
Uber Hires Former Google Search Chief Amit Singhal as SVP of Engineering - leothekim
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/20/uber-hires-former-google-search-chief-amit-singhal-as-svp-of-engineering/
======
oculusthrift
I'm really confused on what to think about Uber. My personal thinking/logic is
really bearish on them, similar to the post on the front page yesterday [1].
However, I keep seeing extremely smart/accomplished people joining it which
makes me second guess my intuition.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13437414)

~~~
grandalf
Uber has done nearly everything right. I think its main vulnerability is that
its laborers are a fickle bunch and Uber hasn't done enough to inspire any
loyalty. All Uber drivers I talk to alternate between Uber and Lyft and
exploit any promotions or incentives either firm offers.

Uber has the opportunity to revolutionize not just logistics but also on-
demand employment, but has lagged in the latter, leaving the door wide open
for Lyft and other services that carve out a big niche of Uber's market.

I think Uber should immediately offer the following services to its drivers:

\- Tax planning, withholding even if it's 1099 income or if the driver has
other sources of income.

\- Matching IRA contributions with one year vesting.

\- healthcare subsidy

\- continuing education, or some way to level up in life by driving with Uber.

\- Some incentive for being a loyal, exceptional driver.

\- Car financing/leasing/sharing and insurance packages tailored at would-be
Uber drivers who don't own a vehicle.

I know that more and more of these sorts of ideas are being tried by both Uber
and Lyft, but investors need to realize that the workforce is being trained to
be opportunistic and disloyal.

Many of the drivers I've interviewed (during my ride) despise Uber the
corporation or boast about their fair weather support. Many reflect back on
how Uber used to be better for drivers, etc.

Uber's main battles have been fought with regulators and with Lyft, but now
the best strategy is figuring out how to become the Uber of on-demand
employment.

~~~
taxicabjesus
> I think Uber should immediately offer the following services to its drivers:

The taxi industry pioneered the 'independent contractor' business model. Some
of the services you suggest cross the line between 'contractor' and
'employee', especially 'healthcare subsidy'.

The owner/operator whom I drove for says that the company only provides
liability insurance (to cover the cab company's liability) as a part of her
contract with the cab company. If she wanted collision coverage, she had to
buy that separately, because insurance == employment.

When I signed up I was told that I should buy my own worker's compensation
policy, but I never did this.

Most people don't want 'on demand' employment, they want stability. Because of
outsourcing and automation, the economy doesn't need as many workers anymore.
Uber's business model is entirely dependent on this phenomenon.

Drivers -- taxi drivers, 'rideshare drivers', trucking drivers, etc -- would
benefit from a union. Arizona is not a union-friendly state; I don't know if
taxi drivers elsewhere have unions.

~~~
byoung2
_Most people don 't want 'on demand' employment, they want stability. Because
of outsourcing and automation, the economy doesn't need as many workers
anymore. Uber's business model is entirely dependent on this phenomenon._

Do you see this phenomenon going away anytime soon? My grandparents'
generation worked at a single company for life. My parents switched companies
maybe 3 times in their careers. I have worked for 9 companies in the last 12
years. The trend has been toward shorter and shorter stints, with less and
less benefits. My daughter's generation probably won't remember a time where
people spent years working for companies, and it will seem natural to string
together a series of gigs and odd jobs.

~~~
taxicabjesus
> Do you see this phenomenon going away anytime soon?

The economic paradigm has to change. I think something will shift, eventually.

Searching for 'john gatto livelihood' just now brought up this link:

[http://www.wtp.org/archive/transcripts/john_taylor_gatto.htm...](http://www.wtp.org/archive/transcripts/john_taylor_gatto.html)
\- John Taylor Gatto (1991 New York State Teacher of the Year) Interview By
Jerry Brown, March 25, 1997

It's probably worth reading the whole thing, but if you're pressed for time
just search for '[break]', and read his take on two groups who have been able
to implement mostly 'independent livelihoods' for virtually all of their
members.

> My grandparents' generation worked at a single company for life.

And their grandparents were probably much more independent.

> it will seem natural to string together a series of gigs and odd jobs.

"You see that house on the hill? If you work hard enough, some day I'll live
there." (This was not said by Travis Kalashnikov).

'Gigs and odd jobs' are not the path towards a fulfilling life.

Edit: My friend recently pointed out to me that I value _freedom_ more than
anything else, which is why I stuck with taxi driving for so long... But the
whole time I was working on something bigger...

~~~
byoung2
_And their grandparents were probably much more independent._

My grandparents' grandparents were slaves. On my dad's side in North Carolina,
on my mom's side in the Caribbean. Not too much independence there.

~~~
taxicabjesus
"Oh." Thanks for letting me know - it's an antidote for my being overly
confident/arrogant.

------
tyingq
There's a number of things that have happened in the organic search area of
Google that seem to suggest a declining interest in quality organic results.

There's Matt Cutts' long leave of absence, his departure, and the announcement
that he's not really being replaced. A much lower volume of communication from
Google on initiatives in the space (they used to talk endlessly about Panda,
Penguin, etc). Amit's original reason for departure was "his next journey will
involve philanthropy"..that seems to have changed.

My guess is that two things are driving the declining interest...

a) The marketshare battle is done. Google won. No competition.

b) Their various initiatives to push organic results down the fold (more ads,
knowledge graph, various widgets, and so forth) has made the quality of the
organic results not as important. Good enough is the target.

~~~
raverbashing
I'd add another item

c) "Search" is changing towards giving information rather than to websites.

Think Siri/Cortana/Alexa. Even Google tries to give you an answer rather than
a website.

Also information is moving from "spread thin" websites to social graphs and
more centralised locations

~~~
nostrademons
That was Amit's doing, actually. Around 2012, with the success of Knowledge
Panels and the acquisition of Metaweb (FreeBase), he decreed that search would
become a "conversational answer engine", devoted toward getting you the answer
to your question as quickly as possible. The Hummingbird ranking update was
part of that - it made it much more effective to phrase your query as a
question rather than a bunch of keywords. Also renewed integration of Google
Now into search, expanded Knowledge Panels, cards on mobile search, bigger
investments in voice search, etc.

------
ChuckMcM
This statement -- _“Those computer science challenges for a computer science
geek are just intriguing – you give a geek a puzzle, they can’t drop it; they
need to solve the puzzle. That’s how it felt to me.”_

When I've been asked what keeps me going this is it, I really like interesting
puzzles and I'm sitting there stuck trying to solve it.

It also says a bit about what Uber thinks their big problems are (or where
their value add will be). I was expecting them to go with someone more
operations focused like Urs Hoezle.

~~~
carussell
A good example of the engineer's puzzle-solving mindset is ice-nine in
Vonnegut's _Cat 's Cradle_. Hoenikker didn't particularly care about the
Marines, mud, or the general's problem with it. He just thought it made for a
good puzzle.

------
r_sreeram
Amit joining Uber after a year's break coincides with the common "1 year no-
solicitation" clause in employment contracts. I wonder if we are about to see
some top people in Google get poached. Not that there's anything wrong with
that.

~~~
geodel
Hope so. I guess last exodus was in 2012 when top people like Marissa Mayer
and her reports got poached.

~~~
kchoudhu
> Marissa Mayer and her reports got poached

Looks like Google dodged a bullet there.

~~~
snovv_crash
Dunno, I think Yahoo! was basically unfixable. I mean, what would you have
done differently? They just had too much dead wood, including the brand name.

~~~
bduerst
Yahoo! became a holding company for Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan. The search and
online services are just window dressing.

------
inverse_pi
Kevin Thompson, another VP from Google also joined Uber very recently
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinthompsontech](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinthompsontech)

------
1qaz2wsx
have people considered this may eventually lead to Google acquiring Uber?
There is the advising CEO Travis Kalanick bit in there.

~~~
pcl
Relatedly, I booked an Uber last night from within the Google Maps app on my
phone, and the entire experience was in-app -- route selection, driver pick-up
tracking, in-ride tracking, and drop-off confirmation. That's a whole lot
tighter integration than I've seen in the past. The rumor-monger in me wants
to read all sorts of acquisition talks into that level of product integration.

(Which is great for another reason -- I don't give Uber access to my location
when I'm not using the app, and the Uber team has apparently decided to
basically brick their own app for users like me. But hooray, Google Maps is
now a functional replacement for the Uber client!)

~~~
s3r3nity
You can book Lyft as well - both are pretty solid experiences.

~~~
ISV_Damocles
No? That just links out to the Lyft app. Booking an Uber in Google Maps no
longer leaves the app at all.

------
carussell
I'd like to see Uber get into mapping. Besides Uber's core business that
everyone focuses on, they've got a self-driving cars program that's halfway
off the ground and they do food deliver through UberEATS. In either case,
they've got a vested interest in making sure high-quality mapping data is
available—higher quality than what Google provides.

Given their deals with tons of local businesses through UberEATS, they've got
operating hours and location data that's fresher than what anyone else can
provide on the scale that they're operating on. Would be nice to see them
improving the OSM dataset and partner with e.g. Maps.me.

~~~
groby_b
"they've got a self-driving cars program that's halfway off the ground"

In the sense that a working model airplane gives me a space program that's
halfway off the ground.

And why would they improve OSM at all? Actually collecting and _cleaning_
mapping data is not cheap. There's no incentive in contributing to OSM, it
doesn't build a moat, it doesn't further their access to markets,...

~~~
carussell
> And why would they improve OSM at all?

It's in their business interests to make sure their fleet and their delivery
drivers have accurate mapping info. Is there something unclear about the way I
worded this in the comment you responded to?

~~~
groby_b
There obviously is something unclear, yes. Having accurate mapping info and
improving OSM are two separate things. I asked about the latter. If that data
were actually crucial to Uber's business, what possible rationale could they
have to share it for free?

But while we're on mapping data - I don't think "higher quality" data is in
any way crucial to their business. (Owning the data so there's no dependency
on third parties is another question). Uber's routing is accurate enough to
work reliably.[1] What does higher quality buy them?

From where I stand, you're proposing that a company that's already bleeding
money like it's going out of style should spend a ton of money, on building
technology they have little experience with, to collect data that is of
dubious value to them, to then give it away freely.

I get that you'd like OSM improved, but I really don't think Uber will be the
one to do it.

[1] Based on purely anecdotal reports from my friends and my own experiences,
the usual case for misrouting is Uber drivers not paying attention to the map,
or thinking they know better than the map.

~~~
carussell
> If that data were actually crucial to Uber's business, what possible
> rationale could they have to share it for free?

I'd understand if this were 1987 and you were asking this question. But it's
not, and even Microsoft is on the public collaboration bandwagon.

We begin by recognizing that if you want to get into mapping and not pay out
the nose for it, then OSM is your starting point. From there, it follows that
we defer to the lessons of the last two decades which show that when given the
choice between either maintaining a private fork or upstreaming, then
upstreaming is overwhelmingly the best thing to do, even from a position of
pure self-interest.

I hardly think their competitive edge hinges on high quality mapping data at
the exclusion of others. Accurate mapping data is an enabler for them to _go
faster, do better_ , for the things they are doing now. If that means drivers
are making 3 deliveries per hour instead of 2, then the proposition holds
true. Or if someone can be picked up/dropped off at the curb in front of their
building, rather than the clubhouse bearing the street number for their
sprawling apartment complex, then the proposition holds true.

> data that is of dubious value to them, to then give it away freely.

No. My position is precisely that they do have a business interest in this
kind of data. I've said as much. This is the third time now.

And it's not as if Uber themselves don't already have similar initiatives to
release their datasets. They've had a program for the last ~two years for
sharing trip data, and two weeks ago they put a public face on their "Uber
Movement" initiative to make it more widely available. And that's a dataset
that's even more proprietary—there are tons of people in the mapping game, but
almost nobody besides arguably Google has access to trip-level data at the
scale that Uber has and is chosing to give away.

------
faragon
The no-driver Uber arguments as profitable future it is crazy stuff, in my
opinion. Could be as simple as Uber being a bubble? How much will take until
that bubble bursts?

------
eva1984
I don't think this is going to change anything though. He is just one person.

~~~
hueving
A single person in a high role in the company can completely change the
culture, the product focus, the attitude towards customer support, etc.

The CEO is just one person, the President is just one person, the Chairman of
the Federal Reserve is just one person, etc.

------
general_ai
That's a pattern among very senior googlers. When they get bored of working,
they go to other companies to semi-retire. I'm almost certain this is not
going to be any different.

~~~
snarf
Not sure Uber is the semi-retire kind of place for this sort of thing. They
have a reputation for working people hard.

~~~
general_ai
People, sure. But he's not "people".

------
LaFolle
Here is Singhal declaring this on his personal website:
[http://singhal.info/home/](http://singhal.info/home/)

------
sAbakumoff
Btw - What are the responsibilities of SVP of engineering?

~~~
epynonymous
senior vice president usually is a people management type person, in charge of
people, processes, and product (3 p's as they say in management lingo), in
other words, hire and retain the best people, introduce proper workflows to
make things more efficient, and make sure they're generating kick ass products
on time, with high quality.

this is often times can be confused with a cto's role, but i believe a cto's
role is more independent, has less organizational obligations, in other words,
manages much less people, at least at large companies. a cto's main role is to
work more with customers, partners, evangelize products, and think about the
longer term vision of the technology, this could be internal technology, like
datacenters, to things like the next 5 year's software products.

at small companies, i think you'll find cto's also doing the job of a svp
along with marketing, sales, support, etc.

------
oh_sigh
Why would a person worth billions work for someone else?

~~~
newsat13
Is he worth billions?

~~~
khazhou
He's clearly worth enough to not have to work for anyone, many times over.

~~~
zump
Yeah, joining Google before IPO would be pretty lucrative.

What I don't understand is the multitude of students who _STILL_ want to join
Google, even though they will likely be munging data from one format to
another, for years.

------
cornchips
"The destiny of search is to become that 'Star Trek' computer and that's what
we are building..." -Amit Singhal

Laugh.

------
killbrad
Uber is a middle man that takes money from existing and potential cab drivers'
pockets, puts it into their own, and artificially reduces consumer costs.

Cab _companies_ aren't innocent bystanders, but the drivers generally are. But
All Hail Uber anyways, I guess.

