Worth remembering that Google paid this guy over $120 Million in compensation. He is a tech "1%"er, which really is saying a lot. That is hedge fund money.
I'm not certain, but I think the average engineer would feel more loyalty to a company that has given them multi-generational wealth.
I'm all for engineers getting paid, but in this case the guy didn't even have to do what most wealthy engineers do: deliver an actual successful product to market.
> I'm all for engineers getting paid, but in this case the guy didn't even have to do what most wealthy engineers do: deliver an actual successful product to market.
Anthony's efforts led to Streetview and Maps improvements. Waymo is still using his LIDAR research. I think Anthony is totally screwed with this lawsuit, but I wouldn't belittle his engineering accomplishments.
The guy built a self-driving motorcycle. I laughed at the first DARPA Grand Challenge when it travelled 30cm before falling over. I ate my words the next year when it made it most of the way.
By comparison, after a year of learning to ride a motorbike I barely make it to work each day without shitting myself.
Sure, but he was the team leader. I was part of a team that built autonomous vehicles too, but the fact that there were others involved doesn't stop me writing "built an autonomous vehicle" on my CV.
I for sure would have remembered some rinky dink motorcycle lining up for the start in Primm in 2005. His team didn't make it past the NQE in LA, IIRC.
The 2005 Grand Challenge was divided into two parts: the national qualification event, where you went around an obstacle course on a closed raceway in an effort to qualify for a limited number of race slots, and the real race, which was a brutal 150 mile course through some pretty gnarly desert terrain.
Blue Team never made it past the NQE, which is why everyone's obsession with the motorbike makes no sense to those of us who actually made it to the real deal.
The Smithsonian's decision to memorialize Levandowski's engineering mediocrity is, to say the least, puzzling.
Oh, I'm not. But I don't think the other Maps engineers took home $100 Million.
Google clearly thought it was in their best interest, but I stand by what I said: As an engineer, the most well beaten path to wealth is building something that sells. To get paid and not even have to do that is itself something of an accomplishment, though not one I'd be very proud of.
According to The Verge article on Levandowski, that is why he left GoogleX/Waymo: they wouldn't ship. And he was too outspoken to be in charge of Google X self-driving.
Just curious, do you have an inside scoop on what value he's brought to Google and other companies?
In these types of situations where a lot of money is involved, I've noticed folks are pretty quick to vilify someone with little information aside from the heavily biased info that leaks into the news.
While $120MM in a vacuum does sound ridiculous, it's hard to know (or even put a price on) his true value without understanding his contributions in depth.
This criticism doesn't extend to you, but in general I've seen a lot of the same folks make snap judgements about someone's ability based on what they've read from news and then vehemently decry how job interviews (which yield far more information) aren't effective at judging someone's worth.
I think I've not made myself clear. I don't vilify $100mm pay days. Honestly engineering doesn't usually take home what I think it deserves. But to get $120 mill and be building competing startups the entire time seems pretty sleazy. I don't know where I'd draw the line of "you are being fully compensated for your time" but I'd say $10+ mill a year clears it.
Also, if they valued his equity grants at $120mm and he held much, he likely netted far more.
Not many words would be written about his pay day if he made a clean break from google before building a competing product.
> but I wouldn't belittle his engineering accomplishments.
It's not belittling engineering efforts if one states that rewarding a non-production research project with 120 million would be adequate in a lot of cases.
I really don't understand how people get greedy after earning that much money. Is it just the high/excitement the comes from it? Seems like money would no longer be motivating.
Many people around the world would say the same thing about the lifestyle enjoyed by the average commenter on this forum, but most of us don't think of our incomes that way. The average American does not need to live in the home size that has become desirable; they do it because they can.
You can't set an arbitrary limit on when money ceases to be motivating. At $100M in net worth, you no longer need to compromise on a lot of things that people with a $1M net worth have to. But at a $1M net worth, you also do not have to compromise on a lot of things that people with a $100k net worth have to, and so on and so forth.
If I had a net worth of over $100M, I'd probably still do things that increase it. That doesn't seem any more inherently greedy than my seeking to increase my net worth now, when it's orders of magnitude lower. I'd do it because it's what I know to do, and because more resources is rationally better than fewer resources.
> When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease.
I like that quote, but I disagree with it. I don't think "love of money as a possession" is a good thing, but I think it's pretty rare compared to the "love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life."
One of the most life-changing experiences I've ever had was swimming in a bioluminescent bay in Puerto Rico. I've never seen so many stars overhead in contrast to absolute darkness (you have to be in remote darkness to enjoy the bioluminescence). The sky was absolutely clear and every sensory detail felt enhanced and euphoric.
That vacation was a relatively expensive week for me. It didn't have to be as expensive as it was, but it couldn't have been significantly cheaper either. With $100M, I could fly down to Puerto Rico and do that every weekend, weather permitting.
But here's the thing - I'm sure that experience can be had (in principle, not exact detail) in every country in the world. With $20,000, you can carefully plan a backpacking trip through Europe. With $100M, you can have virtually any experience in Europe with instant gratification. Have you ever looked at Myspace Tom's Instagram? All the man does is travel around the world to interesting places taking photos. He doesn't necessarily do things people can't do with significantly less wealth, but he 1) doesn't have to choose which things to do and 2) does them casually, because he is virtually immune to financial catastrophe.
Money is freedom, because you can (in limited effect) trade it for time. I think most people love money because they love the time it can buy them, not because it is an end in of itself.
But the discussion is about why do you need more than $100M. All you are describing is well within the realm of $100m. Even low ten millions is plenty -- let's say you arrive to 20M when you are 30 years old and expect to live another 60 years. This means that if you set aside 5M for safety etc you still can have a $20k "salary" every month if the money is invested in a way that it keeps up with inflation. That's a $5k plane ticket, 200 USD/night hotel room and 300 USD/day on food and such. Forever. And that's just 20M.
One simple reason why I think it may make sense to want more money is to do interesting important things. If you earn more money, the market obviously thinks you're good at producing things that sell. It's not perfect as sometimes the market (e.g. the people) prefers something rather stupid. However, in general, I think entrepreneurs are the ultimate redistributors of money in the society. I don't believe government is effecient at doing the same job: it doesn't care whether it wastes it, it always knows it will get its share (taxation is not voluntary) and it's filled with people who have no idea how to actually make a useful product. An entrepreneur earned his money by people voluntarily giving it to him for something they want. He knows what a failure is.
So yeah, I think wanting to earn a lot of money is great and no one should feel ashamed of wanting that.
If "love of money as a possession" is so rare, then how come so many people who have huge amounts of money don't spend it?
Anyway, the general point here is that as you acquire more dollars, the relative value (to you) of a dollar diminishes. That's all the parent post was saying.
It does seems somewhat bizarre to see someone so successful still behave so ruthlessly in order to make money. Of course, that's my snap judgement. Levandowski may not be motivated by money at all. Although I doubt he's motivated by weekend trips to Puerto Rico either.
Love of money as a possession: Warren Buffett was at a party where the wine they were serving to everyone cost about $150 a glass. When they came to him with a bottle, offering him a refill, he said "No thanks. I'd rather have the cash."
He didn't say: "No thanks. I don't like wine. I'd rather have a Cherry Coke." It wasn't an issue of taste preference.
People like Buffett love to play the game of maximizing return on a dollar invested, maximizing the quantity of dollars owned. Dollar accumulation is a game, a fascination, an obsession. For these people, the experience of having more dollars is not only the bioluminescent bay, it's every bioluminescent bay. There's nothing else that feels as great as increasing the dollar horde.
>Many people around the world would say the same thing about the lifestyle enjoyed by the average commenter on this forum, but most of us don't think of our incomes that way. The average American does not need to live in the home size that has become desirable; they do it because they can.
This really isn't true. Middle-class Americans who don't make enough money to sustain their current situation are at significant risk: 1) they can lose their ability to keep paying their mortgage, and then lose their home to foreclosure, or their car to repossession. Their car is what enables their lifestyle, their career, etc. Their home is where they live. They could downsize some of this stuff, but only so much: if you go too cheap on housing, you're now living in a bad neighborhood, which can be extremely dangerous. If you don't have enough money for good health insurance, your health is now at risk. Medicaid usually isn't available to poor adults who are able-bodied, and many healthcare providers refuse to accept it.
There's a reason many people have as their long-term goal to pay off their house ASAP, and to get out of debt, because that means that they're now in a position to afford their current lifestyle but with a significantly lower income, which reduces their risk immensely.
People who are millionaires and up do not have these concerns in the slightest. Going from a $20M mansion to a $750K house is not going to affect your personal safety in the slightest, but going from that to a $500 house in Detroit definitely will.
From everything I've read, he didn't leave because of the money. He left because Google didn't ship. When you want to build a SDC future and that's what you're passionate about you go wherever will support that dream. Google started as that company and was overtaken by a company that was more supportive.
When seemingly conspiring with Uber to defraud Google to a nine-figure tune, ascribing his motivations to the latter's "failure to ship" is quite...generous.
Sure, but whatever he was or wasn't able to negotiate in compensation shouldn't drive the outcome here. He and his (former) employer came to a mutually agreeable deal; how much or how little that number was doesn't change the facts in this case unless I'm missing something?
I'm not certain, but I think the average engineer would feel more loyalty to a company that has given them multi-generational wealth.
I'm all for engineers getting paid, but in this case the guy didn't even have to do what most wealthy engineers do: deliver an actual successful product to market.