
Google claims Levandowski launched competing projects long before Otto - petergatsby
https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/03/google-claims-levandowski-launched-competing-projects-long-before-otto/
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itsmemattchung
> Levandowski was able to collect more than $120 million in incentive pay from
> Google, the complaint says, “all while he was breaching his obligations to
> Google and building a company that would compete with Google.”

Uh.... that's a ridiculous amount of money to try and incentivize someone.

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pvelagal
May be google or any other company should treat these new initiatives as a
separate startup company to begin with, with seed money as the input.
Engineers hired should have salaries/options just like founders/co-founders.
If the company achieves its objectives, Google or any other company should buy
them back at a certain price or let the highest bidder buy (like uber or any
other company).No body loses. Giving 100 million dollars upfront without any
sense of ownership/accountability to drive a startup like effort, looks silly
to me.

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tsunamifury
They got the leading self driving car out of it. It's a lot to pay if it
failed, it's a great investment of it suceeded

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londons_explore
Leading a few years back.

We haven't heard anything else apart from a Waymo rebranding in multiple
years.

My guess: The top people left, and the project lost momentum. I expect to see
it grind on for a few years before being canned.

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tsunamifury
This seems like a troll, since in no way would this be true to anyone who is
even remotely paid attention to the space.

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sushid
The most eye-catching part of the article was the fact that "Levandowski was
able to collect more than $120 million in incentive pay from Google." Wow! I
knew that competition was fierce but not hundreds of millions of dollars
fierce.

That and his chunk of the $680MM acquisition price for Otto means his venture
was well worth it as long as he can avoid jail time.

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arkitaip
Even with jail time it will be worth it for him personally.

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bitmapbrother
How so? If he's found guilty the 680 million, he and his investors, received
from Uber is obviously going to be rescinded. The 120 million he received from
Google may also be challenged considering his deception and the side
businesses he was running.

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tyingq
I don't think it's obvious either of those will happen, even if he admits to
stealing all those documents.

There are both civil and criminal possibilities here, and various avenues
where it might happen. What actually happens though? I don't think the HN
crowd (myself included) knows.

I've tried to be an amateur lawyer before and guess outcomes. It works just
about as well as amateur programming .

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ehsankia
Well one things for certain, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be on the
opposite side from Google's lawyers, especially when it's something as big as
self driving cars, a project they been investing on for almost a decade.

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tyingq
I agree, it looks grim. Actually losing half a billion+, though, depends on
some hairball of laws, judges, juristictions, and so forth...around actual
damages, punitive measures, forfeiture in a separate criminal case, etc.
Handslaps aren't uncommon, and neither are the opposite...awards that seem too
large. There's also the degree to which Uber is culpable (provably, legally)
vs Levandowski personally.

Would be interested in hearing a prediction from an IP lawyer.

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dkarapetyan
$120M. Google basically paid this guy's lawyer fees and then some. They
literally enabled and financed their own court case through this guy's salary.
Since this is white collar crime this guy will not spend any time in jail, the
lawyers will get rich, and either it will be settled or like Oracle case will
be dragged out for a decade until Uber is out of business but since all the
higher-ups are friends I'm guessing it will be settled.

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ehsankia
Every day we're finding out about new details of crazy things this guy did.
Everyone's focusing on the $120M, but can we talk about the fact that he was
connected to two other startups while working at Google, never disclosed it,
and later basically acquired both of those?

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dkarapetyan
How is that any different from VCs being board members of various startups and
those same startups "magically" being acquired by the more successful one?

Why is it OK when VCs do it and not OK when a rank-and-file engineer does it?
I think you too are focusing on the wrong things. The startup and VC ecosystem
is all sorts of retarded. This case blowing up just gives you a small glimpse
into the startup shell game.

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magicalist
> * How is that any different from VCs being board members of various startups
> and those same startups "magically" being acquired by the more successful
> one? Why is it OK when VCs do it and not OK when a rank-and-file engineer
> does it?*

Well it certainly doesn't sound like he was rank and file, but regardless I'd
imagine the difference is that he had a contract that said he wouldn't.

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dkarapetyan
And I think board members are not supposed to have conflicts of interest
through insider connections and yet the VC ecosystem mostly operates by
insider connections.

I'm not condoning what this guy did but the reason he was able to do all of
that is not because he was being shady (although from a specific perspective
he was being shady I think it is a matter of degrees when it comes to this
stuff). It is because the system is set up to enable exactly this kind of
behavior and he just happened to overstep a few too many boundaries whereas
the people that have been playing this game for a while have a much more
measured approach.

So instead of jumping on the bandwagon and burning this guy maybe we should
reflect on how the ecosystem operates as a whole and whether the rules are
slightly rigged. He'll have his day in court but if the rest of us don't learn
from the experience then not really sure if all the wasted bits on the matter
are worth it in the end.

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microtherion
While this is an extreme case, it seems to me that this highlights why aqui-
hires may not be a good idea:

The founders of aqui-hired companies may get compensation which is completely
out of line with what engineers originally at the hiring company earn.
Furthermore, it gives them both the means and the motivation to only stay in
their new job until they've earned out their incentive pay, and then repeat
the quit /found startup/get aqui-hired cycle.

This basically teaches both the aqui-hired and the tenured engineers that the
way to get ahead is to embark on a series of short term engagements. I'm sure
that many consider this style of career the true magic of silicon valley, but
to me it looks like companies are incentivizing disloyalty.

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lawnchair_larry
But it's either that or nothing. These people are not offering to sell their
loyalty for more than a few years. The market has plenty of takers.

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microtherion
But is "that" truly a better deal than "nothing", once you factor in the
effect on morale of your other employees?

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firstpost1234
if you're going to commit a crime, always make sure it's a $50MM+ crime. that
way you can squirrel away the money and pay for lawyers.

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tdb7893
Also those crimes seem to often have less jail time

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ChuckMcM
Wow, this story just keeps getting better and better. It would be really
interesting to see if Levandowski was able to get Google's employee agreement
litigated in a California court.

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sAbakumoff
Levandowski seems like one of those "Hustle" tv show characters who was able
to collect money from everyone by using a sophisticated scheme and almost got
away with it. Hope he will write a memoir one day called "if I did it" or
something

