academic robotics community, even if it would be more competitive if those researchers were in house. Uber was the first one to publically defect which might cause further defections to the detriment of everyone.

Would you stay at CMU while your colleagues are being hired into industry at a multiple of your salary? Yet the argument is, they should stay for some reason. In the end, its up to the researchers to choose their own path.

All the companies in robotics making hiring agreements would actually be illegal. Collusion in fixing salaries/blacklisting whole categories of employee candidates is a much worse evil. Maybe we can stop trying to social engineer, and address the situation as it exists.

But Uber could hire 3 or 4 professors a year, offer internships and fellowships for PhD and Masters students, provide funding grants to professors still working at CMU and slowly work it's way up to a 100 person research lab over the course of 5 years. Or Uber could immediately hire 30 people straight away and destroy the lab and then find itself unable to hire anyone else and stuck at around that number 5 years later.

It's better for both CMU and Uber if they perform the former. It just requires Uber to take a longer term view of things rather than optimizing for immediate gain.

I'm not arguing that this is the reality on the ground. But I see this as a potential line of argument worth considering.

Maybe they'll just move the lab to their own company. They'll have all the researchers after all, with a real budget and real goals.

But no institutional capacity to grow new researchers. Producing PhDs is a highly resource intensive endeavor that requires a ton of institutional support. Universities consider it their mission but private companies have no interest in it, even if it's vital to their long term success.

Would you feel the same way if GlaxoSmithKline went around hiring entire university cancer research departments so they could work for them instead? This is the robotics equivalent.

So these engineers shouldn't be allowed to act with their own volition? Now their technology will most likely hit the market sooner, this benefitting consumers sooner.

Oh engineers can do what ever they want. They are found in places like Facebook, Wall Street and the NSA doing pointless things with talent anyway. The problem isn't really the choices engineers make.

When the smartest people work for the richest people, to make the richest people so rich that hardly any of that wealth can ever get spent in even ridiculous ways, it automatically makes the system more unequal, less stable and secure for everyone involved.

A service which a billion and a half people use, and hundreds of millions every month/day is most definitely not pointless.

More importantly, how do rich people get rich? How does Uber make money? Uber provides a service in over 300 cities which people can choose to use, and evidently a lot of people do use it. Over a million per day. Now, they are voluntarily paying for a service which people are voluntarily driving for. These people see value in the marketplace which Uber has established, likely due to it's cost and time efficiency. So, Uber makes money by saving people time and money, in comparison to the alternatives. If they do not provide a quality service they will not exist.

So, Uber makes money by saving people time and money, in comparison to the alternatives.

That doesn't mean what they're doing is necessarily a good thing. A lot of people argue that Uber saves people time and money by circumventing legislation designed to protect passengers and drivers. Uber's entire business lives or dies on whether or not they're a taxi business and whether or not their drivers are employees. If it's the case that they are a taxi company or their drivers are employees then Uber are definitely in the wrong at the moment. I don't have an opinion either way because I'm not qualified to say.

If they do not provide a quality service they will not exist.

Plenty of terrible businesses that provide shockingly poor quality products exist. I could save people time and money on their building needs by starting a construction business that ignored building regulations. There'd be plenty of trade because lots of people put cost before quality but that wouldn't be a good thing.

The legislation may have been designed to protect drivers and passengers, but I’m hesitant to believe that that is what it has actually done. It has certainly protected the incumbents. From my personal experience I felt far safer using Uber than I did the taxi alternatives in my city, as well it it being 300% cheaper and arriving in 5 minutes as opposed to the 55 of the taxi alternative. I think people are mature enough to make decisions for themselves, I’d love to see comparable data of Uber vs. taxi in the cities. Any examples of successful products which are terrible? I don’t think that’s a fair analogy, you are assuming that by ignoring the regulations that the house will be worse of, that’s an untrue assumption in my opinion. In this particular case, and in my experience, I’d argue that Uber’s service is the most quality service in all senses of the word, it’s the cheapest, it arrives the quickest and it’s the safest.

Legislation is designed to serve the people. It also gets outdated as times change. It's something that's never done and will always be in constant tension with how society and business transform.

Copyright/patent law and same-sex marriage are two quick examples of things that clearly need legal review as the world has changed. We wouldn't just say: "well that's how the law's written so that's how it should be and everything against it is wrong" would we?

Uber's success is an expression of the general public's desire for a different and better system. Taxi's aren't extinct, they're still around and they've even made lots of upgrades to try and win back customers, however it's pretty clear that ride sharing services just provide better quality and value. I personally believe there are some rules that should exist (disabled/wheelchair + underserved areas) but it doesn't need an entire encumbent taxi industry to remain solely through legal mandates. When there's such growing demand for a service, we should start looking at whether the legislation itself needs to change.

BTW: With all the self-driving cars stuff happening, both taxis and ride share drivers might be out of a job anyway, and our current auto laws will definitely have to change when that becomes a real thing.

I really dont get the point of arguing that other people's choices and what they choose to work on is "pointless". It takes all types of people in every imaginable field to make this world work and we have more than enough to keep everyone busy.

What exactly is the issue with wealth? The business owners are rich yes, but you don't get to that level without providing something of massive value to someone. In this case, Uber is helping millions of people every day. Also you don't die and leave with all your money, it always gets dispersed eventually, even if it's longer than a single generation.

In case you didn't get the memo:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_Unite...

This seems widely known information, especially on HN. Not sure how it applies to my comment though?

Yeah, it was a tongue-in-cheek response to "What exactly is the issue with wealth?".

I don't think there's anything wrong with making some money, but the magnitude of the wealth gap is clearly a serious problem (and evidence against the idea that wealth trickles down in some useful way).

Who is worse off because Bill Gates has earned tens of billions of dollars? Who is worse of because Steve Jobs had earned billions of dollars?

I'd argue we are all dramatically better of due to Microsoft and Apple.

No doubt they've done great things, but the wealth gap still exists and has potential to cause social/economic/political problems.

Specifically what social, economic and political problems? And very specifically why are these problems bad? What do you think will happen?

Some reading on the topic if you're curious (or dubious):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality#Effects

Engineers should act however they like. Companies, on the other hand, should be limited to using the open market to fill each post individually. They should be able to approach people (headhunting them) but only to bring people in to an application process that is open and equal to everyone else.

Don't forget that Uber have screwed every robotics researcher who doesn't work at Carnegie Mellon with this. These are probably some of the best paid, best funded, most exciting robotics engineering jobs going, and Uber handed the posts to their preferred group rather than using the free market. That's not fair or reasonable.

This is an existing team who has already shown they can work and accomplish things together. Buying the best individual labor on the free market may not create as strong a whole as just hiring a team outright - this seems like a pretty good economic decision, considering risk/reward.

What? So companies cant hire whoever they want in whatever way they want? They all have to have a set process open to everyone?

I've hired people before on the spot because of who they are and what they know. Is that somehow wrong?

Life isn't fair and sometimes the right team is who they already know. Do you want them to interview every robotics researcher on the planet in a massive interview round instead of getting work done with a pretty great group that's already proven themselves?

Couldn't agree more. I'm surprised people are actually against this.

What is a company? A company is a group of people who are providing a product or service. Why should each post be filled individually? What’s wrong with offering a team of people whom have proven themselves capable as a group a position? Why does there need to be an application? This position was open to anyone else on the planet, and Uber chose the talented people at CM. “Uber screwed every robotics researcher who doesn’t work at CM” I’m not sure I follow your logic on that part, mind expanding?. “Uber handed the position to their preferred group rather than using the free market”, the free market is by definition people consensually transacting with each other. Uber’s preferred group is their choice out of all the robotics engineers on the entire planet, and using their best judgement they offered a position to this particular group of people, and they consensually accepted. How is that not a free market? No one was coerced. Please define ‘fair’ and ‘reasonable’ in this context. Forgive my structuring, I'm on mobile ATM.

... Uber handed the posts to their preferred group rather than using the free market.

Why should they? It's their money and they can choose to spend it (within reason) however they choose to. That actually is how a free market should work, with independent actors doing ludicrous things with their money, irrespective of what you or I think.

That's not fair or reasonable.

Not sure those ex-CMU engineers/researchers would agree with that statement.

Yes. That's just fine, if people want to work for GSK then they can. I'm not going to get upset over every decision that someone else makes with their career.

If you really want that change in the world, and you really want to see cancer research progress or robotics, then YOU should get going and do it.

That would be fantastic. It would pour money into cancer research and open up tons of research spots for incredibly talented researchers now slinging code or hash because they can't get a job in the crowded post-PhD academic arena. It would take some of the burden of the public funding of research and put it in industry's hands.

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