Lyft

Opportunity to work on cutting-edge technologies.

There was way too much industry hype about self-driving cars a couple years back when Lyft started its Level 5 division. Unfortunately, as we all know now, reality doesn't match expectations for this industry.

Have you noticed there is no company that has yet to roll out a rider-ready AV car without a backup safety driver?

The management team (directors and above) are almost entirely made up of men who have no domain expertise in autonomous vehicles, machine learning, or robotics. They are buddies from their previous companies who failed to define and communicate any vision for the self-driving division. The Level 5 management team lacks technical understanding and sets unrealistic deadlines on vaguely-defined milestones.

Sadly, the narrative about our strategy changes every 3 months so if you are less lucky, most of engineers' work becomes throwaway work. Teams are running around in a circle, working on nebulous and technically unattainable projects that resemble pyramid schemes. We have a hard time hiring good people because all the competent folks are going to the AV leaders (Waymo, Tesla, etc.) who are actually run and started by domain experts in self-driving.

The stress level is very high in some groups due to the unrealistic deadlines and pressure.

Hire managers who are domain experts, not your buddies who know next to nothing about building self-driving cars. Hold managers accountable for bad decisions.