Otto went from zero to hero in ~7 months. Assuming that talks of a $800M company acquisition take some time and you don't build a company overnight (hiring and ramping up something like 90 employees), how long was really spent in R&D mode? 3 months? 4? Compared to years of R&D from other companies in the same space seems like a big stretch.
Well, if my understanding is correct, he made something like ~$120M when he left Google and a similar lump sum (most in Uber stock) when Otto was acquired by Uber. I don't think he'll have problems in paying bills and rent (if he manages to stay out of jail). Plus, I'd not expect someone of that seniority to "apply for a job" - but most likely, start new ventures.
Depends. If the story is how Waymo pictured it (the entire acquisition was an orchestrated plan with Uber to take IPs out of Google), if I were Levandowski I'd be reaching out to Waymo and propose a deal. I'll give you information to crucify Uber but you let me go. I guess Waymo is after Uber more than a single engineer.
Interesting. The situation between Uber and Levendowski always reminded me of the prisoner dilemma. If one bails on the other, might the other starts talking about what really happened? I think that staying together would have been the best course of action for Uber. Very interesting to see how this will develop.
I have been looking for a house to buy in SF for the last 6 months. What's been very interesting is that most of the houses we have reviewed, did not have solid foundations (many being 2-unit condos). They are all located in liquefaction zones and the disclosure packages mentioned the foundations had cracks (or needed retrofitting). Still, buyers did not care and bid huge amount of money. Our estate agent told us the average buyer does not take that into consideration nor care to retrofit the foundation. Scary.
That's honestly "common". I've seen it a number of times emails along the line of "let's not talk about this via email but let's discuss it only over the phone" - in many other companies/situations.
Term sheets are prepared by an army of lawyers (from both sides). When negotiating a term sheet, the term sheet goes back and forth a dozen times - redacting and adapting each single comma of the draft. I agree, I doubt that somewhere there will be a "Uber agrees to buy stolen IPs". Lawyers would have killed anything smaller than that.
Not to mention that most of the experiences are team-based. In any medium/large size company, you can end up in a terrible team and your view of the company is very negative. You can end up with a brilliant manager and great team, and you love the company.
I had the very same reaction after reading this. A long post that describes how bad patent trolls are, a general call to embrace the fight, everyone should join the fight sponsored by Cloudflare and together we can win! But, if for whatever reason Blackbird leaves us alone and they bully someone else - not our problem anymore!
As someone who does not have a dog in this fight, I see no reasons to help them when it's blatantly obvious they are just fighting for themselves.
We have offices in Europe and US. While today we travel multiple times a quarter between the offices, I can see how people will not want to cross US borders no more than once a year. I also wonder how this (plus all the shenanigans on borders control, immigrations restrictions, etc) will affect budget and headcount allocations for international companies.
I think we will see an expansion of companies building R&D centers abroad and call it a day.
"An Uber spokesperson said that the stock grant was issued around the time of the Otto acquisition in August 2016, and that it is common for vesting deals to back-date to the formation of an acquired startup." Common? Till 5 minutes ago, I thought stock options backdating was just illegal[1].
If they are calling from California, they are covered by the 2-party consent state law. It's very easy to get accused of wiretapping under these laws, so watch out. Last, even if you get such a recording, it'd be an unnamed guy saying stuff on behalf of Yelp. You'd still have to proof it's a legitimate recording, from a legitimate phone call with Yelp.
In Italy, where racketeering is very common in the South, we have special laws and protections to fight it - because proving it, it is not easy at all. You get threats that are implied and not explicit. If "something happens" you cannot automatically ascribe it to the former threat. It should be the role of an investigative agency to look into that and discover the high burden of proof, not of private citizens.
We were just discussing this with my wife yesterday. The very same story happened to our doula, who's very non-technical and she asked us what to do (we are both engineers). Short story: she had a profile on Yelp, almost 20 5-star reviews from former customers (who spend, on average, 2/3 months with her - so each star is a big deal). One day Yelp! connects with her proposing her to become a paid customer, how could that boost her visibility, etc. etc. Moreover, she has great reviews and it would be good for her to maintain that track record. She declines - also because she is not very technical and she has no idea how much business she's getting from Yelp. Within a month, half of her 5-star reviews are gone and 2 1-star reviews appeared (that she does not recollect as customers - so she reported them).
My get on the entire story is that Yelp sounds a lot like Italian's mafia (btw, I'm Italian) - where "you have a really nice restaurant there, it'd be a shame if something bad would happen to it. But if you pay us, you'd have nothing to worry about."
My newsfeed on Facebook is full of ads of hardware startups with amazing concepts of products. When I get into the "know more" is always a "pre-order". From IOT-retrofit-motorized-shades to triple-your-macbook-screen-via-usb. I've been burned so many times that when I see "startup", "hardware", "pre-order" and "as a service" in the same pitch, I make a mental note of "call me back once you have a real product and it does not depend on your infrastructure".
We can argue what "be a cheerleader for them[employees]" means. If I were a United employee, I'd not be impressed by my employer. I'd feel ashamed of being part of an organization that has managed to escalate a logistical problem (because that's what we are talking about) into violence. I'd like to be proud of my employer and, today, I'd not feel great knowing my company is ok with beating up a harmless man. I'd seriously question the ethics and core value of my employer. As an employee, I'd like to know that /something/ went wrong in that situation - and we do not stand for violence. Frankly, that would cheer me up.
As comparing overbooking to German soldiers - the Nuremberg defense, despite originated from Nazi's trial, refers today to any account where "I was just following orders". It refers to /any/ situation where someone claims unaccountability because "it is the protocol". This is exactly the case. If the protocol accounts for beating up a passenger, are the employees unaccountable just because "that's what the manual says"? No, they are not. They are human beings and they could say "fuck the protocol". There are a million other ways to handle a logistical problem without the use of violence.
If you work for a company, and you want to start a parallel project/business, some key points are:
a. Do not start a side project/business in the VERY same industry or about the VERY same product of your current employer (like in this case, Waymo/Otto/Uber).
b. Do not use IPs, code, equipments, facilities, etc of your current employer (like in this case)
c. Do not solicit most of your co-workers to quit and join you
d. Do not download documents from your employer, save them on personal storage and then resign abruptly from the company
I have started several other businesses while working at large companies - if you don't get anywhere close to a/b/c/d you should be very fine.
Murdoch invested in Theranos ~100M a few years ago https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/nov/29/rupert-murdoch...
You can only consider the investment "failed" if the company goes belly up. Till then, you have to wait to write the investment off (and request a tax credit on the loss). Selling it is a way to proof your investment is now worth ~zero - so you can write it off in the next fiscal year.
I've kept saying this to everyone who supports closing/limiting H1B (or other immigration forms): if companies cannot hire here (at a reasonable price), they will hire there. Moving an IT department is easier than ever. Startups are now doing it too - I know many having a R&D location in India, China, East Europe. All these new policies against immigration will accelerate the process of "hiring there".
It depends on the company. The head of the department is aware. In some cases, the hiring manager might or might not be aware of the entire process ("HR told me to stack rank my direct reports / HR told me to put my team in these 9-blocks"). In large, large company that is typically a headline "Cisco has announced will lay off 500 people next Monday".
Is Uber a company with a horrible culture? Pretty much. Are the details of these reports 100% accurate? Hard to tell. When talking about the subject, I'd recommend to think about the big picture and not the details (ehy, have you heard at Uber people call colleagues "dirty whore" during meetings?)