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Transportation AI Robotics Software

Carnegie Mellon Struggles After Uber Poaches Top Robotics Researchers 234

Posted by Soulskill from the there's-an-app-for-that dept.
ideonexus sends a report from the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) saying Uber has poached 40 researchers from Carnegie Mellon University in an attempt to jump-start development of autonomous vehicle technology. In February, Uber and CMU's National Robotics Engineering Center announced a partnership to work together on the technology. But according to the WSJ, Uber quickly offered massive bonuses and salary increases to simply bring many of the researchers in-house. The NREC's new director made a presentation a few weeks ago about strategies for rebuilding and recovering. The presentation said NREC’s funding from contracts to develop technology with the U.S. Department of Defense and other organizations was expected to sink as low as $17 million from the $30 million originally projected for this year. Some contracts scientists were working on disappeared when the researchers left, accounting for the drop in funding. And it appeared the center would have to raise salaries significantly to prevent more exits. A few scientists left NREC for other companies in Pittsburgh because of concerns the center might be shut down, said two people familiar with the departures.
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Carnegie Mellon Struggles After Uber Poaches Top Robotics Researchers More

Carnegie Mellon Struggles After Uber Poaches Top Robotics Researchers

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  • Pay them market value (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How loathsome that CMU will have to pay their researchers MARKET VALUE to keep them!

    • Re:Pay them market value (Score:4, Informative)

      by plopez ( 54068 ) on Monday June 01, 2015 @10:18AM (#49814909) Journal

      I'm not sure if it is market value. It could be at a premium. In addition there was no indication they would actually be doing research. It could be a strategy, also used by MS, of poaching talent just to keep it from falling into the hands of the competition. Another factor to consider is that now it is private the information gathered is less likely to be openly shared. Proprietary and closed researched as opposed to open research. The situation could become very dysfunctional very quickly.

      • I'm not sure if it is market value. It could be at a premium.

        Which means the 'market value' has just increased.

    • How loathsome that CMU will have to pay their researchers MARKET VALUE to keep them!

      I'd be fine with that - if they eliminated tenure at the same time.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by uncqual ( 836337 )

        But, tenure is a part of total compensation just as much as a dollar of salary, health insurance, a gym, on-site childcare, or free lunch/dinner are.

        Different people will place a different value on tenure. Some (such as those that can't imagine working in the same environment for more than ten years) will attach very little value to tenure and some (such as those that like to settle into an environment and remain there comfortably until they retire) will place a high value on it. As a result, those that don

    • That's how the pay scale works in Pittsburgh. They pay you just enough to keep you there. If they paid anymore you would have the means to leave the city and get a better paying job.

    • How loathsome that CMU will have to pay their researchers MARKET VALUE to keep them!

      The fact they were working at CMU suggests they were already paying them market value.

      What I think actually happened is that Uber treated the Robotics Engineering Center as a startup with a set of internal working relationships and expertise that they wanted. Since they couldn't actually buy the Center they just hired away all the researchers.

      • The fact they were working at CMU suggests they were already paying them market value.

        The fact they aren't working there anymore suggest they weren't.

        What I think actually happened is that Uber treated the Robotics Engineering Center as a startup with a set of internal working relationships and expertise that they wanted. Since they couldn't actually buy the Center they just hired away all the researchers.

        So the employees rather than shareholders, managers or the CEO got a fat paycheck for being good at t

        • The fact they were working at CMU suggests they were already paying them market value.

          The fact they aren't working there anymore suggest they weren't.

          Depends on your definition of market value. If they went to multiple companies I'd say CMU was paying below, but the fact they all went to Uber suggests that Uber paid well above market value to make sure they accepted the offers.

          What I think actually happened is that Uber treated the Robotics Engineering Center as a startup with a set of internal working relationships and expertise that they wanted. Since they couldn't actually buy the Center they just hired away all the researchers.

          So the employees rather than shareholders, managers or the CEO got a fat paycheck for being good at their jobs. That's communism!

          I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing but it's different from how we usually evaluate market value for employees.

    • This is the best evidence why a free market should not be allowed for the employment of smart people.

      /sarc

  • ... that they'll even spend probably billions trying to replace the minimum wage guy at the wheel of the taxi with some automated system that probably won't work as well for decades if ever?

    Someone explain this techno nerd obsession with replacing people with robots, I just don't get it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      ... that they'll even spend probably billions trying to replace the minimum wage guy at the wheel of the taxi with some automated system that probably won't work as well for decades if ever?

      Someone explain this techno nerd obsession with replacing people with robots, I just don't get it.

      the underlying economic principle behind replacing humans with machines is that humans (in this case, taxi drivers) won't be needed no more so they'll go back to school and get a better job with more value added to the overall economy. on the short run it may hurt (because yeah, 60yr old taxi driver won't become a doctor...) but on the long run its what makes economies evolve. thats why the average american is more educated and has a better job than the average chinese... FOR NOW.

      • the underlying economic principle behind replacing humans with machines is that humans (in this case, taxi drivers) won't be needed no more so they'll go back to school and get a better job with more value added to the overall economy. on the short run it may hurt (because yeah, 60yr old taxi driver won't become a doctor...) but on the long run its what makes economies evolve. thats why the average american is more educated and has a better job than the average chinese... FOR NOW.

        And it has worked so well that we have gone from the 1960s model of a single earner working 40 hours a week bringing home more than enough money to support his family, to the current model of two earners working 60+ hours a week struggling to survive.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You only have to solve this problem once, and everyone can enjoy the benefits forever in every vehicle. Not to say that it isn't a hard problem to solve. Personally, I value human life and intelligence enough to think that there is something better a person can be doing with their time than driving others around.

    • Someone explain this techno nerd obsession with replacing people with robots, I just don't get it.

      Profit = Revenue - Costs

      Lower costs = higher profit

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by anegg ( 1390659 )

        I don't disagree with your equations (above) but I don't think you went far enough, either.

        Eventually, when most of the producers (of a class of product) have lowered their costs through automation, producers will have to lower their prices to maintain their market share, which will lower their revenue, returning their profit margin to a lower level. At this point, anyone who *didn't* automate will have too high a price (and will rapidly lose market share) or too low (perhaps negative) profit to stay a g

    • This is the old Luddite-Techie dialectic; will the people be enlightened enough to either a. destroy the things that will unemploy them b. design a system of "employment" that has minimal work and maximal rewards, and let the robots do the hard stuff For a lot of techies, they spend their entire life automating, never being rewarded for they've made so much as what they will make and how little work it will take to maintain. Extrapolate those values and you'll be pretty close to the psychology =]
    • That minimum wage guy is one of the major costs for a taxi company. The IRS rates miles driven in a car at a little under 60/mile, which should cover maintenance, depreciation, insurance and fuel. A taxi that only had these costs could be quite profitable at 70/mile. In New York, taxis cost $2/mile, which isn't that far off other places in the USA. The minimum wage guy needs to be paid even when the taxi is waiting for the next fare. With an automated car, you'd just leave them scattered around the cit

      • With an automated car, you'd just leave them scattered around the city powered down and turn on the closest one when you got a new job.

        Because if there's one thing NYC has an overabundance of, it's parking spaces.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, Down with machines. No more excavators, give people shovels. (make sure they are hand forged blades and hand carved handles). Why would you let evil machines do the work of humans? Why would you want to make the roads safer and public transportation cheaper?

      How dare Slashdot use machines to check captcha. How dare they run a machine on to display this page... we should have squires hand writing these and mailing them to people.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 )

      First they came for the buggy whip producers, and I said nothing...

    • Someone explain this techno nerd obsession with replacing people with robots, I just don't get it.

      There's a general and a specific answer to that question:

      General: If it is going to happen, it is much better to be the person doing it than the person it is done to, so if it can happen, best assume it will.

      Specific: Almost all of Uber's problems spring from the fact that cabs currently need to have drivers.

      These points of view do not consider what effects this will have on society in general. Capitalism does not do that.

      Of course, there are also people who simply like the technical challenge, but they are

    • Put your speculator hat on: IBM, Google, and other car manufactures are working on not only autonomous cars but networked cars that communicate with each other to optimize traffic flow. Allowing human drivers in such a system would add an element of unknown risk to safety and efficiency. Given our fascist friendly government it would not be unreasonable to expect that the government will only allow automated vehicles on the road in the future. Once that happens and transportation is a service Uber wants to

    • A better question is why as a country we don't value human life and human dignity more?

      In such a rich society we should expect that hard working folk will occasionally obsoleted, and we should have a safety net for them. Once you have a family (much needed for the country in the long term) it is very destructive to take 4 years off and go back to school, not to mention spending a few years getting through the break in period in your new profession to get anywhere close to your old salary.

      If we were more hu

  • I hate Uber but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Monday June 01, 2015 @10:15AM (#49814867) Journal

    on't get me wrong, Uber seem like scum.

    But finally someone gets it! There is NO skills shortage, there's just a cheapass git excess. Uber have apparently realised that one flip side of the free market is you can just offer larger and larger salaries until you get to hire the people you want.

    Score a huge WIN for the researchers who were poached.

    • Re:I hate Uber but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bulled ( 956533 ) on Monday June 01, 2015 @10:25AM (#49814985)
      This. Uber may be run by (as stated by another /.er) "the most punchable management shit weasels" but at least they are committing to this free market idea we supposedly support instead of trying to suppress wages.
      • These are three people hired at market value who will prevent Uber from having to share a piece of the pie for thousands of others. Frankly I'm shocked they didn't hold out for 10x what they got.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dj245 ( 732906 )

        This. Uber may be run by (as stated by another /.er) "the most punchable management shit weasels" but at least they are committing to this free market idea we supposedly support instead of trying to suppress wages.

        Don't give them too much credit, they really had no choice. Senior management at Uber decided their next step is to make driverless cars. They seem to be very serious about this. In driverless car competition, you either play small and hope to be bought out or play big and hope to be the winner at the end of the day. They need to move fast because others have a head start, and they have a blank piece of paper. They need some leading experts in the field in order to catch up to where Google was 2 years

    • You realise that this very article is pointing out a skills shortage.

      The reason that Uber paid them a huge amount of money was because there's more than one job available per person capable of doing that job, so they needed to pay a huge amount.

      In paying a huge amount they didn't magically change the fact that there's a shortage of people to do that job, they just (temporarily) came out on top of the pile in terms of who actually gets to employ someone.

      • You realise that this very article is pointing out a skills shortage.

        Nope there was no shortage of skills, only a shortage of really cheap skills.

        • So then who can CMU hire to replace the people that Uber hired?

          Both CMU and Uber want 40 people with these skills, there are only (at least according to Uber's hiring practices) 40 people available. That's 80 jobs, and 40 people. In what way is that not a skills shortage?

          • CMU's fault if they are not commercially or economically viable.

            • So you're saying that it's impossible to ever have a skills shortage, because there's no such thing as a skills shortage? Even if there's only 1 person capable of doing the job, and 1000 companies want to hire them, that's 999 companies' fault for not being commercially or economically viable, and not a skills shortage, right?

          • Both CMU and Uber want 40 people with these skills, there are only (at least according to Uber's hiring practices) 40 people available. That's 80 jobs, and 40 people. In what way is that not a skills shortage?

            In your completely hypothetical world, you're right.

            However the real world isn't your world. The pool of vision and robotics people is much larger than these 40 people. It also includes people with the knowldge and skills who left after a PhD and went into banking because the money is much better than

            • Oh gee, I dunno, how about the legion of people who finish PhDs or postdocs and don't currently get academic jobs. Or possibly raising salaries to compete with banking.

              And where's your evidence that these people who have high end robotics and AI skills in the apropriate research areas actually exist?

              • And where's your evidence that these people who have high end robotics and AI skills in the apropriate research areas actually exist?

                Because my actual job is in computer vision and I've spent time in the government sector, academia and industry?

                I'm going to make one final attempt. Many academics graduate perhaps one or two PhD students per year. Sure not all are great, but there are about as many students graduating per year as there are academics in the system. there's your pool right there.

                if you insist

          • So then who can CMU hire to replace the people that Uber hired?

            Both CMU and Uber want 40 people with these skills, there are only (at least according to Uber's hiring practices) 40 people available. That's 80 jobs, and 40 people. In what way is that not a skills shortage?

            There are more than 40 people available.They may have to raise the salary high enough to attract people away from whatever they are currently doing, but in a country of 350 million people, there are probably thousands of people with a PhD in AI.

  • And UberX... (Score:3)

    by theodp ( 442580 ) on Monday June 01, 2015 @10:15AM (#49814883)

    ...poached Professors Chang and Slater from Greendale Community College!

  • It is capitalism after all.

    • while it's good to see corporate investment, it's a bit sad to see because CMU is established and has a long term focus on autonomy/robotics, whereas Uber is a new company that recently focused on Autonomy, and it could go under, be legislated away, or shift business focus at the drop of a dime.

      • Oh, I agree with you. But these days it's all about "Show me the money". There's plenty of blame to go around for this kind of thing modern ethics and integrity being what it is. **SIGH**

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjbe ( 173966 )

          But these days it's all about "Show me the money". There's plenty of blame to go around for this kind of thing modern ethics and integrity being what it is.

          I'm curious how you think that "modern ethics and integrity" is any different than it ever was. People have been greedy for money as long as there has been money. This is nothing new and I don't expect it to ever change. There never was a good-old-days in regards to ethics and integrity.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fche ( 36607 )

          There is no contradiction between "show me the money" and "ethics and integrity".

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by OhPlz ( 168413 )

        How is it any different from the autonomous car contest that DARPA has been doing for years now? Seems like the only difference is who will get the patents. Uber vs a corporation disguised as academia. Whether Uber folds or not, the science will still exist.

        • the last DARPA car contest was in 2006...but yeah...Google poached a bunch of people following that contest.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by KalvinB ( 205500 )

      This is brain dead capitalism. This is Scarlett O'Hara exploitative, short sighted, moocher stuff where you go in, get what you want and have no concern for the people or big picture view. When things fall apart you go cry and run off to the next batch of suckers.

      This isn't Ayn Rand, understand your interdependencies, work together and support your highly competent support structure to build a larger ecosystem where everyone wins and improves in their core competencies to the benefit of everyone else.

      Uber

      • It's gonna be fun to watch what happens when the teamsters start sabotaging self-driving semis.
        All the best parts of Mad Max : Fury Road all in better-than-3D on Americas highways!
  • This has always been battle between academia and private sector jobs. You can get funding to research what you want... or take the golden handcuffs and research what the man requires you to.

  • Idiots (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KalvinB ( 205500 ) on Monday June 01, 2015 @10:23AM (#49814967) Homepage

    If they had let the researchers work through the university, they would have saved themselves a lot of money paying for the research.

    Uber apparently thinks they need to own patents on self driving technology rather than just mass produced self driving cars ASAP.

    Google is light years ahead of everyone else when it comes to navigating highly complex city streets. By destroying a research facility and bringing researchers in house, they've pretty much just cooked the golden egg. A university has a much better inroad to private industry and public funding to work together to solve this kind of complex problem.

    They didn't just need those researchers. They needed access to everyone's researchers who are working on solving this problem. It's a huge win for everyone when people no longer drive cars and everyone gets to their destination safely. There's a huge motivation for collaboration. And apparently Uber isn't interested in that sort of thing.

    So a university is out of a lot of money and valuable education resources for nothing.

    • Google is light years ahead of everyone else when it comes to navigating highly complex city streets.

      No they're not, they're just rather noisier about it than most people.

    • Re:Idiots (Score:5, Informative)

      by Goldsmith ( 561202 ) on Monday June 01, 2015 @10:40AM (#49815125)

      I think you have a little too romantic view of universities.

      I run a small research-heavy business. Big research universities are now very disciplined about insisting on NDAs and not doing any work without a contract. They have very high overhead rates, pushing typical business costs covered by investment and sales onto R&D contracts. Last, and worst, high level researchers have insane demands on their time outside of research. There are professors I visit who don't make it into their labs more than once a month, and haven't performed meaningful lab work with their own two hands in years. Instead they spend their time raising money and marketing their results. Why has the university system has turned our best scientists and engineers into business development executives? Is that really helpful?

      Many of the professors I talk to would love to get out of academia, not because there's more money in the private sector (there's not, really), but because there's more opportunity to actually do real work. The trick is finding a business or business partner you can trust.

    • They needed access to everyone's researchers who are working on solving this problem

      Researchers in industry can't shut up, talking about their basic research. It's a well-studied effect, and, in fact, industry employers count on this - they pay their researchers, their researchers get to work on their pet projects, and by doing so they stay plugged into the broader industry, and both they and their employers benefit from this arrangement. It's a non-zero-sum game.

      And even though it's been economically va

  • poaching?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bugler412 ( 2610815 ) on Monday June 01, 2015 @10:31AM (#49815041)
    (disclaimer: CMU Employee). If someone offers a better salary and the person takes it voluntarily, that's not poaching, that's a "competitive market".

  • I reckon any resurrected robotics program at Carnegie Mellon will require new hires to sign non-competes. Instead of countering any offers with higher salary other sweeteners and, this is the typical mindset of companies outside of California. At least California bans noncompete contracts.

    Works the same in nature... You attract more flies with honey instead of vinegar.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Minwee ( 522556 )

      You attract more flies with honey instead of vinegar.

      But you can keep the flies the longest with fly paper. That doesn't necessarily make it any better for you or the flies.

    • I reckon any resurrected robotics program at Carnegie Mellon will require new hires to sign non-competes.

      They might, but that more or less guarantees a substandard department. The best researchers won't generally sign such a thing.

  • CMU struggles to retain talent with low pay (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Monday June 01, 2015 @10:32AM (#49815055)

    ...is how the headline should read.

    I would wager that none of these guys are pathologically short-sighted rubes falling for false promises of more money. They more than likely made sure that the money was real, the freedom to develop their work was real, etc.

    Every time I hear these "Foo poached all the talent from bar" stories I just automatically reverse the message to "Bar wasn't paying their talent enough."

  • Apple and other tech companies having an agreement not to hire each other's employees was evil, but when a school is involved many are saying that they should not be able to hire those from another company. Which one is right?! Tell me what to think!

  • I posted this before but I want to top post it and elaborate.

    Universities are Open Research institution. Researchers get raises and build reputation by both doing good publicly acknowledged research and by training the next generation of researchers[1]. Both of these factors are now longer present from the robotic researchers Uber hired away. The loss of open research and the loss of experienced trainers of research Scientists is a huge blow to competition, improving the state of the art in robotics, and in

  • Are these the same robots that seem to be spamming my inbox with UberEATS and other crap? I've already dumped Uber for Lyft because they've decided they have the right to spam everyone in my contact list in my name, but that hasn't slowed them down any.

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