
Carnegie Mellon Reels After Uber Lures Away Researchers - drsilberman
http://on.wsj.com/1AH8LnY
======
blazespin
Wtf: Jeff Legault, the head of business development for NREC. “I would have
preferred [Uber] just come to us” to develop the vehicle rather than hire away
scientists, he said. Yeah, that would have worked out just great for the
scientists forgoing 6 figure bonuses and doubling of salaries. Sounds like
Jeff didn't want to compete for talent. Good on Uber! I dislike the sleazy biz
tactics, but poaching is not sleazy. It's recognition of worth.

~~~
droopyEyelids
That seems oversimplified to me. Uber could have funded the research and given
grants big enough that the professors and researchers could match their uber
salary, while still receiving the perk of contributing and sharing their
knowledge.

~~~
jessriedel
Uber could have built some new buildings for the university and paid for new
student scholarships too. But they didn't because they are a business, not a
philanthropic foundation.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Google is a business as well, but seems to operate with a much lower "tool"
factor than Uber somehow.

EDIT: Being innovative doesn't mean "at all costs".

~~~
res0nat0r
Hiring smart people is now considered a 'tool' move?

~~~
toomuchtodo
No, I'm referring to the other issues in the wikipedia page posted by
ceejayoz.

Two examples:

When I see news about Tesla, I have a positive reaction. They constantly
release new technologies, open sourced their patents, and so on.

When I see a news piece about Uber, I think, "What'd they fuck up this time?".

News pieces about how Uber was attempting to encrypt/destroy data remotely in
their Canadian office while a law enforcement raid was in progress......does
not help their case.

~~~
res0nat0r
Luckily in this case all of that has nothing to do with hiring smart people to
try and improve their product.

------
jowiar
Related story: Academia pays peanuts, and I'd love to see the postdoc/grad
school racket get ravaged by "poaching".

Also, probably the most important contributor in CMU SCS becoming what it is
now was an act of "poaching" (of the Blums, from Cal).

~~~
bpyne
Businesses have been poaching from grad schools for quite a while depending on
the field. My father-in-law regularly has his doctoral students poached by
Wall Street because they have extensive training in developing mathematical
models and using partial diff eq's. Apparently the same mathematical thinking
is highly valuable in financial markets.

While it upsets him that he invests both time and grant money toward students
who don't finish the program, he understands the lure of a 7-figure salary for
people who are living on a low 5-figure income.

~~~
FD3SA
So basically, the principles of economics upset him, but he understands them.

Maybe, just maybe, instead of using grad students and post-docs as slave labor
so he can slap his name on their hard work, he could instead advocate for
better pay and working conditions for them using his privileged position of
PI?

~~~
jrock08
As a grad student, let me explain why I don't think I'm getting ripped off.

1) I have (at least) weekly meetings with advisors who can charge >$250/hr as
a consultant. They are brilliant, and our conversations are enlightening, and
they actually care about the outcomes of their students. This might be out of
the ordinary, but I've never felt exploited by my advisors. In CS, advisors
are very aware that their students are giving up significant salaries to do a
PhD.

2) I get paid enough to live, not incredibly well, but I make a median salary
in the area, and at this point in my life I'm more than willing to share a 2br
2ba apt.

3) I'm encouraged to do internships which do pay extremely well, and on top of
my living wage at school, mean I live really well.

4) I want a job that requires a PhD. Sure I could drop out, take my masters in
AI, brand myself as a data-scientist and get a job doing some ML programming
at a hedge fund making 300k base with 1MM bonus, but working at a research
lab, or at a tier 2 institute as a faculty member seems like a much better
life in the long run.

------
akgerber
40 new, very-well-paying tech jobs within city limits has to be good for
Pittsburgh's tech ecosystem. And, troublesome as Uber is, I'm glad to see
these scientists directing their work to civilian concerns rather than
military purposes.

The Lawrenceville neighborhood, where both NREC & this new Uber office are
located, has recently become one of Pittsburgh's trendiest, and has seen
skyrocketing real estate values— which means houses that used to cost $30,000
or less are now valued at over $100,000.

~~~
atonse
> I'm glad to see these scientists directing their work to civilian concerns
> rather than military purposes

Is that what they were doing? Because I initially thought "what a waste... a
lot of public research will now be locked up in one business's competitive
advantage" \- but if they were just building stuff for the military that would
get locked up for decades anyway, this is better.

~~~
fixermark
NREC definitely does some military work, but it also does quite a bit of
civilian work (things like pattern recognition to improve industrial farming
systems by discerning types or quality of produce).

But that research is generally privately-funded and privately-owned, too. NREC
is not---in general---a hotbed of publicly-published common-use research.

------
mathattack
I see a lot of articles complaining about the lack of job opportunities for
Phd scientists. It seems like Uber just created 40 jobs that were as appealing
as tenure track positions. Or alternatively, freed up 40 tenure track
positions for adjuncts. CMU will survive.

~~~
nsnick
These are not tenure track or even academic positions. NREC is owned by CMU
but it is not part of any academic program at CMU. There are no students
working at NREC. NREC does technology commercialization not fundamental
research. NREC's primary product is big robots not research papers (although
they do publish a bit). NREC is a lot like SRI before it separated from
Stanford.

~~~
SilasX
Then it seems like this story is more "corporation raids corporation" than
"corporation raids academic seed corn".

~~~
fixermark
Basically. But that headline doesn't play nearly as well to the heartstrings
of a readership already primed to assume Uber is the antagonist in any story
with its name in the title. ;)

------
pkaye
Initially I was pissed of at Uber but then I realized that the way
universities run, half of anything Uber gave the universities for research
would go to fund their management costs. I remember in my college days I got
an $800 academic performance award and 25% was taken of for management costs.
When I was a grader, they had me sign a form that any inventions I discovered
as a grader would be theirs. Bunch of leaches in my opinion.

~~~
chimeracoder
> then I realized that the way universities run, half of anything Uber gave
> the universities for research would go to fund their management costs.

I think half is a bit of an overstatement in the typical case, but this same
criticism can be levied at pretty much any research- or cause-oriented work,
like charities and foundations.

Usually this cut is intended in part to fund the process that actually
procures this funding and these grants in the first place, so under that
assumption, it more than pays for itself.

You can't run an organization with literally zero overhead; it's not possible.

~~~
3JPLW
> I think half is a bit of an overstatement

Nope, it's pretty typical. Most grants have a negotiated ~50% overhead in
"indirects". I was surprised, though, to find a Nature report[1] that found
the actual overhead was typically ~20% below the negotiated rate. Which is
pretty wonderful.

1\. [http://www.nature.com/news/indirect-costs-keeping-the-
lights...](http://www.nature.com/news/indirect-costs-keeping-the-lights-
on-1.16376)

------
geebee
What were they getting paid before, and what are they getting paid now?

A "doubling of salary" sounds nice, but it's still important to know the base.
"Loyalty" to an institution is almost certainly an old-fashioned concept and
probably a sucker's bet, but my sense of sympathy for CMU will still be
somewhat dependent on the "pre-uber" numbers.

For instance, if you lose a post-doc earning 55k and uber now pays them 110k,
well, it's time to stop complaining. This is a person who managed to get high
grades in an very tough undergrad major with high attrition rates, gain
admission to a top PhD program (almost certainly requiring high standardized
test scores), and made it thorough a doctoral program with a 35-50% attrition
rate (elite med schools, by contrast, typically have attrition rates below
0.5%).

Now, if these salaries were going from $250K with tenure to $500k, I'm a
little more sympathetic to CMU (though even then, I don't begrudge these
researchers their new and good salaries).

------
jessriedel
Note that Google did a very similar thing last year by hiring the entire
Martinis lab (quantum computing) from UC Santa Barbara.

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/02/google-partners-with-
ucsb-t...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/02/google-partners-with-ucsb-to-
build-quantum-processors-for-artificial-intelligence/)

~~~
tzs
Is it a "very similar" thing? The people hired by Google will continue to work
with UCSB graduate students and use UCSB facilities in addition to Google
facilities, and Google is maintaining a partnership with UCSB.

The Uber thing sounds like it is more of a complete transfer from CMU to Uber.

~~~
jessriedel
They are paying USCB to use the clean room because it would be too
expensive/slow to build and outfit a whole new clean room. (The UCSB clean
room is one of the best of it's kind in the world; no analogous piece of
capital exists for the Uber/CMU deal.) The _current_ graduate students are
going to finish out their dissertation work with Martinis (to do otherwise
would be terrible) but I'm told Martinis isn't taking any new graduate
students.

So yes, this is very similar.

------
adventureartist
Does anyone else think it's slightly shady to be advising drivers take on
loans for vehicles in one hand, while working on making those vehicle loans a
bad investment by investing in competing technology in the other?

~~~
gabriel34
Not if the expected (discounted) payback date of the investment is near and
the expected date of obsolescence of the vehicle is far away (mind not only
technical aspects, but regulation, acceptance/penetration and financial
viability). I wouldn't advise a young professional to drive uber as a full
time job though. He might be making enough now, but when/if obsolescence
comes, he'd be out of a job and lacking the skills he should be acquiring now.

------
rm_-rf_slash
Uber does not seem to care much about its reputation in its rush to own
autonomous transport. When self-driving cars are ubiquitous in a decade or
two, I wonder, will decent folks still opt for the biggest bully in a crowded
room?

~~~
ojego
Looking at other industries: probably yes.

That said, I think Uber will fuck themselves hard, and that Uber's robotics
efforts will be viewed as a massive mistake within the next ten years. This is
a situation where they should buy or borrow, but they're trying to build out
of greed.

Autonomous driving technology is not going to be a differentiator. It's going
to be a commodity. Everybody will have it. Investing heavily in a commodity
product is a waste of money.

But it's exactly the sort of mistake that one could expect an egotistical
asshole like Travis to make.

Uber won't be dead in ten years; they'll be the myspace of transportation. I
guarantee it.

~~~
therobot24
Uber has put NREC's previous employee's on a tight deadline, in an attempt to
almost literally throw money at the problem to be one of firsts to market.
Assuming it works, they'll be one step ahead of the competition. If they
continue to invest and innovate they won't be the myspace of transportation.

------
lordnacho
There's got to be a difference between poaching people from another tech firm
and getting them en masse from a non-profit.

Sure, they are within their rights to get these employees, but it's worth
considering whether they should think about the consequences for CMU. There's
a lot of organization memory that makes a lab special, especially this
particular lab.

If I start a medical startup, I'm more than within my rights to hire some
doctors. But would I go and hire half the staff of my local teaching hospital?
I think I'd think twice.

~~~
jessriedel
Those researchers aren't getting paid what they are worth, i.e., society would
be forgoing value by keeping them at the university.

If your point is that society misses out on the positive externality of the
knowledge they publish (which they mostly won't do at Uber), then the
university or a nonprofit should work out an agreement with Uber to buy that
info from them, e.g., by covering a portion of the scientists' salaries.

~~~
lordnacho
>Those researchers aren't getting paid what they are worth, i.e., society
would be forgoing value by keeping them at the university.

Of course. This is the economically naive explanation of why people are paid
whatever they're paid (marginal product). It works fine for things like soccer
players, where it's quite measurable whether some guy is contributing, how
many shirts he sells, how much he'd add to a given team, etc. In this
situation, it's not that clear. Uber have money, but that doesn't mean those
people are suddenly worth more. They may make something useful, they may not.
Having more chips doesn't make you right, it just wins you the hand.

>If your point is that society misses out on the positive externality of the
knowledge they publish (which they mostly won't do at Uber), then the
university or a nonprofit should work out an agreement with Uber to buy that
info from them, e.g., by covering a portion of the scientist's salaries.

Right, and did they do that? It sounds like they just said "meh, let's not
bother and just use this pile of cash to get what we want". Maybe it's more
complex than that, but it doesn't sound like they care too much.

~~~
jessriedel
The for-profit business will strike any kind of deals the university (or other
non-profit) wants for the appropriate amount of cash. The business is self-
interested, so its behavior is (more or less) predictable.

The question is: do the _non-profits_ actually care about societal benefit, or
are they really just managed by people interested in building prestige? CMU
robotics wouldn't get nearly as much prestige from paying Uber scientists to
publish papers.

------
bedhead
Uber certainly isn't doing themselves any favors when it comes to shedding
their reputation as the most brazen assholes in tech.

~~~
javert
Because paying people a lot more money and saving taxpayers millions of
dollars (since we no longer have to pay for those scientists) is being
assholish?

~~~
noer
CMU is a private university, so there won't be much in the way of taxpayer
savings.

~~~
NonEUCitizen
Private research universities get a LOT of taxpayer money (e.g. DARPA grants,
NSF grants)

~~~
noer
Right, but hiring 40 scientists away isn't going to reduce that money. Even if
CMU doesn't get it, it's not like they're going to save it or give it to some
other department or program. At best, it goes to another institution.

~~~
javert
Yes, but that is a moral indictment of the NSF et al, who will give away their
entire budget even if there is no longer anybody qualified to receive the same
amount those CMU guys did.

And then ask for an even bigger budget the next year.

In contrast, it is not a moral indictment of Uber.

------
serve_yay
I hate the word "poaching". We are not rare and mysterious beasts owned by our
employers. We are laborers who work wherever we think we can get the best
deal. ("Lures" is fine.)

------
NonEUCitizen
CMU should pay its profs and researchers more than it pays its administrators.

~~~
Phlarp
This is the real barometer to watch-- as long as university presidents are
pulling down a million a year you won't convince me that Uber was displaying
their "Asshole" nature by "poaching" these guys.

------
andyjohnson0
Previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9602655](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9602655)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9635554](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9635554)

------
fecak
The most interesting thing about the comments here (in my opinion) is how
differently the industry seems to view professionals in academic/research
environments and those in for profit/private sector jobs.

If this were Uber hiring engineers from Google or Facebook and paying them a
huge premium, it would be considered the market at work and I expect there
would be little debate on whether Uber was acting ethically or not (even when
considering the tactic of opening an office nearby).

~~~
dhruvbird
@bedhead hit the spot with his comment "Circumstances matter. I suppose if
Uber hadn't entered into a partnership first, the whole thing would be more
palatable. But by going this route, Uber is sending a clear signal to all
potential future partners - watch out. I just find it distasteful, and sadly
predictable given Uber's history."

------
throwaway12357
Maybe this is a bit offtopic but I'm curious what are the thoughts with Google
driving car.

Right now it feels Google, Uber and Lyft will compete for the same space. Uber
looks to be winning, but can it really win the race against Google.

Although to its own merit one thing comes to mind was that -- at least from PR
it looks like it -- Uber is moving faster. Google which is always hiring(?)
lost the chance to grab that CMU talent.

~~~
fixermark
Uber is moving faster because it has more catching up to do.

But overall, this will be good for the ecosystem both in terms of raw research
project (more people working on a hard problem, though they aren't working
_together_ so we're not getting theoretically maximum benefit) and economics
(more competition in the space as these projects do flourish into commercial
projects).

In the end, this sort of thing should get the product to market faster than
Google working on it alone, which will be saving lives sooner. Strict
positive.

------
fixermark
Good news for the researchers (and academics in general, as the knock-on
effect of this event should increase their overall market value. An
alternative to a life of academia is clearly out there).

Honestly, the only thing I'd be concerned about is working for Uber itself.
They're a company that has made it clear on multiple occasions that the moment
someone is no longer valuable to them, they'll do everything in their power to
zero out their responsibilities to that individual. Even if the triple-up-
front signing bonus is a good deal now, I hope the researchers they hired
aren't thinking Uber is going to be a career for them...

------
rbobby
It might also be a patent play. Create some new patents related to autonomous
driving and Uber's bargaining position with other patent holders would be
improved... maybe enough for a free/lowcost cross-licensing deal.

------
edge17
I am unaware of the politics, but it should be pointed out that this did begin
as a 'strategic partnership' back in Jan/Feb

[http://newsroom.uber.com/2015/02/uber-and-cmu-announce-
strat...](http://newsroom.uber.com/2015/02/uber-and-cmu-announce-strategic-
partnership-and-advanced-technologies-center/)

~~~
fixermark
I'm an alum of CMU, and make no mistake that that institution (and NREC by
extension) is willing to play hard-ball to meet its own needs.

My (uninformed on the particulars of this situation) guess is that if the
strategic partnership has 'devolved' into a poaching situation, CMU shares its
own bit of the blame. There's a lot that went on behind closed doors that we
will likely never know.

~~~
edge17
The new administration at CMU (President Suresh et al.) are very eager to open
the kimono. You can check out his background with fundraising etc. They are
all about strategic partnerships; frankly in this case they were too eager to
please someone with very deep pockets and I am guessing weren't aware of how
aggressive Uber is or they were blinded by the prospect of money.

disclosure: CMU alum as well.

------
nphyte
Well i'm glad the scientists are finally getting paid their worth. Good on
them and their families.

------
cafebeen
It seems unclear if Uber is hiring them as engineers or building an industrial
research lab. The latter case could mean they'd still publish their work and
contribute to the community (reviewing, conferences, advising, etc). It'd be a
shame to lose that though...

------
cpkscpks
Nice.

I'm looking around the NREC web site. At the top, it is "research professors,"
with similar abusive quasi-academic positions. Maybe this will give some
incentive to move from short-term grant-funded or teaching-funded positions to
workable long-term faculty positions.

The pattern of decades of post docs is not workable. People want families.
There is a biological clock (women, but also men if they marry similar age).

The NERC response is a little bit arrogant. Jeff's quote on Uber coming to
them -- well, Uber hired short-term university employees into long-term
positions. They did with those positions exactly what universities claim those
positions are for (training ground for stable work). Jeff should be applauding
them.

~~~
fixermark
I'm not convinced Uber hires anyone into a long-term position. This project
can be expected to stick around for awhile, but only in the sense that it's
complicated enough to justify long time investment; once the machines are
reliable enough (or Uber loses interest or funding in this avenue of R&D),
expect these researchers to be out on the pavement.

It'd be wise for them to consider this, if anything, a side-move (but a side-
move with a 3x salary bonus, so definitely take that money and bank it!).

~~~
cpkscpks
I agree with the sentiment about Uber, but there is a substantial difference.
Uber will close them down when it stops to make business sense. A research
professor is expected to be out on the street once grant funding runs out.
Most postdocs are expressly 2-year appointments. Grad students get paid dirt,
and have a ~7 year limit (depending on school) with random students kicked out
at random points (qualifying exams, etc.).

Neither is stable, but of the two, almost any industry, even including Uber,
is much, much more stable.

------
solve
Employees being considered property. Disgusting. US universities have become
the most prevalent predatory institutions in existence. Earning trillions per
year and burdening millions with increasingly crippling debt, while only a
minuscule fraction of that money actually goes to the professors and
researchers.

Say what you want about Uber, but universities are clearly 1000x morally
worse.

~~~
javert
But.... but... but universities are sacred cows paved with good intentions....

