
Waymo’s Hiring Binge - muzz
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/inside-waymos-hiring-binge?pu=hackernewso4ym9z&utm_source=hackernews&utm_medium=unlock
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aresant
Instructive the degree to which good HR, recruiting, and operational
onboarding can create giant moats for these larger tech cos.

Hiring 700 "mostly engineer" employees in a year!

I pride myself as an "operator" and have worked in businesses that have scaled
quickly but it is unimaginable how one doubles the highly compensated / hard
to find employee count in a year at that scale.

In an economy where excess labor of that quality is non-existent.

That's an average of almost 3 people a work day you need to recruit away from
probably another high income role, getting them to show up, get devtools
opened, build and manage security clearances, trying to integrate into the
org, etc.

~~~
ttul
This was my thinking as well. The power and wealth of the big-five tech
companies is staggering, with their smaller siblings (Uber, Cloudflare,
AirBnB, Dropbox, etc.) trailing not far behind. It is very tough for startups
to compete with public companies who can offer liquid RSUs monthly along with
whatever salary is necessary to close the deal.

~~~
ttul
.. I should add: This is a great time to be an engineer. Enjoy it while it
lasts. The time to be a founder will be after the next recession.

~~~
mc3
My non US experience is I have seen no correlation of the boom/bust cycles and
"how good it is to be an engineer". I realize that FAANG employees are of
course raking it in like never before. But I thought that was because of a
lack of a salary cartel and general software eating the world.

~~~
gryn
Yes GP probably meant it's a great time to be an engineer in the US other
countries not so sure.

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zapita
There is a cascading effect on software engineer compensation worldwide.

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ChuckNorris89
True to a degree. Thanks to the huge influx of SV companies opening up shops
in Eastern Europe, even if it's just outsourcing the "boring stuff", has led
to an increase in local tech salaries that they're now rivaling Western
Europe.

~~~
fierarul
Not that Western Europe has big IT salaries compared to the US. It never
seemed to me that IT is viewed in EU as this big growth engine compared to the
USA and salaries and prestige seem to reflect it.

~~~
zapita
That is changing as well. US tech companies are hiring more and more across
Europe, and the local startup ecosystem is growing also. Some local founders
who have made money in the US are coming back and seeding local startups,
which has an accelerating effect. Another factor is remote work, with some
developers getting nearly US-level salaries while living in Europe. The result
is a new class of ultra-well-paid software developers enjoying the good life
in many European cities. It's still a niche phenomenon, but not for long. The
SF Bay Area was in the same place around 2011-2012. I expect a massive wave of
gentrification and anti-tech sentiment in Europe in 2-5 years, similar to what
the US is experiencing now.

~~~
fierarul
Maybe I'm not in a good niche anymore, but seems to me many US companies are
setting up local shops which means they won't hire you remotely as an
independent contractor but as a local employee / contractor which has _much_
lower rates.

There are some lucky few that still manage this or some that even manage to
get US-level rates doing _open source_ but that's like winning the lottery;
outliers.

~~~
zapita
Yes, most of those new bigtech/startup employees are getting compensation in
the local band. But they are in the very top of that band, and gradually
shifting it up as US companies compete for talent, and VC-funded local
companies start competing more seriously as well.

It’s a gradual process but in my experience it’s very real.

~~~
fierarul
This gradual process might also happen because compensation has to cover the
costs. While some things have kept their prices seems to me some services have
gone way up. I was just discussing that a hotel we went to long ago basically
tripled their prices. Real estate is also up.

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mdszy
>Waymonauts

Weird-ass names for employees of a company is one of the weirdest "WE HAVE TO
TRY HARD TO MAKE PEOPLE FEEL LIKE A PART OF THE CULTURE" things ever,
honestly.

~~~
zelly
Credit Karma also apparently calls its employees "Karmanauts". Heavy duty
cringe.

~~~
tudelo
also, noogler and n00b are some fun ones

~~~
warent
Noogler is supposed to be silly/goofy, it's not cringe at all if it's self
aware

Disclaimer: used to be a noogler. I'm not mad at all!!1!

~~~
rainyMammoth
Seems to have achieved its goal on you.

~~~
warent
Is there really so much need to take ourselves so seriously and simultaneously
go out of our way to try and make others feel badly about the way they live
their lives? It's unfathomable to me.

~~~
rainyMammoth
That was a bit snarky and didn't specifically meant it that way. Sorry if it
was understood that way.

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bko
This may seem like a stupid question, but why isn't there a company that just
outsources driving to remote drivers?

Imagine a car simulation in which someone in a low cost country sees what the
driver in the car would see, including the surroundings (side mirrors, behind
them, etc). She can look around, same way as someone in the car and that
person can drive. And her actions gets sent to the car half way across the
world.

Kind of like a Mechanical Turk for driving. Is this crazy?

~~~
wpietri
I think it's crazy for reasons other people state, especially latency and
connection reliability issues. But I think a related idea can work pretty
well.

Self-driving cars are classified into 6 SAE levels, 0-5. 5 is full autonomy, 4
is autonomy in limited conditions, 3 is self driving but there has to be a
driver ready to take over.

Getting to 5 is really hard. It could take decades, because there are a
zillion edge cases. But what if you could turn cars loose at the "can handle
95% of driving" level and then let it call a human to give guidance when the
car is nervous or confused?

Obviously, the phone-a-friend approach can't work for things requiring quick
action. But if you bias the car to just stop safely and wait for orders, I
think it's doable. E.g., the car comes upon an accident where the lanes in one
direction are blocked. Humans know to go around the accident by slowly and
carefully sharing the remainder of the road. So perhaps the car stops before
the obstruction and asks for help. A human looks at it and draws in the path
it should follow to get back to normal road.

So I think remote "robot coaches" could plug the gap between levels 4 and 5.
And maybe some of the level 3 gap, too. And from what I hear of the Waymo
operation in Arizona, I suspect Google's doing something akin to this.

~~~
nradov
There are many places where cars have to go with no cellular data coverage,
even inside major cities. Tunnels for example.

~~~
fragmede
Starlink won't grant Internet coverage inside tunnels or underground, but it
plans to blanket all of the US with Internet coverage making that far more
possible than with terrestrial cellular data networks.

I'm sure Tesla has been keeping that in mind as their self-driving technology
progresses.

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KKKKkkkk1
The article points out that the heads of perception _and_ of motion planning
have been replaced. That's big. The former head of planning Nathaniel
Fairfield specifically has a legendary status there.

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anon-waymonaut
Not mentioned in the article is the high rate of attrition at Waymo. It's
roughly the industry average (~20% Y/Y). So the % of folks that are new is
even higher than reported here.

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dehrmann
This read like a paragraph of commentary followed up machine-generated
narration of LinkedIn status updates.

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wolfgke
I want to quote Brooks's lawv
([https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brooks%27s_law&ol...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brooks%27s_law&oldid=942474898)):

"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later".

~~~
KKKKkkkk1
Great quote, and highly relevant.

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eluusive
Cruise did the exactly the same thing and it turned into an internal disaster.
They're going to have to lay off a ton of people.

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dipshitlol
This is less a story of anything other than that "theinformation" has access
to google's internal systems and should be investigated accordingly in a court
of law.

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a_t48
Weird, they ghosted me after my phone screen, coming from another self driving
company. Guess they weren't that impressed with me. Or I "missed" the hiring
binge.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Or the employee who screened you had no idea what they’re doing. That’s pretty
common in my experience.

Or some random thing you said triggered a fear of theirs and they downvoted
you in an abundance of caution. That’s pretty common too.

Not really worth reading into it. But it is worth applying again at a later
date if you’re pumped about the company.

~~~
a_t48
I didn't read too much into it, was mostly just vaguely disappointed.

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iamaelephant
> Mawakana just hired a new head of fleet operations, Ryan McNamara, who
> previously worked on product quality for the Google Pixel phone

As the previous owner of 2 Pixel phones, this man is the last person on Earth
I want in charge of operations of a fleet of 2-ton automated vehicles. No
offence.

~~~
polishdude20
I don't know man. My pixel 2 is the best phone I've ever had.

~~~
superfrank
I'm not trying to argue with you, obviously everyone has different
experiences, but that's such a funny thing to hear someone say. I had a Pixel
1, Pixel 2, and a Pixel 3a (current phone) and I feel the 2 was the worst of
the bunch. I had mine replaced twice in the 18 months I had it due to crashing
and overheating issues.

I would never in a million years recommend the Pixel 2 to someone, but I know
there are plenty of people out there who love theirs.

~~~
guiomie
I've had the Pixel 2, and never had any issues, now I've had the 3 for over 8
months I think, and It has convinced me to switch to iPhone. It's full of bugs
and inconsistent UX. I need to reboot the phone every 45 minutes since it will
not connect to wifi.

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erhserhdfd
Anyone have a copy of this not behind a paywall?

~~~
kamikaz1k
Outline says there isn't much...

[https://outline.com/3MyKkw](https://outline.com/3MyKkw)

~~~
netinstructions
because it's just grabbing the first three paragraphs that anyone can see
before the paywall...

