Levandowski agrees to plea deal over Google secrets (opens in new tab)

I'd argue the opposite that this was extremely expensive for Uber.

The legal nightmare which resulted a loss in 0.34% of equity and combined with having to throw away whatever they had[0] before as part of the deal with Google is not cheap at all.

Anecdotally, I have engineering friends on the Uber self driving team and they talk about how they are just starting over again and how far behind they are as a result of it.

This is definitely a path Uber would not choose to go down again in hind sight. All to say, Uber did pay a significant price for "30 months of someone else's life".

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/uber-waymo-lawsuit-settlement/

The document was an open meeting minutes team spreadsheet. It’s how Google runs their teams, tabs like OKRs, Metrics, Weekly Updates, Progress, etc. Definitely a valuable document but trade secret? jail? Bankruptcy? Meanwhile, Waymo just raised 2.5Billion.

Let's also not forget that Uber got away with killing Elaine Herzberg. "Move fast, break things"

He may well get out of paying the $179M.

"Uber indemnifies workers under its employment agreements. But Uber has said in financial filings that it expects to challenge paying the big judgment against Levandowski, who was fired from the company in 2017."

https://www.businessinsider.com/anthony-levandowski-files-ba...

Note that Uber paid out $9.7M to Google on behalf of Lior Ron, one of Levandowski's Otto employees. So they already established the pattern.

If that amount is for civil damages, I think that would be a separate matter, but the last two paragraphs of the article leave little doubt that he is, and that Uber is not picking up the tab unless he can force them to (...would it be in the interests of Google (Alphabet? Waymo?) to help him do so? It would hurt Uber. Could it do so, if it wanted to, e.g. by hiring lawyers on his behalf?)

Update: The article has just been shortened, and the paragraphs on that issue have been removed...

Update 2: they are back again, apparently slightly reworded, IIRC the original...

I believe that any gains that result from a crime have to be given back to the relevant parties. If you trade on insider information you forfeit your profits for example. Maybe since this is a settlement he was able to keep it. Idk. Perhaps a lawyer could chime in.

What do you have to do to get a job where you could be liable for $179M for "violating employment contracts"? The mind boggles. I hope they had free soda at least.

I'm wondering this as well!

My company was retained by Uber to assist in the investigation and discovery during the Waymo lawsuit. While the case settled, there’s a great deal of public information from court filings, depositions, and testimony. One deposition that’s worth reading is the one by Google’s security staff. They log everything and it’s basically open and shut that he downloaded version control repos at the time of his resignation (after not having logged into his corporate computer for months). His personal guilt has never been in much doubt.

No, there is no legal basis for using corporate resources for personal gain. It's not a gray area, it's a bright line.

I take a different lesson: when a large company is affected, the small guy gets up to 30 months. When a small-time engineer gets his idea stolen by a big company in a similar way, they have zero recourse.

To be clear, I think both should be punished, but the large corp stealing ideas NEVER will.

Two and half years is a hell of a lot of jail time. I seriously wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

30 months is a major punishment for downloading a doc that tracks technical goals and doing nothing with it.

Is your complaint that his sentence is too light? Or that non-white collar crime is punished too harshly?

I'm against this barbaric tradition of putting people in cages for whatever XYZ crimes. I think the isolation of the rest of the society from the criminals is essential but should be done in a much more humane way. For instance, prisons should be a place to learn and develop one's mind with libraries, documentaries, education and tools of creation but still making sure the person cannot contact the rest of the society. Prisoners should be making living to pay for such facilities by doing work. You might wonder what if this actually promotes more crimes but you can increase the lengths of sentences and exponentially growing lengths for repeated offenses. A way to think of prison is just another society with its own economy and rules with strict isolation but otherwise similar in most other respects. For example, a "prison town" may have cafes, restaurants, theaters etc with everything being run by this isolated community which is not allowed to be in contact with the rest. I know this is crazy and rather radical ideal but small cages and solitary confinement is inhuman beyond thought.

The lesson if anyone is paying attention that if you’re going to steal $1, better make it a million.... but slow down before you hit Madoff levels. There is a sweet spot north of a million; less than a few billion.

The question in criminal cases should be: how many people's lives were hurt by the crime, and how severely?

In this case, no one's life was the slightest bit injured. Uber is most likely too incompetent to be a real threat. Waymo has undoubtedly advanced far from the versions of everything that he copied illegally. It won't damage them at all. If anything, the lawsuit and criminal case were probably more damaging to their progress due to the distraction.

This is pretty similar to copying software or movies illegally. In almost all cases, there is no injured party. It's simply illegal by virtue of the powerful corporations demanding laws that they can use as a bludgeon.

Startups and other small companies don't get any of this "protection", but when someone copies code illegally from Google or Goldman Sachs, the FBI gets involved and makes them pay dearly. Prosecutors use the cases to make their bones.

I'm not suggesting that what this guy did was ethically or legally correct, just that it didn't actually harm any human life. It should probably be illegal but the punishment/fines should be capped at a very low level. The laws should primarily be designed to stop someone from continuing to use illegally copied data.

Seriously? What exactly is brilliant about stealing designs? If he was so brilliant, he’d know what to do better or differently. He’d have been able to work around Google’s IP. That’s true brilliance.

Not only is he a thief, by his own admission, but it probably wasn’t the first time he did this. The way he stole the designs he wasn’t worried about getting caught. This is not something someone does for the first time. It’s a pattern of behavior built up over a long time.

I’m seriously worried about the lack of basic morals in technology where behavior like this, like Andy Rubin’s, etc.... goes unpunished because these people are “brilliant.”

I'm trying to be as vague as possible here so as not to identify myself, but I knew him fairly well. I can tell you it wasn't just a mistake. Anthony doesn't have the same... qualms as you and I.

No doubt he is capable.

I think he'll end up somewhere and just fine. Someone will be willing to take a chance on him.

Personally I'm not smart enough / likely to end up working with him. But just for the sake of argument if I was I would be wary.

He took all that stuff with him... that no doubt included the work of people around him, and that showed a lot of disregard not just for his employer, but his peers. I could 'understand' if someone had a problem with their employer (still a bad choice!), but the disregard for his coworkers to me signals something else as far as his moral / ethical choices / standards... if there are any.

Do you trust that guy not just to walk off with your work, but to even represent it accurately to others? Have your back when you need it? Not sure I would.

I suspect his path back won't be to go work for someone else. Probably easier for him to get a modest investment to start a company. Investors are probably more willing to gamble than an employer...given the history.

I'd also be more willing to work for him, than have him work for me. Sounds weird, but it's easier to ensure I'm doing nothing illegal than checking that an employee of mine isn't.

I'd hire a guy who was an ex-con, but not if his criminal history related directly to the thing I'm hiring him to do. I'd hire a guy who robbed a bank 20 years ago to design a bridge or build houses. A guy who screwed over his employer, though? No, not if there were any other candidates available.