Carnegie Mellon Reels After Uber Lures Away Researchers

http://on.wsj.com/1AH8LnY

by drsilberman • 11 years ago

78 104 11 years ago

on.wsj.com

blazespin• 11 years ago

Wtf: Jeff Legault, the head of business development for NREC. “I would have preferred [Uber] just come to us” to develop the vehicle rather than hire away scientists, he said. Yeah, that would have worked out just great for the scientists forgoing 6 figure bonuses and doubling of salaries. Sounds like Jeff didn't want to compete for talent. Good on Uber! I dislike the sleazy biz tactics, but poaching is not sleazy. It's recognition of worth.

droopyEyelids• 11 years ago

That seems oversimplified to me. Uber could have funded the research and given grants big enough that the professors and researchers could match their uber salary, while still receiving the perk of contributing and sharing their knowledge.

javert7• 11 years ago

They'd probably spend twice that much that way. The academic system will siphon off a ton of money before it gets to the actual scientists.

jessriedel5• 11 years ago

Uber could have built some new buildings for the university and paid for new student scholarships too. But they didn't because they are a business, not a philanthropic foundation.

joezydeco• 11 years ago

Something tells me CMU would have diverted the money to things other than the salaries of the researchers.

ISL• 11 years ago

In a competitive business, it's not always an advantage to contribute and share knowledge. Uber can still choose to do so if they'd like. It's not up to the researchers anymore, though.

Brakenshire• 11 years ago

but poaching is not sleazy. It's recognition of worth.

My impression is there's a difference between luring away researchers with good salaries, strictly according to their talents, and effectively acquihiring an entire team (but without the acqui bit). They're paying not just for the skill and expertise of the individuals, but for the institutional memory and project state of the research group.

anthony_d• 11 years ago

You're right, but part of running a business is recognizing where your value/vulnerabilities are and protecting them. If you have millions riding on the performance of a team of researchers and engineers, then you spend more than you otherwise would to retain them. This is especially true if your field is in high demand. Mitigating risk is just another operational cost.

Acquihires happen when the team is well motivated to remain but another company has deeper pockets. It's either cheaper to poach staff or buy the company and it can be a tough call which it is.

It also feels like academics are a bit inconsistent here. Universities are run like any other business but act as though they have a special position as dispensers of education.

fixermark8• 11 years ago

One difference is that they were able to acquire the research talent without having to shoulder the burden of the administration talent (in an administration ecosystem that is not of interest to Uber, while Uber already employs enough middle management to take care of the project's needs).

Most companies would go through a full acquire and at least try to soft-land anyone they don't have a use for. Uber has made clear time and again that it has zero interest in individuals that it cannot use.

SilasX3• 11 years ago

Yes, I imagine the HN crowd would have been at least as outraged if Uber had refrained from offering competitive packages as a result of some gentlemen's agreement. See: the recent tech no-poach conspiracy.

bedhead2• 11 years ago

Uber certainly isn't doing themselves any favors when it comes to shedding their reputation as the most brazen assholes in tech.

javert7• 11 years ago

Because paying people a lot more money and saving taxpayers millions of dollars (since we no longer have to pay for those scientists) is being assholish?

noer2• 11 years ago

CMU is a private university, so there won't be much in the way of taxpayer savings.

rm_-rf_slash3• 11 years ago

Tech we take for granted like televisions, microwave ovens, and the Internet, all have significant roots in university research, where the benefits are lately available to the public, whereas private research also privatizes profits. As the article mentioned, there is now a gap to handle research grants, and funded research may go by the wayside. People lose from a dick move.

BukhariH• 11 years ago

It's not an 'asshole' manoeuvre to pay people more to come work with you.

After all those engineers and scientists don't belong to CMU or the NREC.

bedhead2• 11 years ago

Circumstances matter. I suppose if Uber hadn't entered into a partnership first, the whole thing would be more palatable. But by going this route, Uber is sending a clear signal to all potential future partners - watch out. I just find it distasteful, and sadly predictable given Uber's history.

goatforce5• 11 years ago

Universities may see themselves as holier-than-thou, but it's a reality that they have to offer wages that are in line with industry as a whole.

Let's say I want to open a new burger joint and I know there's a really good team in a kitchen down the road. Am I smart or a dick for hiring away that team at double their previous wages?

rm_-rf_slash3• 11 years ago

Uber does not seem to care much about its reputation in its rush to own autonomous transport. When self-driving cars are ubiquitous in a decade or two, I wonder, will decent folks still opt for the biggest bully in a crowded room?

mathattack3• 11 years ago

If there's a near monopoly, most people don't worry about whether or not it was a bully to get there. (Once can look beyond current tech companies to oil and telecom) This isn't a moral judgment, just an observation on consumer preferences.

rm_-rf_slash3• 11 years ago

Consolidated monopolies like oil and telecoms make sense because they require huge infrastructure investments. In all reality, the cost of cloning uber in any city with enough cars and smartphones is not out of reach. Personally, I prefer to ride with Lyft: the drivers seem like people and I always have interesting conversations. There is an air of resentment in every Uber ride for me, and I find it detracts from the experience.

ojego• 11 years ago

Looking at other industries: probably yes.

That said, I think Uber will fuck themselves hard, and that Uber's robotics efforts will be viewed as a massive mistake within the next ten years. This is a situation where they should buy or borrow, but they're trying to build out of greed.

Autonomous driving technology is not going to be a differentiator. It's going to be a commodity. Everybody will have it. Investing heavily in a commodity product is a waste of money.

But it's exactly the sort of mistake that one could expect an egotistical asshole like Travis to make.

Uber won't be dead in ten years; they'll be the myspace of transportation. I guarantee it.

kabouseng2• 11 years ago

Much like web search is a commodity these days...

therobot24• 11 years ago

Uber has put NREC's previous employee's on a tight deadline, in an attempt to almost literally throw money at the problem to be one of firsts to market. Assuming it works, they'll be one step ahead of the competition. If they continue to invest and innovate they won't be the myspace of transportation.

andyjohnson0• 11 years ago

Previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9602655

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9635554

solve• 11 years ago

Employees being considered property. Disgusting. US universities have become the most prevalent predatory institutions in existence. Earning trillions per year and burdening millions with increasingly crippling debt, while only a minuscule fraction of that money actually goes to the professors and researchers.

Say what you want about Uber, but universities are clearly 1000x morally worse.

javert7• 11 years ago

But.... but... but universities are sacred cows paved with good intentions....

lordnacho2• 11 years ago

There's got to be a difference between poaching people from another tech firm and getting them en masse from a non-profit.

Sure, they are within their rights to get these employees, but it's worth considering whether they should think about the consequences for CMU. There's a lot of organization memory that makes a lab special, especially this particular lab.

If I start a medical startup, I'm more than within my rights to hire some doctors. But would I go and hire half the staff of my local teaching hospital? I think I'd think twice.

jessriedel5• 11 years ago

Those researchers aren't getting paid what they are worth, i.e., society would be forgoing value by keeping them at the university.

If your point is that society misses out on the positive externality of the knowledge they publish (which they mostly won't do at Uber), then the university or a nonprofit should work out an agreement with Uber to buy that info from them, e.g., by covering a portion of the scientists' salaries.

lordnacho2• 11 years ago

Those researchers aren't getting paid what they are worth, i.e., society would be forgoing value by keeping them at the university.

Of course. This is the economically naive explanation of why people are paid whatever they're paid (marginal product). It works fine for things like soccer players, where it's quite measurable whether some guy is contributing, how many shirts he sells, how much he'd add to a given team, etc. In this situation, it's not that clear. Uber have money, but that doesn't mean those people are suddenly worth more. They may make something useful, they may not. Having more chips doesn't make you right, it just wins you the hand.

If your point is that society misses out on the positive externality of the knowledge they publish (which they mostly won't do at Uber), then the university or a nonprofit should work out an agreement with Uber to buy that info from them, e.g., by covering a portion of the scientist's salaries.

Right, and did they do that? It sounds like they just said "meh, let's not bother and just use this pile of cash to get what we want". Maybe it's more complex than that, but it doesn't sound like they care too much.

chrisbennet2• 11 years ago

Most people associate "non-profit" with charitable organizations but it simply means that the organization does not distribute profits/dividends to shareholders. It also enjoys tax benefits not available to other organizations.

A quick look at Glass Door shows that C.M. "post doctoral fellows" are being paid $55K/year. I don't know what the robotics guys were getting paid but it's not hard to believe that they would jump at the chance to get paid what a software engineer gets paid.

It doesn't seem fair to expect C.M. robotics engineers to work for half their potential pay.

noelsusman2• 11 years ago

Every Engineering/CS PhD student and post-doc in the country does that. If you look at PhD students then it's more like a quarter of the potential pay. Everybody who is there has chosen to forgo large chunks of salary.

jowiar• 11 years ago

Related story: Academia pays peanuts, and I'd love to see the postdoc/grad school racket get ravaged by "poaching".

Also, probably the most important contributor in CMU SCS becoming what it is now was an act of "poaching" (of the Blums, from Cal).

bpyne2• 11 years ago

Businesses have been poaching from grad schools for quite a while depending on the field. My father-in-law regularly has his doctoral students poached by Wall Street because they have extensive training in developing mathematical models and using partial diff eq's. Apparently the same mathematical thinking is highly valuable in financial markets.

While it upsets him that he invests both time and grant money toward students who don't finish the program, he understands the lure of a 7-figure salary for people who are living on a low 5-figure income.

FD3SA• 11 years ago

So basically, the principles of economics upset him, but he understands them.

Maybe, just maybe, instead of using grad students and post-docs as slave labor so he can slap his name on their hard work, he could instead advocate for better pay and working conditions for them using his privileged position of PI?

mathattack3• 11 years ago

I see a lot of articles complaining about the lack of job opportunities for Phd scientists. It seems like Uber just created 40 jobs that were as appealing as tenure track positions. Or alternatively, freed up 40 tenure track positions for adjuncts. CMU will survive.

nsnick3• 11 years ago

These are not tenure track or even academic positions. NREC is owned by CMU but it is not part of any academic program at CMU. There are no students working at NREC. NREC does technology commercialization not fundamental research. NREC's primary product is big robots not research papers (although they do publish a bit). NREC is a lot like SRI before it separated from Stanford.

SilasX3• 11 years ago

Then it seems like this story is more "corporation raids corporation" than "corporation raids academic seed corn".

mathattack3• 11 years ago

Thank you for clarification. So it's 40 new senior engineering jobs from a university affiliated employer to a private one. Hard to feel too bad about it.

It seems like Stanford has a better way of managing these type of deals.

akgerber2• 11 years ago

40 new, very-well-paying tech jobs within city limits has to be good for Pittsburgh's tech ecosystem. And, troublesome as Uber is, I'm glad to see these scientists directing their work to civilian concerns rather than military purposes.

The Lawrenceville neighborhood, where both NREC & this new Uber office are located, has recently become one of Pittsburgh's trendiest, and has seen skyrocketing real estate values— which means houses that used to cost $30,000 or less are now valued at over $100,000.

twelvedigits• 11 years ago

Where has Uber set up shop in Lawrenceville?

nsnick3• 11 years ago

Towards the strip district from NREC.

atonse• 11 years ago

I'm glad to see these scientists directing their work to civilian concerns rather than military purposes

Is that what they were doing? Because I initially thought "what a waste... a lot of public research will now be locked up in one business's competitive advantage" - but if they were just building stuff for the military that would get locked up for decades anyway, this is better.

fixermark8• 11 years ago

NREC definitely does some military work, but it also does quite a bit of civilian work (things like pattern recognition to improve industrial farming systems by discerning types or quality of produce).

But that research is generally privately-funded and privately-owned, too. NREC is not---in general---a hotbed of publicly-published common-use research.

kenrikm• 11 years ago

In the Bay Area houses that used to be valued at 300k are now over 1 million. $100k sounds like a steal in that case.

akgerber2• 11 years ago

Exactly :)

onion2k• 11 years ago

40 new, very-well-paying tech jobs within city limits has to be good for Pittsburgh's tech ecosystem.

Only if CM replaces them. If they decide that the robotics lab is unrecoverable then the jobs will simply transfer from CM to Uber which has no direct benefit to Pittsburgh at all.

elchief• 11 years ago

At double the salary, though

nphyte• 11 years ago

Well i'm glad the scientists are finally getting paid their worth. Good on them and their families.

adventureartist• 11 years ago

Does anyone else think it's slightly shady to be advising drivers take on loans for vehicles in one hand, while working on making those vehicle loans a bad investment by investing in competing technology in the other?

gabriel34• 11 years ago

Not if the expected (discounted) payback date of the investment is near and the expected date of obsolescence of the vehicle is far away (mind not only technical aspects, but regulation, acceptance/penetration and financial viability). I wouldn't advise a young professional to drive uber as a full time job though. He might be making enough now, but when/if obsolescence comes, he'd be out of a job and lacking the skills he should be acquiring now.

NonEUCitizen2• 11 years ago

CMU should pay its profs and researchers more than it pays its administrators.

Phlarp• 11 years ago

This is the real barometer to watch-- as long as university presidents are pulling down a million a year you won't convince me that Uber was displaying their "Asshole" nature by "poaching" these guys.

jessriedel5• 11 years ago

Note that Google did a very similar thing last year by hiring the entire Martinis lab (quantum computing) from UC Santa Barbara.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/02/google-partners-with-ucsb-t...

tzs• 11 years ago

Is it a "very similar" thing? The people hired by Google will continue to work with UCSB graduate students and use UCSB facilities in addition to Google facilities, and Google is maintaining a partnership with UCSB.

The Uber thing sounds like it is more of a complete transfer from CMU to Uber.

jessriedel5• 11 years ago

They are paying USCB to use the clean room because it would be too expensive/slow to build and outfit a whole new clean room. (The UCSB clean room is one of the best of it's kind in the world; no analogous piece of capital exists for the Uber/CMU deal.) The current graduate students are going to finish out their dissertation work with Martinis (to do otherwise would be terrible) but I'm told Martinis isn't taking any new graduate students.

So yes, this is very similar.

rbobby• 11 years ago

It might also be a patent play. Create some new patents related to autonomous driving and Uber's bargaining position with other patent holders would be improved... maybe enough for a free/lowcost cross-licensing deal.

pkaye3• 11 years ago

Initially I was pissed of at Uber but then I realized that the way universities run, half of anything Uber gave the universities for research would go to fund their management costs. I remember in my college days I got an $800 academic performance award and 25% was taken of for management costs. When I was a grader, they had me sign a form that any inventions I discovered as a grader would be theirs. Bunch of leaches in my opinion.

chimeracoder• 11 years ago

then I realized that the way universities run, half of anything Uber gave the universities for research would go to fund their management costs.

I think half is a bit of an overstatement in the typical case, but this same criticism can be levied at pretty much any research- or cause-oriented work, like charities and foundations.

Usually this cut is intended in part to fund the process that actually procures this funding and these grants in the first place, so under that assumption, it more than pays for itself.

You can't run an organization with literally zero overhead; it's not possible.

pkaye3• 11 years ago

A poster below mentioned that 50% overhead was taken from his grant. Many of the universities have way too much overhead with many management layers and many of them don't bring in any money but get compensated well. Meanwhile these researchers get below industry standard and a sizable chunk of whatever they bring in is taken from them. The university can do what they want to do but so can the researchers.

3JPLW• 11 years ago

I think half is a bit of an overstatement

Nope, it's pretty typical. Most grants have a negotiated ~50% overhead in "indirects". I was surprised, though, to find a Nature report[1] that found the actual overhead was typically ~20% below the negotiated rate. Which is pretty wonderful.

1. http://www.nature.com/news/indirect-costs-keeping-the-lights...

fecak• 11 years ago

The most interesting thing about the comments here (in my opinion) is how differently the industry seems to view professionals in academic/research environments and those in for profit/private sector jobs.

If this were Uber hiring engineers from Google or Facebook and paying them a huge premium, it would be considered the market at work and I expect there would be little debate on whether Uber was acting ethically or not (even when considering the tactic of opening an office nearby).

dhruvbird• 11 years ago

@bedhead hit the spot with his comment "Circumstances matter. I suppose if Uber hadn't entered into a partnership first, the whole thing would be more palatable. But by going this route, Uber is sending a clear signal to all potential future partners - watch out. I just find it distasteful, and sadly predictable given Uber's history."

throwaway12357• 11 years ago

Maybe this is a bit offtopic but I'm curious what are the thoughts with Google driving car.

Right now it feels Google, Uber and Lyft will compete for the same space. Uber looks to be winning, but can it really win the race against Google.

Although to its own merit one thing comes to mind was that -- at least from PR it looks like it -- Uber is moving faster. Google which is always hiring(?) lost the chance to grab that CMU talent.

fixermark8• 11 years ago

Uber is moving faster because it has more catching up to do.

But overall, this will be good for the ecosystem both in terms of raw research project (more people working on a hard problem, though they aren't working together so we're not getting theoretically maximum benefit) and economics (more competition in the space as these projects do flourish into commercial projects).

In the end, this sort of thing should get the product to market faster than Google working on it alone, which will be saving lives sooner. Strict positive.

cafebeen• 11 years ago

It seems unclear if Uber is hiring them as engineers or building an industrial research lab. The latter case could mean they'd still publish their work and contribute to the community (reviewing, conferences, advising, etc). It'd be a shame to lose that though...

edge172• 11 years ago

I am unaware of the politics, but it should be pointed out that this did begin as a 'strategic partnership' back in Jan/Feb

http://newsroom.uber.com/2015/02/uber-and-cmu-announce-strat...

fixermark8• 11 years ago

I'm an alum of CMU, and make no mistake that that institution (and NREC by extension) is willing to play hard-ball to meet its own needs.

My (uninformed on the particulars of this situation) guess is that if the strategic partnership has 'devolved' into a poaching situation, CMU shares its own bit of the blame. There's a lot that went on behind closed doors that we will likely never know.

edge172• 11 years ago

The new administration at CMU (President Suresh et al.) are very eager to open the kimono. You can check out his background with fundraising etc. They are all about strategic partnerships; frankly in this case they were too eager to please someone with very deep pockets and I am guessing weren't aware of how aggressive Uber is or they were blinded by the prospect of money.

disclosure: CMU alum as well.

fixermark8• 11 years ago

Good news for the researchers (and academics in general, as the knock-on effect of this event should increase their overall market value. An alternative to a life of academia is clearly out there).

Honestly, the only thing I'd be concerned about is working for Uber itself. They're a company that has made it clear on multiple occasions that the moment someone is no longer valuable to them, they'll do everything in their power to zero out their responsibilities to that individual. Even if the triple-up-front signing bonus is a good deal now, I hope the researchers they hired aren't thinking Uber is going to be a career for them...

cpkscpks2• 11 years ago

Nice.

I'm looking around the NREC web site. At the top, it is "research professors," with similar abusive quasi-academic positions. Maybe this will give some incentive to move from short-term grant-funded or teaching-funded positions to workable long-term faculty positions.

The pattern of decades of post docs is not workable. People want families. There is a biological clock (women, but also men if they marry similar age).

The NERC response is a little bit arrogant. Jeff's quote on Uber coming to them -- well, Uber hired short-term university employees into long-term positions. They did with those positions exactly what universities claim those positions are for (training ground for stable work). Jeff should be applauding them.

fixermark8• 11 years ago

I'm not convinced Uber hires anyone into a long-term position. This project can be expected to stick around for awhile, but only in the sense that it's complicated enough to justify long time investment; once the machines are reliable enough (or Uber loses interest or funding in this avenue of R&D), expect these researchers to be out on the pavement.

It'd be wise for them to consider this, if anything, a side-move (but a side-move with a 3x salary bonus, so definitely take that money and bank it!).

cpkscpks2• 11 years ago

I agree with the sentiment about Uber, but there is a substantial difference. Uber will close them down when it stops to make business sense. A research professor is expected to be out on the street once grant funding runs out. Most postdocs are expressly 2-year appointments. Grad students get paid dirt, and have a ~7 year limit (depending on school) with random students kicked out at random points (qualifying exams, etc.).

Neither is stable, but of the two, almost any industry, even including Uber, is much, much more stable.

geebee• 11 years ago

What were they getting paid before, and what are they getting paid now?

A "doubling of salary" sounds nice, but it's still important to know the base. "Loyalty" to an institution is almost certainly an old-fashioned concept and probably a sucker's bet, but my sense of sympathy for CMU will still be somewhat dependent on the "pre-uber" numbers.

For instance, if you lose a post-doc earning 55k and uber now pays them 110k, well, it's time to stop complaining. This is a person who managed to get high grades in an very tough undergrad major with high attrition rates, gain admission to a top PhD program (almost certainly requiring high standardized test scores), and made it thorough a doctoral program with a 35-50% attrition rate (elite med schools, by contrast, typically have attrition rates below 0.5%).

Now, if these salaries were going from $250K with tenure to $500k, I'm a little more sympathetic to CMU (though even then, I don't begrudge these researchers their new and good salaries).

serve_yay• 11 years ago

I hate the word "poaching". We are not rare and mysterious beasts owned by our employers. We are laborers who work wherever we think we can get the best deal. ("Lures" is fine.)

Carnegie Mellon Reels After Uber Lures Away Researchers

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