
Anthony Levandowski, self driving car whiz who fell from grace - Fricken
https://www.wired.com/story/god-is-a-bot-and-anthony-levandowski-is-his-messenger
======
KKKKkkkk1
> In early 2011, that plan was to bring 510 Systems into the Googleplex. The
> startup’s engineers had long complained that they did not have equity in the
> growing company. When matters came to a head, Levandowski drew up a plan
> that would reserve the first $20 million of any acquisition for 510’s
> founders and split the remainder among the staff, according to two former
> 510 employees. “They said we were going to sell for hundreds of millions,”
> remembers one engineer. “I was pretty thrilled with the numbers.”

> Indeed, that summer, Levandowski sold 510 Systems and Anthony’s Robots to
> Google – for $20 million, the exact cutoff before the wealth would be
> shared. Rank and file engineers did not see a penny, and some were even let
> go before the acquisition was completed.

I made a rule for myself that once I find out for sure that a person is an
asshole, I will cut all my ties to that person. (Fool me once etc.) Apparently
Silicon Valley does not have a similar rule.

~~~
_pmf_
> for $20 million, the exact cutoff before the wealth would be shared

That requires a special kind of attitude.

------
valuearb
"But Larry Page is no longer convinced that Levandowski was key to Chauffeur’s
success. In his deposition to the court, Page said, “I believe Anthony’s
contributions are quite possibly negative of a high amount.” At Uber, some
engineers privately say that Levandowski’s poor management style set back that
company’s self-driving effort by a couple of years."

So does this mean Waymo owes Uber damages, or payment for taking the problem
off their hands?

~~~
Animats
I could see Page saying that. Urmson seems to have been the one who took the
Waymo technology from "sort of works" to "works reliably". There's a long,
slow grind phase of testing, logging, and dealing with more unusual situations
before the technology is ready for deployment. Levandowski tends to skip that
part, as with the Otto demo. One can see why he got along with Kalanick.

Levandowski comes out of this fine. Google can't sue him. Google has an
employee contract which forces employee disputes into arbitration. That
arbitration has already happened and can't be reopened. The settlement terms
are not public.

The LIDAR design is a side issue. There will be lots of good, low-cost LIDAR
units as soon as someone is able to order a few hundred thousand of them.
Continental's flash LIDAR will probably be the first successful mass-market
flash LIDAR. Quanergy made a lot of noise, but never shipped. Now they seem to
be pivoting from automotive to border security. (They want to make Trump's
border wall a virtual one.) Tetraview has funding but no products. Velodyne
has been making flash LIDAR noises but hasn't demoed yet. Innoviz has demoed
an experimental unit and claims to be selling it. Meanwhile, Velodyne is
trying to get their rotating devices down to $500 in quantity.

~~~
rsp1984
Knowing the Tetravue founders personally and having seen the tech years before
any the funding came in I can say that their product is at least as real as
their competitors'.

~~~
bob_theslob646
Who?

------
Isamu
> In September 2015, the multi-millionaire engineer at the heart of the patent
> and trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, Google’s self-driving car
> company, founded a religious organization called Way of the Future. Its
> purpose, according to previously unreported state filings, is nothing less
> than to “develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on
> Artificial Intelligence.”

I'm sure this is strictly on the up-and-up, but in the 70's this was a classic
tax dodge that many folks tried. The problem was if you got caught in any
inconsistencies where, for some purposes, you seemed to be acting as a regular
business while representing yourself as a church to the govt.

> Way of the Future has not yet responded to requests for the forms it must
> submit annually to the Internal Revenue Service (and make publically
> available), as a non-profit religious corporation.

Is this true? All churches must make their IRS returns available?

~~~
dmix
> I'm sure this is strictly on the up-and-up, but in the 70's this was a
> classic tax dodge that many folks tried.

And for this reason it's incredibly difficult to get tax-free status after the
whole "new religion" movement in the 1970s. The bar the IRS sets is far higher
now. Which is why this is very likely not the motivation here... any lawyer
would tell you this and I'm sure this guy has plenty of lawyers.

~~~
pasbesoin
Makes me think of Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land". Although arguably,
they really had something going for them.

Anyway, always interesting to hold Heinlein's writing up to contemporary
society. Or rather, to have comparisons spontaneously appear in one's thinking
as one surveys circumstances.

~~~
maxerickson
There's some claims that Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard had discussions about
religion prior to the writing of _Stranger in a Strange Land_ and founding of
Scientology.

[https://everything2.com/title/The+Heinlein+-+Hubbard+Wager+M...](https://everything2.com/title/The+Heinlein+-+Hubbard+Wager+Myth)

------
linkregister
I had not previously known before this article: Levandowski was one of the
first employees of Velodyne and did much of the engineering regarding the
inter-device networking.

Is there any company in the self-driving realm that he _isn 't_ deeply
connected to?

------
redm
The most interesting thing in this article to me is the realization that the
Velodyne that makes lidar is the same Velodyne that made subwoofers. I always
thought they just shared a name.

I wonder how on earth that pivot happened.

~~~
monocasa
It's sort of like how Ball both makes mason jars and has an aerospace
division.

They went from mason jars -> aluminum cans for food -> aluminum cans for
satellites.

~~~
bobsil1
Wonder if Dyson will be successful in their leap. Vacuums -> EVs.

------
mcguire
" _Part of the team’s secret sauce was a device that would turn a raw camera
feed into a stream of data, together with location coordinates from GPS and
other sensors. Google engineers called it the Topcon box, named after the
Japanese optical firm that sold it. But the box was actually designed by a
local startup called 510 Systems. “We had one customer, Topcon, and we
licensed our technology to them,” one of the 510 Systems owners told me._

" _That owner was…Anthony Levandowski, who had cofounded 510 Systems with two
fellow Berkeley researchers, Pierre-Yves Droz and Andrew Schultz, just weeks
after starting work at Google...._

" _Google’s engineering team was initially unaware that 510 Systems was
Levandowski’s company, several engineers told me. That changed once
Levandowski proposed that Google also use the Topcon box for its small fleet
of aerial mapping planes. “When we found out, it raised a bunch of eyebrows,”
remembers an engineer. Regardless, Google kept buying 510’s boxes._ "

Raising eyebrows? Starting a company to design products to sell to your
employer through a third party would raise more than eyebrows for most of the
people who tried it.

[Edit]

" _In early 2011, that plan was to bring 510 Systems into the Googleplex. The
startup’s engineers had long complained that they did not have equity in the
growing company. When matters came to a head, Levandowski drew up a plan that
would reserve the first $20 million of any acquisition for 510’s founders and
split the remainder among the staff, according to two former 510 employees.
“They said we were going to sell for hundreds of millions,” remembers one
engineer. “I was pretty thrilled with the numbers.”_

" _Indeed, that summer, Levandowski sold 510 Systems and Anthony’s Robots to
Google – for $20 million, the exact cutoff before the wealth would be shared.
Rank and file engineers did not see a penny, and some were even let go before
the acquisition was completed. “I regret how it was handled…Some people did
get the short end of the stick,” admitted Levandowski in 2016. The buyout also
caused resentment among engineers at Google, who wondered how Levandowski
could have made such a profit from his employer._ "

Yep. I guess this is another Silicon Valley success story.

~~~
jbattle
> "I regret how it was handled"

Burn in hades dude. You've got the money, if you _actually_ regret it pay out

~~~
smcl
I hate those extremely passive non-apologies that are attempts to squirm out
of admitting you did wrong. There are far worse things that happen in the
world, but I certainly hope this comes back to bite him in the ass

------
senatorobama
At the end of the day, Anthony is rich and we're not.

~~~
tyingq
I'm somewhat curious about that. I suspect the Otto buyout was tied to
conditions he breached, so maybe zero there.

It's unclear how much of the after tax $100m of the Google payout he spent
building up Otto. They did have 90 or so employees, and probably other fairly
big spending, though not for that long.

Perhaps rich, but I suspect much less so than he would have been had he stayed
put.

------
jondubois
He just seems like a spoiled brat who always got to play with all the toys he
wanted and everything just happened to line up for him... Until recently. It's
good to see that these people get a dose of reality sometimes.

------
fictionfuture
So what did Anthony end up w after all this?

I thought I heard he had a $100m bonus from Google at some point. Then he sold
Otto later to Uber for $600m+?

After all the mess, what's he left with?

~~~
valuearb
The $600M was likely funny money, i.e. stock with vesting conditions. It's
unlikely he has much of that. His Google pay was supposedly $120M, so after
tax he should still have at least $60M left.

~~~
tyingq
>after tax he should still have at least $60M left

I wonder if he spent some of that on Otto. They had 91 employees at the end,
and I assume some of amount of capital equipment.

~~~
hkmurakami
With his credentials and track record, he would be able to easily raise 8
figures quickly, without much need to risk your own capital.

~~~
jeeyoungk
Otto did not raise any rounds. Having external stakeholders would've made
their shady deal even harder to pull.

~~~
hkmurakami
ah in which case... he likely did put in personal capital until the uber deal
went through (it closed very quickly after the company's founding, like 12~16
months iirc?)

~~~
tyingq
I don't know that the Uber buyout of Otto recouped that loss for him. It may
have been an all-stock deal, and he had to forfeit his $250M portion:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-31/fired-
ube...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-31/fired-uber-
executive-said-to-forfeit-250-million-stock-grant)

------
gnicholas
Did Wired change its title? I can't figure out any other reason that the HN
title would be so different (and value-laden). Maybe the OP or mods can fix
this?

~~~
dang
It's the HTML doc title (often a source of slightly reduced baitiness). I
prepended his name to reduce the swelling a bit further.

It's still not a great title in the misleading+bait department
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)),
but we prefer to use language from the article itself wherever possible. If
you or anyone can suggest a better—more accurate and neutral—title, we can
change it again.

------
jasonmaydie
This story is probably better told with a flow chart.

------
payne92
We have to reserve judgment before he has his day in court, but there are a
LOT of alleged irregularities. For starters: having management and decision
authority at company A & acquiring technology from Company B, that you own.

And, when the stakes are high, there’s no room to play loose and fast with IP.

~~~
busterarm
> having management and decision authority at company A & acquiring technology
> from Company B, that you own.

On the Board of Directors level, this kind of thing happens all the time.

------
jpm_sd
> Can we ever trust self-driving cars if it turns out we can’t trust the
> people who are making them?

This is a ridiculous question. Any organization may include untrustworthy
people (cf. Volkswagen emissions scandal) but that does not make their
products unsafe, necessarily.

~~~
lightbyte
>(cf. Volkswagen emissions scandal)

I'm not sure that was the best example for your point, the few untrustworthy
people in Volkswagen _did_ cause cars to not work as advertised. That's an
example _for_ not trusting any of their products anymore.

~~~
jpm_sd
Sure, I brought that up for a reason. Despite some underhanded maneuvering and
cheating, the emissions-compromised cars still passed independent safety tests
and I haven't heard of anyone being killed by them.

~~~
geofft
1,200 people will be killed in Europe by these cars:

[http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-
deat...](http://news.mit.edu/2017/volkswagen-emissions-premature-deaths-
europe-0303)

They won't be killed by the cars physically running them over or otherwise
going out of control, true, but that's because the untrustworthy people chose
to be untrustworthy in emissions standards and not in handling or self-driving
algorithms or anything. You can't rely on them always making that choice,
_because they 're untrustworthy_.

~~~
dahart
> The researchers [examining the health impact from the 2.6 million affected
> cars sold in Germany] estimate that 1,200 people in Europe will die early,
> each losing as much as a decade of their life [edited for brevity]

I have no doubt that the extra pollution is doing health damage. I strongly
want more air pollution regulation. I don't trust Volkswagen, and I had one of
the super-polluter TDIs, and sold it back to VW.

But this claim of 1,200 premature deaths by up to a decade seems goofy. If
VW's 2.6M cars in Germany alone were taking a decade off anyone's life, it
seems like we'd all be dead already. The world has over a billion polluting
motor vehicles, and we're not even talking about airplanes, fires, factories,
natural sources of NOx, or energy production. Car emissions are a minority of
the total.

For sure, lots of people are getting sick from pollution in Europe and
globally, but I wish the authors had stuck with person-years of life rather
than try to state it as a specific number of people affected. Whatever
actually happens, assuming it was even possible to pinpoint VW, which it's
not, the probability that number of people affected in Europe is near 1,200 is
almost zero. So, I guess at least consider calling it what it is: someone's
estimate.

------
jgalt212
The most amazing thing to me is how much money he made without actually ever
delivering a finished product.

Very similar to the careers of a number hi paid bankers and traders I know.

~~~
HockeyPlayer
Do you really know a number of highly paid traders who don't make money for
their employer? I run a trading group and that is pretty unusual.

~~~
pcsanwald
I read the parent comment as don't, on average, make money for their
employers. Which I assume is the way that Taleb points out, which is make a
little most of the time and occasionally lose a lot.

------
seppin
I think he's just getting started. That 100m + is similar to what Elon got
from Paypal. Could be a copycat case

------
reeteshv
To me, it appears as if the sole purpose of the article is to redeem
Levandowski and not to report in a balanced manner in what he had been accused
of doing.

~~~
notahacker
The article tells a story of a very clever person repeatedly disregarding
other drivers' safety and legal obligations who apparently ripped off his
employees and his main employer with side projects long before the Uber case,
and whose "religion" sounds like either further evidence of apparent self-
important fanatical weirdness or (as other users have pointed out) a tax
dodge.

Either you've skimmed it, or you have a very unusual concept of what "redeems"
someone...

------
steven
Please correct spelling--"God is a BOT" in this hed not a bit.

~~~
dang
We changed the baity title to the HTML doc title, per the HN guideline "Please
use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait."

------
tungvietrip6
shared villa in vietnam, the [http://canhodulich.com/viet-nam/vung-
tau/p](http://canhodulich.com/viet-nam/vung-tau/p)

------
apk-d
_/ s/chill Uber’s efforts to remove profit-sapping human drivers from its
business/impede Uber’s attempt to reduce costs of vehicular locomotion/_

Not really fond of Uber either, but the author could at least _try_ to sound
impartial.

