Google Paying Arizona Residents $20/Hr To Test Self-Driving Cars (mashable.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report on Mashable: Google is paying Arizona residents $20 per hour to test its self-driving vehicles. The 'Self-Driving Vehicle Operator/Operations Associate' needs to have a clean driving record, no criminal history, a BS or a BA degree and the ability to type at least 40 words per minute, according to the job listing. The job involves driving 6-8 hours a day in a two person team, five days a week while monitoring the car's systems with "constant focus" and filling up daily reports. "[Test drivers] give our engineers feedback about how our cars are driving and interacting with others on the road, and can take control of the vehicle if needed," Brian Torcellini, head of operations for Google's Self-Driving Car testing program, told The Arizona Republic. The job listing comes about a month after Google announced it would expand its self-driving car testing program to Phoenix, Arizona. At that announcement, Google said it wants to test how autonomous vehicles behave in Phoenix's desert conditions and high temperatures.

Comments

Am I the only one

[rsilvergun]

slightly horrified that they're asking for somebody with a degree, and for a $20/hr job no less...

Re:Am I the only one

[Anonymous Coward]

degree is the new high school diploma. It means you can read, write, play well with others and follow something to completion even if bits are boring.

Re:Am I the only one

[galabar]

...unless they need to run to their safe space. :/

Re:Am I the only one

[Applehu Akbar]

slightly horrified that they're asking for somebody with a degree, and for a $20/hr job no less...

That's the going rate for three adjunct professors.

Re:Am I the only one

[Bender0x7D1]

Well, $20/hour ($41k/year) is about the median income for a person with a Bachelor's Degree, and Arizona doesn't have the highest cost of living, so they are probably ahead of the game. Especially if their degree is in a lower paying major.

Plus, "ride in car and pay attention" doesn't sound like the highest skilled job. Given the safety record of the cars, it isn't that dangerous of a job, either.

Re:Am I the only one

[aaarrrgggh]

It actually seems like pretty fair pay to me as well. I doubt it will be driving the median wage for entry level positions any, but it seems like a smart strategy for booking miles.

Arbitration Clause

[PopeRatzo]

"First, you'll have to sign this waiver of our liability, because motherfucker, if it was a "self-driving car" we wouldn't need you to be our crash-test dummy.

If they really want to test their self-driving cars, they should hire unemployed "software engineers" to lay down in the road in front of a fleet of self-driving cars. That's the test that matters.

Re:Arbitration Clause

[PopeRatzo]

That test has already been passed.

Hundreds of little 2-seater Google self-driving cars can already be seen driving everywhere in Santa Clara and Mountain View.

There are no pedestrians in Santa Clara or Mountain View. I'm serious.

And if there were and they were run over by a Google Car, they probably wouldn't be missed until they didn't show up for their hot yoga class on Thursday.

Re:Arbitration Clause

[stephanruby]

There are no pedestrians in Santa Clara or Mountain View. I'm serious.

Clearly, you were not stuck in traffic yesterday during the two conventions and the game.

Re:Arbitration Clause

[dgatwood]

There are no pedestrians in Santa Clara or Mountain View. I'm serious.

... spoken like someone who has never driven down Charleston Rd. through the Google campus. Imagine streams of pedestrians flooding across the roads (mostly at traffic lights, but not always), brightly colored bicycles every twenty feet (both in the bike lane and not), etc. It's a self-driving-car safety testing dream.

B.A./B.S. Degree

[__aaclcg7560]

Are these driver-less cars are so sophisticated that they require a college-educated person to sit behind the wheel? Or is this like a law firm requiring a college degree for a filing clerk position?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/business/college-degree-required-by-increasing-number-of-companies.html

Re:B.A./B.S. Degree

[asasdlfgnjl]

What I donâ(TM)t get is why did they pick bachelors and not an associates, masters or doctorates? Associates, pfft. You spent too little on education. Youâ(TM)re not elitist enough. Have your Masters and you didnâ(TM)t get your doctorates? PHD, Iâ(TM)m not going to risk you taking my job. Professional truck driver, I donâ(TM)t need you to tell me how the car should drive. I just want to get my cronies who happen to have a BA an easy job watching which lights light up.

Job listing violates 1964 civil rights act

[Anonymous Coward]

Google better watch out our they will have lawsuits....their job listing lists no criminal history as a requirement which is illegal under the civil rights act of 1964 (enforced by the equal employment opportunity commission). Simple existence of a past criminal record is not sufficient to deny employment; it must be directly relevant to the job. EEOC has several guidelines to determine relevancy (basically 3 guidelines - severity, relation to job position, likelihood of recidivism [majority of crimes committed over 10 years don't qualify for employment denial]).

Re:$20 an hour for a BA/BS degree?

[TapeCutter]

There are literally tens of millions of people in the US who never got past HS but still show up every day for far less than $20/hr. Requiring a crash test dummy to hold a degree is fucking ridiculous, if they want real world testing conditions then hire a bunch of frat boys, don't pay them, just put a keg in the back seat. If the autopilot can cope with that, then it can cope with picking up drunks in the early hours of Sunday morning. For extreme testing conditions use a mothers club and a couple of casks of red wine.

Disclaimer: Ex taxi driver.

You need a Degree just to test it?

[flajann]

This is insanely crazy. Many of Google's own software engineers would not qualify either, being degree-less Autodidacts like myself. Maybe I'm missing the point here. Oh well. I'll just stick to my AI projects. Because I am simply too undereducated to test a self-driving car.

Re:$20 an hour for a BA/BS degree?

[Pfhorrest]

College graduates obviously have a higher median income than the general populace, and I don't have figures for that myself, but according to another poster in this thread $20/hr is around the median for them nationally, and above it in Arizona specifically.