

Uber poached people from Carnegie Mellon robotics lab to build self-driving cars - joeyespo
http://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/uber-self-driving-cars-carnegie-mellon-poached

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robg
Seems like a win-win for all involved. Uber can devote many more times the
investment than the Feds are making. CMU and its people get to focus on the
technologies, not writing grants. And CMU likely gets royalties for previous
inventions. Plus the city of Pittsburgh will be showcased with 21st century
tech. And DARPA helped launch the whole industry. Pretty amazing history when
it's widespread. Might be a 15 year trend from first Grand Challenge to
widespread acceptance.

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dsiegel2275
From a reliable source (my wife's coworker has a friend who was one of the
defectors), apparently Uber offered folks a signing bonus equal to triple
their yearly salary to leave NREC.

Damn, should have went into robotics.

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imglorp
Wow, it must suck to be an Uber driver around now. The only people that like
you are the customers.

You're a liability to the company who is now openly plotting your exit, a
target for the old boy taxi network, and a target for government.

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bliti
They shouldn't worry about self driving cars. The cost and complexity of
developing a fleet of them is very high. In too of that, the technology is not
quite there. Their biggest risk ae regulation and gun point robberies.

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fennecfoxen
What's a robber going to take from an Uber driver at gunpoint? Obviously not
the cash he's earned from the rides, so... his personal wallet and the Uber
smartphone? Most drivers have a wallet and a phone; why are Uber drivers a
substantially better target than any other driver out there?

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bliti
An average driver does not stop to pick up passengers ever _n_ amount of time.
A Taxi/Uber driver does. Speak to some taxi drivers and ask them how many
times they've been robbed. Its pretty common. Not necessarily at gun point
either. They get a lot of knives pulled on them.

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grkvlt
An Uber driver doesn't have the cash from fares, wheras a taxi driver does,
though.

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bliti
They do have valuables. Their own cash, maybe tips, the cellphone, etc.
Robbers go for the easy targets.

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manigandham
The drivers dont have more than any average driver... in fact they usually are
just average everyday drivers. The pickup and payment is done entirely through
the mobile app and now includes pictures of both drivers and riders.

I really would say it's far safer than a taxi. Someone planning on robbing
someone probably wouldn't use a GPS capable device to first have the potential
crime scene come to them with continuous tracking the whole time, only to
steal what they could get from basically anyone on the street.

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mturmon
It's nice to see this event get more attention, although this story did not
add much to what has already been reported. I'm not sure how secure and
plentiful the old NREC's funding was. My impression is that they were chasing
a lot of small pots of money. Maybe that's part of the reason why CMU has not
been bothered.

Clearly this move by Uber rewrote the book. They took the director of the
center, Tony Stentz, and a lot of others besides.

That's not the only case of significant recruiting decimating robotics staff
members recently, either. There have been a lot of departures from my own lab.

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caminante
Yeah, the NREC's 2013 budget was only ~$30M...

At your office, have you experienced any "lingering resentment" \-- similar to
that in the article?

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mturmon
I have not experienced the resentment, but most of my friends were among those
who left. I'm not in robotics, I do classification, but I worked with them. A
new crop of graduates has taken their place.

The suddenness was rather amazing. Salary bumps were given but it was not
enough.

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_greim_
This is nothing new. High-end investment firms absorb many top computer
science grads every year, sometimes even pulling them away from their PHDs,
but it doesn't seem to raise many headlines.

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waterlesscloud
And companies like Google and Facebook hired all the top AI researchers away
from universities. Good for the people hired, I say.

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nakedrobot2
Uber's sleazy ways continue.... This company appears to be totally amoral and
without remorse. The leaders of this company are winning, by stepping on the
heads of everyone else. At least, that is what the headlines of the last year
describe. Is this an inaccurate portrayal? I have to say, I am not tempted to
patronize Uber because of this.

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SilasX
What's sleazy about hiring people away from a university research job? Why
does it merit the "poaching" appellation?

If making competitive bids for labor is "sleazy poaching", god help us all.

Is the problem that they hired "too many" people? Is there some maximum rate
at which you're supposed to hire employees at another organization before
you're the bad guy?

People here rant about the anti-competitive no-poach conspiracies, and we're
supposed to compartmentalize that away while we get outraged at the exact
opposite?

Sorry if I'm missing the point here; I just don't get it.

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onion2k
Would you feel the same way if GlaxoSmithKline went around hiring entire
university cancer research departments so they could work for them instead?
This is the robotics equivalent.

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dylanjermiah
So these engineers shouldn't be allowed to act with their own volition? Now
their technology will most likely hit the market sooner, this benefitting
consumers sooner.

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onion2k
Engineers should act however they like. Companies, on the other hand, should
be limited to using the open market to fill each post individually. They
should be able to approach people (headhunting them) but only to bring people
in to an application process that is open and equal to everyone else.

Don't forget that Uber have screwed every robotics researcher who _doesn 't_
work at Carnegie Mellon with this. These are probably some of the best paid,
best funded, most exciting robotics engineering jobs going, and Uber handed
the posts to their preferred group rather than using the free market. That's
not fair or reasonable.

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manigandham
What? So companies cant hire whoever they want in whatever way they want? They
all have to have a set process open to everyone?

I've hired people before on the spot because of who they are and what they
know. Is that somehow wrong?

Life isn't fair and sometimes the right team is who they already know. Do you
want them to interview every robotics researcher on the planet in a massive
interview round instead of getting work done with a pretty great group that's
already proven themselves?

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nomercy400
Couldn't agree more. I'm surprised people are actually against this.

