The level of greed, hubris and stupidity of some people never ceases to amaze me.
Levandowski was paid a bonus of $120 million while at Google, which is more money than any reasonable person will need for several lifetimes. This was actually a running joke at Google (while I was still there) to describe $120M as "1 Levadownski". Like Sundar one year was described as earning "only 1.7 Levadownskis" (he got paid $200M one year).
Why someone would risk jail time doing something so clearly wrong (taking material trade secrets from an employer) for even more money is just staggering to me. Even if he escapes prison time the stress and cost of a protracted criminal trial is huge. The loss of reputation is likely permanent.
I get why some high fliers have big egos and they privatize their success (even when pure dumb luck can be a huge factor). This is the hubris part. Right or wrong, that belief in your own abilities is almost a prerequisite for disruption.
The interesting part is how he "cheats". Like he clearly went to efforts to cover his tracks. Those aren't the actions of someone who felt they didn't do something questionable. So at this point, it's not about the hubris of the individual, it's about being perceived as being gifted, intelligent, a visionary and so on.
Honestly it makes me glad when such charlatan have their almost inevitable fall from grace.
I don’t know details about his work at Google but it isn’t uncommon for people who have gotten caught criminally to have done plenty to push the envelope over the years, with actions going from ok, to aggressive, to sleazy, to unethical (but still legal), to unethical (possibly civil offenses), and eventually to criminal. It isn’t usually that someone turns overnight.
Again, I don’t know details here but if you see past corporate crime stories, people got rewarded on the way to the end, which served as positive reinforcement for them to think they are doing the right thing.
For example, the conflicts of interest — and eventual rewards — at 510 Systems were quite possibly a major positive reinforcement.
> it isn’t uncommon for people who have gotten caught criminally to have done plenty to push the envelope over the years
That's actually part of espionage 101- pressuring a person through each little step on the ladder so that they can get all the way up to straight-up criminal behavior without ever doing anything that much worse than they did the week before.
I'm not saying this is an incident of espionage, just that espionage folks have recognized what you pointed out, and basically made it a step by step formal process.
Yes. It's the reason why so many crimes are punished severely (e.g. think about how hard driving-under-the-influence is punished). If you did it enough to get caught, especially as part of an active investigation rather than being passively discovered, you probably did way more of it.
Check out other reports - he clearly was enabled by lary for a long time by letting him get away with anything (self-dealing, employee abuse, borderline illegal stuff, etc). Not surprising he felt invincible after this. Just like with social clusterfuck Lary bears at least part of the blame here.
The common denominator is Larry Page. He has great technical vision, but it's evident that he is an awful judge of character and a poor manager who was out of touch with what was really going on and unable to exert control over his reports. I was there when Eric Schmidt was CEO and don't recall any management issues. Larry takes over, and one of his first big things that happened was the G+ fiasco. Larry just sat back and watched that mess unfold. His whole tenure was marred by hiring sleazy execs like Gundotra, Levandowski, Fadell, and Rubin and letting them do whatever they wanted. Sundar is better, but he lacks the authenticity that Eric had. To be sure, there are lots of reasons not to like Eric, but he was easily the most effective CEO Google had in my mind.
> Honestly it makes me glad when such charlatan have their almost inevitable fall from grace.
"almost inevitable?" -- really?
Seems like most of them get away with it. That's what makes them so frustrating, and why it's such a big story when they do get punished (even inadequately).
But why didn’t anybody at Google stand up against him?
Levandowski is also responsible for perhaps the first incident of Google’s self-driving car causing a freeway crash, and he circulated a video of it to the team:
Levandowski wasn’t the only Chauffeur engineer to collect gobs of cash and run. The founders of Nuro headed out with $40m each. Chris Urmson and Bryan Salesky now run dueling start-ups.
What does accountability at Google even look like? Is it just too daunting to stand up and raise a flag?
I think it's just a scenario where once you are in the big leagues that becomes the group you compare yourself to. I don't think about the kind of comp c-suite people get besides sometimes just being boggled by the concept. But if I was making that kind of money I'm sure I'd be seeing other people making a bit more and trying to get there just the same.
But yeah I think that I would have the common sense to just bow out with just a few years of that comp and be happy, but the fact that I would be satisfied by that probably means I wouldn't go to the lengths that people like that go to get there in the first place.
And that includes the kind of psychotic back stabbing and self promotion, but also all the hard work required as well.
It would be good if corporate culture didn't make such a point of promoting and rewarding people with obvious personality disorders.
Even if you think the ethics are irrelevant - a reach on its own, but let's go there for the sake of argument - how often does the money thrown at these people generate lasting and reliable ROI?
It's weird walking away from 120 million but I think I might get what he was thinking. He was probably over confident with the tech, and thought it was close to roll out. He was also probably thinking the tech was worth billions. I bet Anthony felt he built the tech himself and he owned it. He probably wanted and felt like he deserved a bigger piece of the multi billon dollar self driving pie than just 120 million.
If you read through Autonomy by Lawrence Burns, the author states that Levandowski felt the project was losing focus & getting too bloated, and wanted to disrupt it with a Team Macintosh style parallel project that he would head.
It could've just been part of the big ego'd power struggle that occurred on the project and saw the exit of many early stage employees, but I also wonder if he had a point, looking back today at the stages the project went through. It's hard not to feel like they thought they were close to launch, only to hit some roadblocks and need to rebuild major chunks of it. Speculation. But they're a huge company with a product that is at risk of getting usurped at this point.
If he thought it was close to roll-out and worth billions, he's more a lucky manager than an actual engineer. Which makes his criminality far more understandable.
Much of the vision may have been his, but what he is accused of stealing is the work of 100s (1000s?) of engineers who worked to make those ideas a reality.
> Why someone would risk jail time doing something so clearly wrong (taking material trade secrets from an employer) for even more money
In particular 'for even more money'.
You are assuming that the motivating factor was money. People do all sorts of things when no money or financial gain is involved at all. Sometimes just to enjoy the pleasure of being aberrant. Take hacking as one example.
Yeah, it's conceivable that his motivation was to make self-driving vehicles a reality at all costs (to save lives or something), and Google wasn't moving fast enough for him.
That doesn't excuse stealing, but it might not be as simple as greed or hubris.
But his former employer is no different as Google blatantly steals IP themselves and gets caught in the process! See this popular HN thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929
You want to see him strung up for ripping off a company whose does the same thing and he probably witnessed and was taught to do it there(directly or indirectly).
Don't know why your original comment was down voted, but I'll tell you why I down voted this comment: the site rules say not to complain about downvotes. This isn't reddit, these types of comments only clutter the conversation. Plus, your original comment is only 9 minutes old, perhaps wait a bit longer before complaining about downvotes ;)
Since your first comment didn't get downvoted, it's likely because you're repeating the same comment multiple times. Repetition lowers signal/noise ratio, so please don't.
It may also be because your comments contain grand claims and high indignation without much information. That doesn't mean you're wrong, of course, but given that everyone's priors here are formed by past internet discussion, it does increase the likelihood, and comments that fit that description tend to get downvoted.
However, one of the ways prosecutor maintain a 95%+ conviction rate is to only pursue cases they are extremely confident they could win in court. And sure, just because someone loses in court or pleas out doesn't mean they are actually guilty, but it's the best system we have.
Well he appeared to take files from Google / Waymo's repo on the same day as he met with Uber about selling Otto (before Otto even existed). More importantly, Uber very explicitly paid (and handsomely so) for Levandowski's capacity (and a few others) to create lidar-- Uber allotted 20% of Otto golden handcuffs to building a lidar.
If he didn't actually deliver / use Google's files at Uber (I believe they actually may have found he didn't?), he was clearly trying to get the tech in his head and build a crib sheet for what was to come later.
In any case, today he paid $2m in bail and is wearing an ankle bracelet GPS monitor.
I don't believe this, but just to entertain the possibility that he is innocent, let's try and come up with some dystopian world where he could be:
Imagine all big-corp actually have a book or ledger of IoU's / tabs / etc so that any work for each other goes untaxed instead of reporting reciprocal work done. This would be a way to avoid paying taxes to the state. Once optimized, what's left? Avoid actually paying your employees, you feed the chicken ... but then you eat it: they pay their employees for a prolonged period of work, then they ask another company to seduce the employee in a crime, then you sue the employee (with or without a mock trial surrounding the second company), then the second company settles. If this happens mutually the money of the employees goes back to the employers. If just 2 companies are on the ledger this may become noticable, so larger cycles (A to B, B to C, C to D, D to A) spread over time and in a different order have the same effect.
A large part of what he made was paid before he went to Otto/Uber. He will be financially very well off for the rest of his life, unless he does stupid shit with the money.
> The max fine of $8m is tiny compared to what he made.
Restitution to injured parties is available for the charges here on top of fines, and the DoJ has also included a non-specific criminal forfeiture allegation against any property used in, intended to be used in, or directly or indirectly derived from the charged offenses.
So if he made anything (or deprived anyone of any value) from his crimes, he could pay that back on top of the fines, potentially.
He is also being sued. So at the end it’s going to be more then the $8m fine. This charge resulted from the judge at the civil action saying “If what is being said here is true then it would also be illegal so I’ll refer that aspect to the prosicutirs “
Google has special compensation structure for some startup-like projects designed to keep talent in the company instead of leaving and building their own company. After they hit (or were thought to hit) all milestones, self-driving unit was valued at 8B by independent assessment. As one of the leaders, Lewandowki’s share was 120M.
Also, they bought his startup (510 Systems) to bootstrap the self-driving car unit. It's possible at least some of that $120M was an earn-out from the acquisition.
I never read up much on his payouts until now, but it's extra baffling to me since I interviewed with the self driving car team back in 2015 and was told all the engineers had to start as contractors hired through an outside firm until they got budget approval to bring them on full time. It already seemed bizarre to me for such a high profile project at rich company, but seems especially indefensible now.
>>Levandowski was paid a bonus of $120 million while at Google, which is more money than any reasonable person will need for several lifetimes.
$120 Mil is about half after taxes. Or nothing, depending on the crowd Levandowski hang out with or wanted to join. Private jets, Aspen ranches etc etc cost a lot of money... IMO he felt he would get away with it and become a billionaire. Fame and billions might not let you enjoy your tens of millions.
Sure. But that’s an absurd response to the assertion that it’s “enough for any reasonable person for several lifetimes”. Sure, you could potentially burn $60 million on private jet service and an army of personal waitstaff. For that matter you could also literally burn $60 million cash in a fire. But most probably wouldn’t consider these “reasonable” behaviors.
I mean he was rubbing shoulders with SV giants worth tens of billions at the time. He probably felt like he could do better than paltry hundreds of
millions.
Is he worth that much though? Everyone seems to paint him as a genius, but is his value 5x the other engineers on the team? 10x? 100x? It seems like there are plenty of smart and talented people you could hire for your self-driving car initiative that are 1% his price. Or, flipping it around, if self-driving engineers are really worth $100MM+ then maybe they should band together and work for themselves.
It isn't uncommon for employees to sign over their rights over the intellectual property they develop using the company resources. The argument being those resources were a necessary component and the person was compensated for delivering that product. Some go even further to cover any work done off hours as well because the company's resources provide the knowledge necessary for that work, but that can be more of a grey area
> Levandowski was paid a bonus of $120 million while at Google, which is more money than any reasonable person will need for several lifetimes.
There is not and there should not be any hard cap on what is 'reasonable' in a lifetime. Maybe someone wants to make money so they can get their name on a wing of a hospital or fund their alma matter. Forget the 'good cause means it's ok' angle as well. Maybe you are ok living a particular way but that doesn't mean others are or that you are reasonable and they are not.
Also plenty of good comes out of the world (as well as bad) because of people's pursuit of money, fame etc. If everyone was just content with very little many things we enjoy today would not exist. And maybe that wouldn't matter to you (not you but 'you') but just the same I don't like sports but I recognize others do and find enjoyment in their lives (or video games).
Levandowski was paid a bonus of $120 million while at Google, which is more money than any reasonable person will need for several lifetimes. This was actually a running joke at Google (while I was still there) to describe $120M as "1 Levadownski". Like Sundar one year was described as earning "only 1.7 Levadownskis" (he got paid $200M one year).
Why someone would risk jail time doing something so clearly wrong (taking material trade secrets from an employer) for even more money is just staggering to me. Even if he escapes prison time the stress and cost of a protracted criminal trial is huge. The loss of reputation is likely permanent.
I get why some high fliers have big egos and they privatize their success (even when pure dumb luck can be a huge factor). This is the hubris part. Right or wrong, that belief in your own abilities is almost a prerequisite for disruption.
The interesting part is how he "cheats". Like he clearly went to efforts to cover his tracks. Those aren't the actions of someone who felt they didn't do something questionable. So at this point, it's not about the hubris of the individual, it's about being perceived as being gifted, intelligent, a visionary and so on.
Honestly it makes me glad when such charlatan have their almost inevitable fall from grace.