Waymo

Waymo is doing this right and is definitely ahead of the pack. Fully driverless cars are very far away, and many teams are making it to the 95% mark, but that last few percent is hard.

We have a real big group of drivers and test systems, and I do think Waymo will be the first to get there, but not anytime soon.

3 things:

1. There is a really long time horizon between the work you are doing today and its impact. Both that these cars aren't going to make a real impact for another 20+ years, but the company is also moving slower and being very cautious these days, so your code doesn't ship for months to years now.

2. The remaining challenges are relatively boring. All the cool sims, sensors, and pipelines are running solid. We're deep in the land of tinkering.

3. The best team is long gone. Few OG Googlers still on the team, combined with the above, makes life here more and more boring by the day.