+1, this place has (mostly) managed to retain what made it special despite becoming more mainstream due the popularity of the SWE career in the last decade.
I don't think it's comparable to Theranos. He took over a company w/a heavily (but still in a pre launch) product in its "beta" phase and was chosen for an obvious reason (get the tech into cars). He doesn't have the technical chops to understand the tech enough to know whether it's ready for prime-time or not aside from looking at metrics some of his engineering subordinates gave him.
Elizabeth Holmes didn't have a product which functioned like she claimed at all (nothing compared to the tech Waymo has already developed)... She assumed w/enough effort her ideas would eventually come to fruition, so she lied about the progress her company had made so gullible investors would fork over $$. Waymo has non-tech people trying to sell a tech which is still in development, they've made an (incorrect) assumption about when it'll be ready, as I doubt anyone really thinks it's flat out impossible... just really difficult.
I agree, it's strange to axe the type of person they'd need to rollout the tech, unless the tech itself just isn't going to be ready soon at all vs. giving him a different role? I wonder how long the project of "L4/L5 autonomous vehicles on today's roads" would have to meander on for before the Alphabet leadership decides to axe it or radically change to scope would/will be?
We still have 3 more years of the current administration, that's an eternity (figuratively) in politics. Predicting who will be a legitimate contender at this point is a fool's errand.
Is being a "WOW killer" worth it anymore? Activision doesn't even release the subscription numbers anymore (most likely because they've fallen so much since WotLK).
I know SC initial funding is unprecedented, but is taking out what amounts to a line of credit really that uncommon? It doesn't necessarily mean the initial 150M has dried up -> thus the sky just may not be falling?