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Chris Lattner, Poached From Apple To Become Tesla's Top Software Executive, Quits After 6 Months (bizjournals.com)
Tesla said last night Chris Lattner, the vice president of Autopilot software, has left the company about six months after the electric car-maker hired him away from Apple. From a report: Lattner had led the software development team in charge of Autopilot. Tesla executive Jim Keller is now in charge of Autopilot hardware and software. The company announced it had also hired OpenAI research scientist Andrej Karpathy, who will serve as Tesla's new director of artificial intelligence and Tesla Vision. "Chris just wasn't the right fit for Tesla, and we've decided to make a change," the company told reporters in a statement. "We wish him the best." Lattner tweeted last night, "Turns out that Tesla isn't a good fit for me after all. I'm interested to hear about interesting roles for a seasoned engineering leader!" Lattner is a widely respected figure in the industry. He is the main author of LLVM as well as Apple's Swift programming language. We interviewed him earlier this year.
AP2.0 isn't even as good as 1.0 yet. The new hardware is all camera based instead of using a mixture of cameras and other sensors (radar/ultrasonic), and they expected it to be just as good with the right software and then move on to being fully antonymous.
At the moment it can't even stay in lane properly...
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
He is the main author of LLVM
Way too many co-workers were forced or voluntarily tried the Engineer -> Engineering Leader route and turned out to hate it.
Code, unlike subordinates, does exactly what I tell it to do. If a mechanical design of mine fails it's because I screwed up not because my subordinate did.
"Chris just wasn't the right fit for Tesla, and we've decided to make a change,"
He may have technically quit, but it kinda sounds like he didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. I also find it quite interesting that they talk about 'fit'. I doubt he is a high level asshole, given that post Jobs' Apple is not known for HR scandals, and in my experience personal issues have to be devastatingly bad before a company will let go of someone who knows their stuff. So maybe he didn't know his stuff (which bodes poorly for the Apple car), or he got off side with Musk (which bodes poorly for Tesla).
Anyway, I hope he negotiated one hell of a golden handshake. I don't imagine the Apple car project will be excited about having him back.
Still trying to piecemeal the timestamps of who said what about who did not fit first.
Assholery makes a difference after all. Or is that before?
Turns out he got caught fucking the boss's wife!
Tentacle Grape.
#DeleteFacebook
for a job hopper that will leave at the next glimpse of shiny
"They have hired people we've fired," Musk said. "We always jokingly call Apple the 'Tesla Graveyard.' If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I'm not kidding."
Don't you see what's going on here people? Elon is making check knockoffs of people and enslaving the originals and eventually eating their brains! We need to save Chris from the evil clutches of the alien menace that is Elon Musk. WHO'S WITH ME?! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
after all, how much experience does he have with AI and autopilating software?
Normally we would have at least 3 or 4 Slashdot weather reports by this time of day telling us how warm it is. How will I know how warm it's getting today? Or how warm it will be in 10 years? Or 2 centuries? Please Slashdot, we need multiple updates EVERY day telling us how warm it is, even when it's cold. For the love of God, please get your act together PDQ!
I've heard Tesla has a ruthless startup culture even though they're a huge company -- kind of the worst stereotypical SV startup taken to a new level because Elon Musk is so driven. If that's the reason he's out I'm not surprised. Coming from Apple where employees are pretty much pampered and living off the constant money flow from the App Store might be a pretty big shock.
But -- this guy is the "main author of LLVM". I've seen this one play out over and over, and have experienced it personally. Almost every company that isn't producing actual software treats their IT and development resources the same way the rest of the company regarding career path. Every individual worker in non-IT/non-engineering departments dreams of becoming the supervisor, then the manager, then the director and maybe a VP someday...mainly because most people aren't passionate about typical corporate jobs. The problem is that people management skills and engineering/work skills are completely orthogonal. No problem in the other departments -- who would want to be some random report analyst when they could be the boss of a bunch of report analysts and never have to see a report again? This is a bad fit for many engineers, scientists and IT people though, because most of us got into the job because we enjoy it.
Some companies are just starting to come around to the fact that not everyone is hard-wired for management and would rather just be doing more interesting and impactful technical work. That's how I've been able to structure my career (luckily.) When my current company figured out I was good at what I do, liked it and wanted to keep doing work like it, they gave me more responsibility on the technical side instead of a Kindergarten class of employees to manage. I'm hoping I can keep going in this way because I've done the whole department manager thing. I really tried liking it, but it's just not where my skills are best used. Being a senior engineer/architect type, teaching the newbies the ropes and figuring out our long term technical path is what I'm good at, and companies who figure this out with their smarter employees will benefit in the long run IMO.
Well, the guy is known for compilers and languages. He was asked to make autonomous car software. I honestly don't see why anyone would assume because he could do one means he could do the other.
I don't mean to paint with too broad a brush but I've run into a fair number of software developers that are rather arrogant and presume that because they are talented at writing code that they are somehow domain experts in other fields as well. There are more than a few of them who have posted here on slashdot over the years. This doesn't describe the majority I think but it's hardly rare to see the Dunning-Kruger effect among engineers.
Ahem
He should give John Chen a call. Blackberry just got a 900 Million dollar windfall. I'm sure they are looking for good people for software development.
>the main author of LLVM as well as Apple's Swift programming language
The only point of Apple hiring him was to prevent LLVM going GPL.
Without LLVM, Apple would've been locked to GPLed realm of GNU C++ ecosystem, which meant no DRM and other goodies
"They have hired people we've fired," Musk said. "We always jokingly call Apple the 'Tesla Graveyard.' If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I'm not kidding."
That's one way to spin it. It smacks a little of post hoc ergo propter hoc though with a little bit of puffery on top. Or it could be simply that they were a bad cultural fit at Tesla and Apple was a better fit. Just because someone doesn't fit at a given company doesn't mean they are inferior. I probably wouldn't be a great fit for Tesla either for a variety of reasons, none of which have anything to do with competence.
Headline says he quit, summary says "they made a change" which is it?
This is my sig, there are many like it but this one is mine
There was a bunch of them...
Perhaps this is a trend. Swift sounds nice in design but when in actual use feels like it was designed by 10 different faction groups each with their own take on what is the next-gen language. Total half baked language with wtfs everywhere.
Not to mention, the LLVM compiler for Swift is one of the slowest and error-prone garbage even after (pending) 4 major api breaking revision of the core language.
What does this have to do with this Tesla post? It shows he can't manage anything large correctly.
...has to do with control systems?
Lattner is smart to publicly leave now before Tesla's blaming dead users for lethal product failures finally backfires. They are on borrowed time until they are barred from all sales and forced into mandatory recall due to public endangerment.
"They have hired people we've fired," Musk said. "We always jokingly call Apple the 'Tesla Graveyard.' If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple. I'm not kidding."
Is this the only thing you are going to post today? I've seen you post this throughout this thread.
No, I'll post about how your mom is being banged by the horsecocks of Tyrone and Jamal right now.
I'm looking around the office where I work, and it's just exasperating. Everyone is either a compulsive climber or a mindless drone. There is no in between. And this seems to be the case in almost every industry driven by software. With the rise of e-commerce and instant universal availability, no one is willing to accept second place anymore, so we have more false starts than we can count. Every competent new person we hire quits after six months to go build their own startup. I feel like I'm living in the Silicon Valley TV show. How is this going to play out in the long term?
Giving or receiving ?
Do you feel lucky?
Way to Go idiot...
From a long podcast interview he did around the time he left Apple, he has been mostly managing people for a while, along with some technical direction. But it was not like he simply had the title and was doing coding day to day.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You know Trump is not a Republican, right? Just because someone runs under a party's ticket doesn't mean they share the values of that party.
and why. Tesla is more of a trail and error developer than actual engineers.
"IT IS WORKING NOW!"
"Do you know why?"
"No..."
"Never mind, ship it!"
Don't forget the Clinton Foundation as well.
"Don't forget the Clinton Foundation as well"
You can stop now, Trump won.
You really just cannot expect a compiler designer to know shit about car software and to succeed in any project because he was successful in another thing.
I for one congratulate Chris for taking the step aside to do something he may enjoy better.
First he wins the NCAA title for Duke on a last ditch shot, then played for the Hawks, then went to Apple and then lastly Tesla. Dude is living the life.