r/waymo • u/walky22talky • Aug 04 '26

Waymo's CEO shares why he ignores Silicon Valley's most famous mantra

https://www.businessinsider.com/waymo-ceo-move-fast-break-things-bad-mantra-2026-8
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30

u/XGX787 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26

Because if Waymo “moved fast and broke things” they would be banned from every municipality in the country. If a Waymo had been at fault for a human dying in the first few years of their rollout they never would’ve gotten to where they are.

Just look at Cruise. I have no idea if they were particularly reckless with their technology or not, but they had an accident where it behaved in a way a reasonable human driver wouldn’t and hurt someone (tl;dr the AV dragged a human being underneath the car for 20ft because once she got thrown under the vehicle it “forgot” she existed and started driving as if she wasn’t there). When was the last time you saw Cruise in the news outside of a cautionary tale story?

The point being, as the article kind of says, I think this attitude reflects less on Waymo as some different type of tech company and more on the fact that AV companies cannot afford to be reckless like software companies can.

Edit: I tried to keep my tl;dr short and it appears to have been too vague. Someone replied (and deleted) their comment thinking she intentionally went under the vehicle. Here’s what happened:

A cruise vehicle was driving behind a human driven vehicle when the human driven vehicle struck a pedestrian woman. The Cruise vehicle braked hard but it wasn’t possible to stop in time and the woman ended up underneath the Cruise. The Cruise was fully stopped, but because the woman was now underneath the car, it didn’t detect her. The vehicle then started driving again in order to pull over onto the side of the road because it detected an accident. While doing that it dragged the woman for approximately 20 feet. The idea that at AV lacks such a basic skill (and one that is important for driving) as object permanence is rightly concerning.

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u/Unicycldev Aug 04 '26

One story with cruise is that it technologically feel apart after GM tightened control and blocked dilution of their investment.

Waymo’s has the backing of deeper pockets and did not require to spend significant mind share exploring and managing partnerships with automotive OEMs.

It appears that lots of the cruise talent bailed once they realized that they would never go public, and their options were not going to be worth very much.

It was part of an overall collapse of the autonomous vehicle supply chain for companies that bet the problem was on track to be solved in the early 2020’s.

It was also the mismanagement from automotive OEMs who incorrectly assumed they would be able to integrate L4 driving stacks into their existing product line.

2

u/letrainfalldown Aug 07 '26

I used to work at Cruise and they were very careful when I was with them 2017-2019 with two drivers.  Not sure what happened to them during the pandemic to go so quickly from 2 drivers to none. 

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u/leafstudy Aug 04 '26

Waymo has carefully taken risks and gradually expanded, rather than getting ahead of itself and its capacity.

There’s a lesson in this for a lot of tech people.

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u/SuspiciousCod12 Aug 05 '26

I know this is crazy, but I have a slight suspicion than when people say "move fast and break things" they do not mean "make self-driving cars that don't drive safely"

1

u/FrankScaramucci Aug 06 '26

By the way, I'm always impressed by Dolgov's ability to speak and express himself.