Junli Gu Tesla's Lead Machine Learning Manager/Engineer Quits!

[Bladerskb]

Here's Electrek's (WARNING this is a Tesla shill....ahem fansite) article when she was hired.

Tesla hires machine learning expert from AMD to lead the Autopilot’s self-learning tech


Here's her linkined page https://www.linkedin.com/in/gujunli

As the tech lead for machine learning, I am responsible for creating Tesla's machine learning roadmap and directions. I drive the directions forward as the architect for the machine learning software, and lead team to innovate and implement self-driving technology. My challenges are big and Tesla rhythm is intense. But I love it. This is the exact platform to fulfill my impact in AI domain and utilized my passion to drive core technology forward.

I built and lead the machine learning team (both manager and technical leader ) at Tesla Autopilot. Our mission is to build the vertical machine learning stack and product to solve the autonomous driving problem. We have the coolest challenges among the cutting edge AI domain. My scope is to create the AI roadmap, lead the team to innovate the algorithms, implement them into high quality autopilot product and launches product release regularly. We also own the applied machine learning projects across tesla. My team's scope includes but not limited to the following:
1. Innovating machine learning algorithms to drive the core technology of self-driving, to achieve large scale of object detection, lane detection and modeling various of complex driving scenarios;
2. Development of the high performance machine learning inference engine in the car. I designed and developed the industry leading inference SW which enabled autopilot to run on tesla's hw2 cars;
3. Building large scale of data collection/definition and training software and system to empower algorithm development and evolvement;
4. high quality product development and product shipping to Tesla customer fleet;

Looks like the rats are jumping ships quicker than you can say cheese!

 

[patrick40363]

Why do you care? perhaps you can apply for the job.

 

[croman]

@Bladerskb has lost it. People leave tech companies all the time. No one wrote that AMD was tanking after key personnel left. Its just the way of the Valley. If more critical personnel leave, then it might be an issue. Otherwise, perhaps Karpathy has other candidates he prefers. Speculation is pointless.

 

[M0DEL³]

Uhhh .... You realize you are responding to a blog post that is from Feb 2016 - right?

 

[mongo]

Uhhh .... You realize you are responding to a blog post that is from Feb 2016 - right?

Yes, they do (with added emphasis):

Here's Electrek's (WARNING this is a Tesla shill....ahem fansite) article when she was hired.

 

[Pale_Rider]

She went from Tesla Staff Engineer to a VP at another company. I wouldn't consider a promotion to be "jumping ship"...

 

[Matias]

Turnover rate in Tesla’s AP team is very fast. OTOH, results are not.

 

[Matias]

BTW, this thread is in the wrong section.

 

[Leopold Stotch]

When nascar goes autonomous. I may start to watch it.

 

[Bladerskb]

She went from Tesla Staff Engineer to a VP at another company. I wouldn't consider a promotion to be "jumping ship"...

She wasn't some regular software engineer. She was the manager of the machine learning team and also their technical lead and architect which makes her a senior staff engineer aswell (aka senior software engineer).

She quit because what she was doing was equivalent to a job of a director and other companies who she interviewed for took notice and she went somewhere else to get that title.

This is a huge loss for Tesla seeing as she developed all of Autopilot current backend systems.

VP is roughly equivalent to a Director position.

 

[Bladerskb]

@Bladerskb has lost it. People leave tech companies all the time. No one wrote that AMD was tanking after key personnel left. Its just the way of the Valley. If more critical personnel leave, then it might be an issue. Otherwise, perhaps Karpathy has other candidates he prefers. Speculation is pointless.

If Electrek can make a hype article when someone gets hired i should be able to make a reality check post after they quit.

Anyway what you mean by "If more critical personnel leave" seriously? when almost a dozen heads and leads have left in less than 12 months. The head/director of autopilot position has been changed like 4 times in the last year.

 

[croman]

If Electrek can make a hype article when someone gets hired i should be able to make a reality check post after they quit.

Anyway what you mean by "If more critical personnel leave" seriously? when almost a dozen heads and leads have left in less than 12 months. The head/director of autopilot position has been changed like 4 times in the last year.

Other than the head/director changes (which all have their own story), the team's personnel migration is normal for this sector and the fact it is bleeding edge tech. Also the fact that this particular engineer left for another position in a Chinese start up makes sense to me and does not forbode anything serious. I believe the only hype is your hype about smoke where there is no fire.

 

[ucmndd]

If Electrek can make a hype article when someone gets hired i should be able to make a reality check post after they quit.

Not denying that Electrek is basically a Tesla hype site that gets 90% of their content by reading TMC, but I can recall several articles over the last year about high profile departures.

 

[patrick40363]

If Electrek can make a hype article when someone gets hired i should be able to make a reality check post after they quit.

Anyway what you mean by "If more critical personnel leave" seriously? when almost a dozen heads and leads have left in less than 12 months. The head/director of autopilot position has been changed like 4 times in the last year.

So how does this affect you? There is another guy who posts nothing but negative stuff about Tesla and he has no skin in the game either.

 

[ILLCOMM]

She quit because what she was doing was equivalent to a job of a director and other companies who she interviewed for took notice and she went somewhere else to get that title.

She personally told you why she quit? [As an aside, title hunting is a ****ing horrible reason to leave and implies a lot about what's going on here.]

This is a huge loss for Tesla seeing as she developed all of Autopilot current backend systems.

You know for a fact she personally developed "all of Autopilot current backend systems." You know for a fact that this is regretted attrition? You were part of the performance review process (which not-so-coincidentally just completed)?

LOL.

 

[ecarfan]

Looks like the rats are jumping ships quicker than you can say cheese!

The person in question was at Tesla for a year and 8 months and then left for a similar job in another company. This happens all the time in high tech companies pursuing cutting edge technologies. Your breathless over-hyping of this minor event is unwarranted and your assertions are questionable, as @ILLCOMM has correctly pointed out.

 

[efusco]

Old news, appears to be trolling. Closing this thread.

 

[efusco]

Apologies, there is new news here in that the person quit fairly recently. Still feel that this is an inappropriate post with the description of "shilling" and the "rats jumping ship comments"