Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

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Editor's note: this is a letter from an engineer from a domestic self-driving company, in which TA's personal experience tells a lot about the strange situation encountered at the self-driving company:

Telling stories in the name of the country, fooling localities and enterprises with technological cognitive bias, intimidating and seducing engineers to draw cakes. In short, autopilot is regarded as a good tool to make money.

The letter engineer believes that this scam will collapse sooner or later, but on that day, it will be a disaster with unpredictable consequences for the entire autopilot industry, practical companies, and many hindsight engineers.

So now, before it's too late, TA wants to expose what he's been through, especially to wake up engineers who are still in the fog.

The details of the company and person named in the article are hidden in the text.

Run away from a self-driving company

I am a self-driving algorithm engineer, just left this self-driving company last month, can be said to be "escape".

During my working hours in this company, I have seen too much evil of human nature, and I have seen that autopilot has become a tool to circle money for profit, and there are many engineers who do not see through this trick and are inadvertently helping to do evil.

So I want to tell the engineers who are still trapped what kind of scam this is.

And once the scam gets bigger and bigger, it will cause a crisis for the whole industry.

"Building cars for the country"

I first studied in the United States, and after graduation, I found a job as an engineer in the United States. Although I was stable, I always hoped to return to China for development when I had the right opportunity.

So I met A.

He used to work in a giant company, through this company to have a reputation for self-driving, looks quite friendly, even if the public praise is different, but he told me: self-driving, will be the best opportunity for engineers to serve the country, and he is the man who built cars for the country.

It was ridiculous when I thought about it later, but I believed him at that time.

He said that autopilot is becoming a concentrated expression of national development and competition, but now the United States is deceiving others too much. He is already financially free at the age when he can retire, but he does not like the United States bullying China so much and does not want to seek money. I just hope to make some contribution to the country in this historical opportunity.

Does that sound ambitious?

As a matter of fact, I didn't know A's resume at that time. He had studied abroad before, and then worked abroad first, and successfully got a green card in the United States, which is still an American identity.

But An is very round. He said that his naturalization in the United States was a historical reason, and he had a Chinese green card a few years ago, and he was the first group of technical experts to have this honor, and People's Daily had a complete list of special articles-- although no one was found later.

And he does have a well-known resume as an executive in a company, and he does have financial freedom according to the salary level of that company.

So it's not like talking out of your mouth.

So he told me: "if people of his age still work to make money, this is loser, it is a disgrace."

I believed him.

He also repeatedly hinted that his father's relationship was not simple, and that it was the will of the state to join the unmanned car. He had a connection with heaven and was inspired, hoping that he could create self-driving for China in a market-oriented way.

The engineer is simple and has been abroad for a long time, so he is all the more convinced that this is really an ambitious leader who is worth following.

So I quit my job in Silicon Valley and returned home to join the company.

But gradually I realized that this was just the beginning of the scam.

"Landing place"

After joining the team, I found that everyone believed in A's patriotic story.

And this story is not only for us, but also for local provinces and cities that are eager to "land" autopilot.

But the place is not stupid, will not listen to the idea of building cars for the country and give money to resources.

So we engineers have become the best tools to knock on the place.

Although self-driving technology and realization are not easy, it is not too difficult to build a prototype car simply, and the requirement for the prototype car is not high, as long as the fixed route on the closed road can run, it can provide a test ride "off the steering wheel". Can win the admiration of local leaders.

But even so, it is not easy to really make the car run, and unlike the previous technology Internet, self-driving does not have a real "full stack" engineer, anyway, there is no A team, and it will take longer to really make it out of nothing.

So An also kept poaching people from some companies, and after some positions were in place, the results were indeed immediate, but we soon found that some of the code did not come from scratch, and released electronic diagrams. The jitter is strikingly similar to that of a company.

Later, we learned that the poached engineers not only drew a pie in terms of salary, but also had a signing fee of millions of dollars.

Are these engineers worth it? The reason may not be simple.

What is even more frightening is that at first the car could not stop at all. We had a total of 9 cars, but only 2 of them could run and could only run on the road where there was no one at all. The phenomenon of the car nodding was so serious that it was out of control.

As a result, many leaders and visitors come to take a trial ride, although they all take their hands off the steering wheel, but they all have to rely on the safety guards to slam on the brakes, otherwise they can't stop at all and can only drive on a fixed route.

However, this set is still very useful for local governments, because of technical problems, they do not have the ability to judge whether it is true or not.

Therefore, with A's car-building for the country + technology demonstration, we still covered it up and obtained the support of a certain province and city, which is known as the landing place.

A told us that 300 million yuan was given to the place for nothing, not even the shares.

But then we found that the money was very suspicious, because the company did not seem to have actually got the money, and even did not include such a bright spot in order to issue financing news later.

Later, I found that the place is not stupid. At first, it is said that there are money and resources, but it is not that easy to get real money and silver right away. There are plenty of resources in the place, and it will be easier to give resources.

So there are resources, such as office, land and policy incentives, but no funds.

But this is not difficult A, patriotic story to solve the engineer, prototype car test ride to live, then together, you can do PPT, find a relationship, and then get support from the capital market.

Financial innovation

But capital markets are much more difficult than employees and places.

Moreover, investors who understand technology will probably know how many kilos and taels. In addition, there has been a mixed reputation before A, and no investment institution with a name is willing to give money.

At this time, it is time to introduce B, who is the co-founder of the company and does not understand technology. He is a fellow-townsman and classmate of A.

B before, in the field of finance, at first he often said that "Shen Nanpeng and Zhu Xiaohu are all his younger brother" and "you can get 3 billion on a phone call", but then the company disclosed a financing and there was no VC with a name.

Later, we also heard that the money of the seed wheel came from the townsmen of An and B, but it could not be regarded as financing, because the agreement was to borrow money, that is, if the development was good, it could be converted into shares, and if the development was not good, the principal and interest would be repaid.

This is also thanks to the landing place, which makes these tuhao feel that no matter how bad they are, they may not know that the place is becoming more and more indifferent to the company.

We engineers also began to find that something was wrong, because the salary increase that we had talked about many times was not realized once, and the salary could not be paid regularly. If asked, we would encounter the threat of dismissal.

We also heard more about An and B.

In the past, A fell out in the last company, the core reason was to engage in P2P in the name of cutting-edge technology, similar to now, circle engineers, circle places, and then raise money, but the way is very wild, giving a high rate of return debt-to-equity financing, but also found a lot of private private equity platforms.

Other people in the previous company later found something wrong and felt that it was not "financial innovation", but P2P, which would hurt the company, so they fell out in this way.

Now, it's still the same way of playing.

But the strange thing is that some people still believe it, so the company still spent hundreds of millions of yuan to dig engineers, buy a car, and then land on the ground at first, and trick more people to take the car and draw the cake together.

Later, there are two main types of people who come to take the bus.

One is people from other places, who, like before, do not know about it, but hope to land there, but they are more cautious in giving money, so they have not made much progress.

For engineers, it is also difficult to tell the true from the false. Today, A said that this is a local official of so-and-so, and a political figure of so-and-so is very high-end.

The other is people from car companies, but A prefers people from state-owned car companies.

If they are foreign car companies and new car-building forces, they are usually more cautious and know more about technology.

But the state-owned car companies are different, they are more likely to accept the concept of "building cars for the country". In addition, they are more urgent about technology, have a sense of crisis, and no one inside can do self-driving related technology, so they are very close.

Later, An always told us that X Automobile was already making a decision, signing today and signing tomorrow. In short, there will be hundreds of millions of dollars in the account soon.

But until I left, I didn't think there was any money coming in.

However, I have to admire A. at the beginning, the prototype car bought the Lincoln MKZ, which is the easiest to modify, but soon bought a car from a state-owned car company, which seems to be a signal to employees and to the outside world.

But then the car company clearly announced that it had invested in another self-driving company, so our employees began to think that it was more of unrequited love.

In this process, because the promise of salary increase is not fulfilled and the payment of wages is uncertain, the morale of engineers begins to fluctuate.

An at this time, he began to talk about "son," saying that son's hundreds of billions of dollars vision fund wanted to find an autopilot company in China, and he would come to take a test ride in person one day.

So we regained hope and waited every day. After all, the XX leaders and XX executives who came before us did not know each other, and son still knew what he looked like.

But after talking for a long time, son didn't come either. Later, we asked A Magi A that the people of the Vision Fund had already come to the XX, did not alarm too many people, had a good evaluation of the company, and there would be a huge amount of investment in the account immediately.

At that time, SoftBank Vision Fund invested in Cruise and invested nearly $1 billion in Nuro, which boosted our morale.

But then I gradually learned that this is still a painting cake made out of nothing.

Now A has repeatedly boasted to us that the company's seed wheel is valued at US $X billion and the next round is US $2 billion, which is sure to become the highest valued unmanned car company in one fell swoop.

However, no one knows exactly where the money comes from.

Before joining the job, I made a lot of promises, such as the time for a pay rise, but then again and again without words, financing is always coming. I will sign next month and give everyone a raise when I get to the account.

"get you a girlfriend."

Wages are often not paid on time, and wages are deducted at any time.

A there is also a way to be a boss, to be a bad cop with HR.

HR always finds reasons for deducting wages, not paying wages on time, and failing to raise wages as promised.

We went to A, and he pretended that he didn't know, but he really couldn't get by, saying that he didn't care about the specific business, he didn't know, and he couldn't overstep the management, and he should respect the work and decisions of his personnel colleagues.

The management is also very strange. Once in the evening, everyone was informed that they must arrive immediately. A colleague asked whether the sick child in the family could settle down and come back again, but no, he had to be there immediately.

When we arrived, we found that it was all right, but we were all talking about 996 recently, but we were far more than 996.

If these requirements are not done well, they will find a nominal deduction of their wages, which will not be the case for companies under normal management, will they?

An also understands the psychology of us engineers and uses grace and power at the same time. He knew that many engineers had a simple life and low EQ, so it was more difficult to find a girlfriend, so he brainwashed during dinner and said that he would arrange a girlfriend for him if he followed him.

To tell you the truth, there are also girls in the company, some young, some have families and rooms, his words spread later, how do these female employees behave outside?

The more we went on, the more suspicious we became, and we decided to give up the wages and promises we owed, but every time we had to go, A first enlightened us, saying that young people should have a long-term vision, that we were building cars for our country and accomplishing our national mission, and that he was meeting with the number one leader yesterday, and so on.

I really couldn't stop it, so I fell out directly, and the competition agreement threatened.

In fact, we also believed that he did not take a closer look at the entry contracts and documents signed at the beginning, but only to find that many things could not be cashed, there were many pitfalls, and the option shares involved were completely A's decision.

I don't know why a financially free man like him would cheat us out of the hard money of writing code.

Fraud loophole

Now that I have resolutely left my job, looking back on all this, I feel that it is full of loopholes.

A Why should a person with a US passport create self-driving for China? Which country is it for to build cars for the country?

And he set up a company with Cayman structure, 100% of which is controlled by himself, so how can he build a car for the country?

And later, son's cake was also very suspicious. Since he had been building cars for his country from the very beginning, why should he take a Japanese dollar?

It's just that it's too late to figure it out. At first, we had 50 or 60 engineers, all surrounded by layers, working hard to write code, and the last one came to nothing.

But even so, I still have some brothers who don't know the truth and think it may be possible and unrepentant, which is why I want to expose this matter.

Now, it has collapsed because of infighting among some self-driving car companies.

An also saw the opportunity, went to dig on a large scale, and hoped that they would join in with the code, so the company seemed to run faster, but the people who knew the real ability knew it very well.

These people are also very good at digging. The highest one has heard that there is a signing fee of 1 million US dollars, but it will be given in the form of a loan agreement to tell engineers that they can avoid taxes and so on.

In the industry of unmanned cars, we all know that there can be no limit in the future, but in this way, four bowls and three covers will not last sooner or later, and in the end, whoever takes the plate will be unlucky.

But the day when An is really unable to play, it will be no small blow to these engineers and the whole industry, and those diligent engineers and enterprises that do things in a down-to-earth manner will be affected by the fish in the pond.

Anyway, I have been discouraged, I have escaped, but I do not want to continue to be self-driving.

I'm afraid of meeting someone like An again. I'm afraid of becoming part of a layer of hoax. I don't want self-driving to be spoiled like this.

I chose to run away.

-end-

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