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Carnegie Mellon Struggles After Uber Poaches Top Robotics Researchers
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.
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
It doesn't have to bear fruit, just block others from getting said research and thereby blocking them. A strategy used by MS.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
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.
Work Safe Porn
(disclaimer: CMU Employee). If someone offers a better salary and the person takes it voluntarily, that's not poaching, that's a "competitive market".
...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."
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
Those who can't understand, complain about teachers.
Most CS professors are paid market value. You can look up salaries at public schools. You'll find that at the ones that compete with CMU, the salaries are all in the range of what the researchers would make at a company ($100-250k). Bonuses are a little harder to compete with. But, in CS at least, grants cover a ton of travel. To publish in CS, you have to go to the conferences you're publishing in, unlike the rest of science which just has journals. That more than makes up for the lack of bonuses as far as fringe benefits go.
Now, the one benefit you get from industry is that you don't have to write grants. But, you also have more job security in academia. What worries me most about this is that when this bubble bursts, Uber will be one of the first companies to go (at least, research at Uber will go quickly). These researchers will now be stuck without jobs in a market that will be very hostile towards PhDs. For their sake, I hope they all vest quickly enough to get a nest egg before things go south. (it's going to happen, it always does)
-Chris
Yes they did... AFTER gaining access by forming a partnership (which it sounds like they are abandoning) to find out just which staff to target.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
"Market value, by definition, is what somebody is willing to pay."
Therefore it is impossible to overpay for something, as long as you're willing! :)
"Market value" in this meaning only applies in aggregate given the prior assumption of a liquid market. Is their a liquid market for autonomous car researchers?
You can't really apply commodity economic laws to "rockstars" like CEOs, entertainers or top researchers; when there's only one or a few of anything prices are more the result of rentierism and Veblen effects.
What good is going to do any of us if these guys end up working for Uber for 5 years, producing no useable products, and in the process destroying our best university autonomous vehicle program? Is that efficient? Or did Uber just have a huge checkbook and such a small marginal value for dollars they were happy to blow a few million dollars to slow down Google and Apple, with the completely speculative objective of maybe developing some product at some point.
It makes no sense to speak of market value when someone has so much money they can simply buy the best of everything and let it burn just to deny the other barons (er, capitalists) the prize.
(I really do think Uber has absolutely no idea what they're going to do with these people and zero wherewithal to run a R&D organization. This was just the rich parvenu buying the most expensive caviar to impress his friends...)
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.