Elon: FSD Beta tweets

[Bladerskb]

Elon confirms autopilot team is about 150 engineers. Other driverless teams are estimated at about 3K engineers. I'm confident the 3K is exaggerated, for U.S. driverless companies.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592152556373176321

@Bladerskb

He's spreading BS again knowing no one will check him.

The Information said there was 200 AP Engineers back in 2018.
The information also said they had over 100 chip engineers
In 2019 they acquired DeepScale and picked up 25-50 engineers.
They also at one point had a sizable inhouse team making an inhouse radar (~25)
No one knows how many people work on the OS and the apps (most likely 25-50).

That's around ~400-425 engineers give or take.

Waymo for example has 600 engineers which includes the ML engineers, OS engineers, chip engineers, camera hardware engineers, radar hardware engineers, lidar hardware engineers.

Is 600 more than 400? sure but remember that Waymo also makes their own state of the art ultra resolution / dynamic range cameras in house, and their own SOTA ultra resolution 4D imaging radars inhouse and their own SOTA ultra resolution lidars inhouse.

Interesting that for the first time in his life, he is finally facing some resistance and Twitter engineers have been calling him out on his BS and ofcourse getting fired right away for it.

If this was another person saying this we would call them blatant liars.
But since its Musk, we call him "optimistic" or just "exaggerating".

This quote will forever be used for Tesla propaganda in every AV discussion from now on. You will see his fanbase saying "but Waymo has 3000 engineers to Tesla's 150"

Yeah, I think the 3,000 number is exaggerated. For example, Waymo is estimated to have around 610 AV engineers in 2019, and Cruise is estimated to have around 900 AV engineers in 2021. So while Waymo and Cruise have a lot more AV engineers than Tesla, it is nowhere near 3,000.

I do think Elon has the right to proud of the Tesla AP/FSD team. For only 150 engineers, they have accomplished a lot IMO.

Those numbers include all software and hardware engineers.
Its more like ~400 Tesla engineers to Waymo's ~600.
And OfCourse Waymo has more, they make everything inhouse (software, compute, camera, radar, lidar, etc).
Tesla just takes stuff off the selves (camera, radar and ultrasonic)

@EVNow

 

[JupiterMan]

He's spreading BS again knowing no one will check him.

The Information said there was 200 AP Engineers back in 2018.
The information also said they had over 100 chip engineers
In 2019 they acquired DeepScale and picked up 25-50 engineers.
They also at one point had a sizable inhouse team making an inhouse radar (~25)
No one knows how many people work on the OS and the apps (most likely 25-50).

That's around ~400-425 engineers give or take.

I read that as the Autopilot AI software team, i.e. dealing with the NNs and self driving software.

Dojo, Hardware, chip design, infotainment will be separate teams.

looks legit to me.

 

[Bouba]

I read that as the Autopilot AI software team, i.e. dealing with the NNs and self driving software.

Dojo, Hardware, chip design, infotainment will be separate teams.

looks legit to me.

I agree..and I think that it must be true in all walks of life...a small group of talented, driven, well led people can outperform a large group who aren’t well motivated or as goal orientated.

 

[aronth5]

@Bladerskb The main point I got out of Elon's quote was his stated philosophy above which has been my general experience working in IT. Forget the argument over numbers. Do you agree with his philosophy or not?

 

[kabin]

Interesting that for the first time in his life, he is finally facing some resistance and Twitter engineers have been calling him out on his BS and ofcourse getting fired right away for it.

More likely he was one of the many self-centered, remote working Twitter numb skulls deserving to be let go.

 

[Yelobird]

He's spreading BS again knowing no one will check him.

The Information said there was 200 AP Engineers back in 2018.
The information also said they had over 100 chip engineers
In 2019 they acquired DeepScale and picked up 25-50 engineers.
They also at one point had a sizable inhouse team making an inhouse radar (~25)
No one knows how many people work on the OS and the apps (most likely 25-50).

That's around ~400-425 engineers give or take.

Waymo for example has 600 engineers which includes the ML engineers, OS engineers, chip engineers, camera hardware engineers, radar hardware engineers, lidar hardware engineers.

Is 600 more than 400? sure but remember that Waymo also makes their own state of the art ultra resolution / dynamic range cameras in house, and their own SOTA ultra resolution 4D imaging radars inhouse and their own SOTA ultra resolution lidars inhouse.

Interesting that for the first time in his life, he is finally facing some resistance and Twitter engineers have been calling him out on his BS and ofcourse getting fired right away for it.

If this was another person saying this we would call them blatant liars.
But since its Musk, we call him "optimistic" or just "exaggerating".

This quote will forever be used for Tesla propaganda in every AV discussion from now on. You will see his fanbase saying "but Waymo has 3000 engineers to Tesla's 150"


Those numbers include all software and hardware engineers.
Its more like ~400 Tesla engineers to Waymo's ~600.
And OfCourse Waymo has more, they make everything inhouse (software, compute, camera, radar, lidar, etc).
Tesla just takes stuff off the selves (camera, radar and ultrasonic)

@EVNow

Many like to lock in on one data point in history ignoring that things change. What was said in 2018-19 can change. Recall a layoff of xxx engineers a year ago?

 

[diplomat33]

I agree..and I think that it must be true in all walks of life...a small group of talented, driven, well led people can outperform a large group who aren’t well motivated or as goal orientated.

Yes of course, I would agree with that statement. I certainly agree with Elon's general philosophy that a small motivated team is better than a large and unmotivated one. My issue is that Elon used bad and misleading numbers to try to make his point. He also implied that the competition is made up of large and unmotivated teams which is completely false. If you look at the AV competition like Waymo or Cruise, they don't have teams of 3,000 unmotivated engineers, as Elon implies. They have a total of 600-900 AV engineers who are highly motivated and very goal oriented. And they divide their projects into smaller teams who are highly motivated and goal oriented. The truth is that the AV competition also believes in small, highly motivated, goal oriented, teams. Using small, highly motivated and goal oriented teams is not some new idea that only Tesla is doing. LOL. Basically, Elon wants to praise the Tesla FSD team, which is great, but lies about the competition to do it. I have no issue with Elon praising the Tesla team. There is just no need to lie to do it.

 

[sleepydoc]

Many like to lock in on one data point in history ignoring that things change. What was said in 2018-19 can change. Recall a layoff of xxx engineers a year ago?

wasn't that people related to object recognition, not directly on the self driving team?

 

[Bladerskb]

Many like to lock in on one data point in history ignoring that things change. What was said in 2018-19 can change. Recall a layoff of xxx engineers a year ago?

Those are data labelers not engineers. And the engineer count has only gone up. There has been massive hiring sprees (ala the point of AI days).

 

[EVNow]

The Information said there was 200 AP Engineers back in 2018.
The information also said they had over 100 chip engineers
In 2019 they acquired DeepScale and picked up 25-50 engineers.
They also at one point had a sizable inhouse team making an inhouse radar (~25)
No one knows how many people work on the OS and the apps (most likely 25-50).

That's around ~400-425 engineers give or take.

I was thinking about this. What kind of engineers is one counting - hardware, Tesla car apps ..... I have no idea whether that is 150 or as you claim 450. I don't know whether Waymo is 3,000 or 600 either. My guess is 150 is the number of engineers actually working on AP / AI. Basically everyone whose work was represented at AI day. Not sure that includes Dojo. Waymo probably has 3k total people (not just engineers) ?

It would be great if someone has reliable, current links. 4 year old numbers in bay area are very unreliable, given the churn.

@Bladerskb The main point I got out of Elon's quote was his stated philosophy above which has been my general experience working in IT. Forget the argument over numbers. Do you agree with his philosophy or not?

I think philosophically it makes sense. But to me its duh ....

More important question is how do you make sure ALL your engineers are top notch and they stay motivated ?

Definitely not by getting into political partisan fights, for sure.

 

[Bladerskb]

More likely he was one of the many self-centered, remote working Twitter numb skulls deserving to be let go.

Really? all three senior software engineers who came out and said his statement was laughably wrong and explained why were fired immediately.
Then there's this..

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592539948745650176

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592540195391688706

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592543795597709313

 

[EVNow]

Really? all three senior software engineers who came out and said his statement was laughably wrong and explained why were fired immediately.
Then there's this..

Absolutely.

In any company if you publicly challenge your CEO, you will be fired. There are clear policies that restrict what you can post in social media that all companies have (I'm sure Twitter has too).

I think the twitter employees who are not onboard with Musk as the new owner should just quit. Not stay there are bad mouth. They got double/triple for their stock, take the money and leave.

Afterall if they are good, experienced engineers shouldn't be difficult getting another good job.

We are not talking about older blue-collar workers who might find it difficult to get another job here.

ps : There is a separate Twitter thread, we should use that for twitter related stuff. Keep this thread for AP/FSD.

 

[Bladerskb]

Absolutely.

In any company if you publicly challenge your CEO, you will be fired.

I think the twitter employees who are not onboard with Musk as the new owner should just quit. Not stay there are bad mouth. They got double/triple for their stock, take the money and leave.

Afterall if they are good, experienced engineers shouldn't be difficult getting another good job.

We are not talking about older blue-collar workers who might find it difficult to get another job here.

Not just publically, also in private slack/aka teams team chat.

This is exactly why Elon can spend 7 years spreading BS about L5 happening this year, next year and not a single engineer says a word. Although they all know he is making up lies. Because if anyone says anything even in internal chats. They would be fired instantly.

That's like me getting fired while on Teams group chat with my fellow engineers talking about how our CEO misrepresented our work/technology and doesn't know what he's talking about.

Wait this happens EVERY DAY in almost every company. And yet no one gets in trouble let alone get fired over it. You say one word about how Elon is wrong. Booom, you're gone!

 

[EVNow]

Not just publically, also in private slack/aka teams team chat.

This is exactly why Elon can spend 7 years spreading BS about L5 happening this year, next year and not a single engineer says a word. Although they all know he is making up lies. Because if anyone says anything even in internal chats. They would be fired instantly.

That's like me getting fired while on Teams group chat with my fellow engineers talking about how our CEO misrepresented our work/technology and doesn't know what he's talking about.

Wait this happens EVERY DAY in almost every company. And yet no one gets in trouble let alone get fired over it. You say one word about how Elon is wrong. Booom, you're gone!

Try it after a company has gone private with a new owner. Then, let us know how it worked. Companies are not democracies with "free speech" - they are autocratic.

Moreover, if people continuously leak what is written in internal slack, its not internal anymore.

Essentially, there are a group of engineers at Twitter who don't like Musk (and what he is saying) who are going to keep cribbing about him. How exactly are they going to be productive, motivated employees ? They will just bring down the morale and affect productivity of everyone. What is the point of taking a company private if you can't fire such people ?

ps : Last post from me on this. If you want we can continue in the twitter thread.

Elon & Twitter

Behavior like this from an employee in a public venue screams dismal morale IMO, which isn't particularly surprising considering what has happened and is happening But this is also just a really bizarre method of communication for people in the same company much less the CEO and an employee...

teslamotorsclub.com

 

[Bladerskb]

Try it after a company has gone private with a new owner. Then, let us know how it worked. Companies are not democracies with "free speech" - they are autocratic.

Moreover, if people continuously leak what is written in internal slack, its not internal anymore.

Essentially, there are a group of engineers at Twitter who don't like Musk (and what he is saying) who are going to keep cribbing about him. How exactly are they going to be productive, motivated employees ? They will just bring down the morale and affect productivity of everyone. What is the point of taking a company private if you can't fire such people ?

ps : Last post from me on this. If you want we can continue in the twitter thread.

Elon & Twitter

Behavior like this from an employee in a public venue screams dismal morale IMO, which isn't particularly surprising considering what has happened and is happening But this is also just a really bizarre method of communication for people in the same company much less the CEO and an employee...

teslamotorsclub.com

This is literally how every company works. Not every one likes the CEO and if leadership says something incorrect especially if its technical, people will have opinions about it and share it. I have worked for over 4 tech companies, some private, some public. One was even bought out by another bigger company and there were internal and open revolt. Yet not a single person has ever been fired because they didn't knee to the CEO. But ofcourse for Elon, its 100% worship. Its a full-on dictatorship. It doesn't matter if its a public or private company. Alot of people let their love for Elon completely cloud their judgment. Maybe some day you'll see it, but not today.

 

[Knightshade]

I have worked for over 4 tech companies

"over 4"?

who talks like that?

Anyway I've been at multiple tech companies where someone got fired doing reply all instead of just reply and being critical of an executive (or even a peer) in a fashion more public than it needed to be.... so this is not unusual at all

 

[BobDolesGhost]

I can explain it to you in seven letters, of which three are t.

Titles?

My mind lives under the gutter... heh

 

[Yelobird]

This is literally how every company works. Not every one likes the CEO and if leadership says something incorrect especially if its technical, people will have opinions about it and share it. I have worked for over 4 tech companies, some private, some public. One was even bought out by another bigger company and there were internal and open revolt. Yet not a single person has ever been fired because they didn't knee to the CEO. But ofcourse for Elon, its 100% worship. Its a full-on dictatorship. It doesn't matter if its a public or private company. Alot of people let their love for Elon completely cloud their judgment. Maybe some day you'll see it, but not today.

Your certain how company policy works yet you’ve bounced to 4 or more tech companies lol. Possibly you judged those CEO’s by assumption like you do Musk?

 

[aronth5]

I suspect Twitter employees will find Elon's style very difficult. in 2018 he was criticized for what he did to the Starlink team but now look where Starlink is compared to competitors. If Twitter does well going forward few people will care how he did it. Just sayin.
Musk shakes up SpaceX in race to make satellite launch window: sources

 

[aronth5]

Not many CEO's would admit their mistake. Good for Elon.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592618665933156352