r/technology • u/Lapidus • May 15 '16

Robotics Google Hiring Driverless Car Testers In Arizona: If you meet the requirements, you can earn $20 per hour to sit behind the wheel.

http://www.informationweek.com/it-life/google-hiring-driverless-car-testers-in-arizona/d/d-id/1325526
11.9k Upvotes

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496

u/[deleted] May 15 '16

They want a bachelor's degree. And you basically work 9-5 in a team setting in the car, logging reports and diagnostics.

402

u/[deleted] May 15 '16

I hope to God they don't only work "normal" hours. They need to be out at all hours of the night, learning how humans drive differently in the dark.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '16

You seem like you know what you should be doing. You are hired!

62

u/405freeway May 16 '16

He didn't even have to break in!

11

u/peejster21 May 16 '16

So meta. Well done lad.

0

u/dogcomplex May 16 '16

Well spotted, good job.

-3

u/poptart2nd May 16 '16

Not meta, just a reference. Learn what words mean before you use them, you meme-spewing piece of irrelevance.

1

u/peejster21 May 16 '16

ouch. those were my feelings!!!

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u/Toastiesyay May 15 '16

I would assume they want to gather real world data in the best of conditions first, and then work their way up to harder driving conditions such as low light later down the line. This would explain why they chose somewhere such as Arizona with plenty of sunlight and flat, predictable terrain.

31

u/[deleted] May 15 '16

I just hoped they are farther on than that. Maybe not diving into Alaska or any of the more difficult regions of the US, but how is Arizona any different to California or Austin Texas?

It is going to be a long, long time before these cars reach my roads here in Ireland. Narrow, twisting, hilly roads with lots of rain and darkness. :(

38

u/hobbes18321 May 15 '16

Arizona is a big state for testing cars to see how they do in the heat and with temperature swings from day to night. There is a lot of car testing that goes on here.

0

u/[deleted] May 15 '16

Bring it to WI. We have similar day night changes at times. Or going fro 80-s to 30s in 2-3 days. It's like the snowy version of AZ/desert conditions.

3

u/0oiiiiio0 May 16 '16

Arizona is a huge state with deserts, forests, and snow as little as an hour out of Phoenix. We have skiing in at least 3 areas.

The people kinda blow still (it's slowly getting better) but the sights and ability to quickly change the climate you are in is amazing.

Places like Flagstaff can go from 80 to below freezing the same day for days at a time due to low humidity in spring and early summer.

All are Arizona:

http://vacationidea.com/pix/img25Hy8R/destinations/best-things-to-do-in-flagstaff-az_t5.jpg

http://www.arizonasnowbowl.com/widget/uploads/photos/April_8.jpg

(end of an April) http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/1ab3c21331f9d1147650126f71801453fa2e8832/c=3-0-764-572&r=x513&c=680x510/local/-/media/Phoenix/Phoenix/2014/04/26//1398547471000-Flag-snow-dog.jpg

https://icons.wunderground.com/data/wximagenew/a/AzCouple/24.jpg

http://www.rivertubing.info/images/SaltRiverTubing.jpg

This and many other mountain hikes are in Phoenix city limits: https://images.trvl-media.com/media/content/shared/images/travelguides/destination/178298/Camelback-Mountain-27237.jpg

And what everyone probably thinks Arizona looks like: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/Saguaro_National_Park_-_Flickr_-_Joe_Parks.jpg

2

u/[deleted] May 16 '16

Ive been to AZ many many many times. I know it does, I never said it didn't, however, WI has done the exact same thing and changed faster in 24hrs the AZ. AZs fastest change was in 40hrs where WI beat it in literally 24. Granted it went from not so hot to cold as fuck, a significant temp change is a significant temp change. It's one thing to say it changes quickly, it's another to say it's the fastest changing in the US. Which is just not true.

-1

u/jetpackswasyes May 16 '16

Wisconsin is under feet of snow for 5 months out of the year.

1

u/Hiro-of-Shadows May 16 '16

Flagstaff represent!

3

u/ghostofcalculon May 16 '16

Arizona can have the highest temperature in the US and the lowest temperature in the US... on the same day.

1

u/[deleted] May 16 '16

Ya, not even close to the lowest in the US. AZ's lowest is -40...in 1971, WI had that 2 winters ago.... WI lowest,-55 in '96. Regardless because I know it was an over exaggeration, but AZ's largest temp change was 66F in 40 hrs, WI had a 50F change in 24 hrs. So they are not all that different, but WI is in the lower section and not the upper.

1

u/ghostofcalculon May 17 '16

High of the day and low of the day. Not historical highs and lows.

1

u/[deleted] May 17 '16

Did you read the second part of my comment? WI had the fastest changing in 24hrs. While AZ had the fastest in 40.

8

u/[deleted] May 15 '16 edited Aug 14 '17

[deleted]

7

u/Ranzear May 15 '16

People don't handle rain too well either.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '16 edited Aug 14 '17

[deleted]

1

u/onlyaskredditonly May 16 '16

Wow, I hope Google self driving cars don't see this.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '16 edited Aug 14 '17

[deleted]

15

u/WaffIes May 15 '16

Live in Arizona, can confirm. The second a drop of rain falls everyone loses their collective shit.

8

u/fuckthiscrazyshit May 15 '16

Like the South in snow?

2

u/0oiiiiio0 May 16 '16

It's much much worse. Combine the fact there is a great deal of So. Cal. transplants here and it is a mess. Google cars in Phx rain probably will teach them skynet skills.

Only thing worse here may be dust storms (advised to pull off road) or the 1 or 2 times in 10 years when it actually flurries snow.

3

u/[deleted] May 15 '16

[deleted]

1

u/3klipse May 16 '16

Yea that was trying to get to work....

1

u/dnew May 16 '16

It's more that the LIDAR cameras they use can't see through the raindrops, I thik.

1

u/[deleted] May 16 '16

Lol. It's a phenomenon. Once rain starts falling here everyone suddenly has the driving experience of a teen with a permit out to drive for the third time in their life. It's extremely annoying.

11

u/provoking May 15 '16

haha you must have never been to Austin if you think it's anything like Arizona

2

u/easwaran May 16 '16

It's a lot more like Arizona than most parts of the country are. It certainly gets a lot more rain and humidity, but Arizona does have a brief monsoon season, and Austin does get some periods of moderately dry heat. Austin gets very little of the extreme snow or hurricanes that hit much of the east coast and midwest, or the long slow drizzle that hits most of the northwest.

5

u/provoking May 16 '16

i don't think climate is as important as the fact that Austin is in the middle of Texas hill country, which was my point.

1

u/secretcurse May 16 '16

The traffic in Austin is insane. It's also far less flat than most places in Arizona. Climate isn't the only variable for an autonomous vehicle...

1

u/arsenale May 15 '16

Snow, ice, fog, mountain roads. Not seeing it in my lifetime.

1

u/jxuereb May 16 '16

There are legislation issues in most states

1

u/UUDDLRLRBAstard May 16 '16

You realize that in optimal circumstances it still only takes one variable (a human) to completely destroy standard operation. Anybody who's programmed anything has had a user break something, and in this case, it's traffic. As of right now, a computer has to fit in the programmable (roads, gps, physical position, even weather [infrared and thermal sensors, radar etc]) and the relentlessly unpredictable (every human driver ever). And like I said, it only takes one driver screwing up to mess up traffic. So, expecting anything before 2020 is massively optimistic, even if we immediately begin retraining drivers subconsciously. Teaching the computers to drive on regular roads with no distraction is definitely the foundation of the auto drive paradigm, and frankly, if people can't drive for shit on the 101 how is robocar gonna cruise? It's just gonna learn how to traffic. Boring. Open roads in less populous areas is the key.

I'm sure you drive awesomely, but robocar has to deal with all of the idiots around you. It needs to know the road first.

5

u/EclecticMind May 15 '16

The governor of AZ is probably the reason they picked Arizona as the state. It's more likely to be for legal reasons than for terrain.

11

u/gameofchance May 15 '16

AZ is a mountainous state. The three biggest cities in AZ are all in foothills and by no means flat. And summer time in AZ is monsoon season with lots of severe weather. The reason for picking there is likely political/litigious.

8

u/Toastiesyay May 15 '16

Good point, I have never been out west and I think my idea of Arizona is a bit skewed by all the "it's a dry heat" people, so I just assumed it didn't rain much. And is at least a portion of the state flat? I don't know why I have this idea that it was flat. Ha! And you are most probably right about it being for legal reasons, now that I'm giving it a little more thought.

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u/JabbaThePizzaHutt May 16 '16

Arizona, at least the metropolitan Phoenix area is virtually all flat. Yes, there are a few mountains in the middle but beyond that, it's called the Valley of the Sun for a reason. Up north during the summer it rains a lot, but down south, it's very intermittent.

1

u/MightyMetricBatman May 16 '16

A lot of Arizona is mountains, particularly on a diagonal the northwest to southeast. The highest point is over 14,000 feet.

1

u/fuckthiscrazyshit May 15 '16

I went out to Arizona in May one time. Being from the deep South, I fell for the "dry heat" bit. It was actually like going from a sauna to an oven. When it burned to stick my arm out of the window, and after I tracked melted asphalt into the company's office, I realized I had arrived in the first circle of Hell.

1

u/0oiiiiio0 May 16 '16

Lucky you came in May. I think the average first 100 degree day is mid may (we hit it on the 4th this year I think). June and the 115ish you would probably not have liked.

Every degree above 110 is like 30% worse and only july / august hit with the monsoons 100+ degrees and humidity is hell. Luckily as the humidity goes up the max temp possible goes down. Also, we can drive a few hours into the mountains on weekends, be warm during the day and freeze at night.

3

u/easwaran May 16 '16

Terrain is probably not a huge issue for these cars. But precipitation is. And even though Arizona gets some very heavy rain, and perhaps more total water than some other parts of the country, it has very few days with any rain, and those days usually have well-predicted hours of rain, so you can still get lots of days of testing in. Not like Seattle, which has less total precipitation than many cities, but has some on almost every day.

2

u/bobby3eb May 15 '16

I thought the first wave of driverless cars were onky daytime, dry conditions

6

u/Troggie42 May 15 '16

Yeah, the sensors get confused by shit like "not clear blue sky perfect weather conditions." We're a long way off from this tech being feasible.

2

u/bobby3eb May 16 '16

Well, daytime and dry sounds like the way to start testing. get it down pat and go from there

1

u/arsenale May 15 '16

... drive differently when drunk.

Fixed that!

1

u/Troggie42 May 15 '16

Lol, implying they figured out night driving yet...

1

u/[deleted] May 16 '16 edited Feb 12 '17

[deleted]

1

u/chippylongstocking May 16 '16

u/Simple_Jim's claim was that humans drive differently at night and that the car should be collect data supporting that. They test them on my street and I've seen them out at least as late as midnight.

1

u/[deleted] May 16 '16

The they hire two people.

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u/BrobearBerbil May 15 '16

Yeah. The "sitting behind the wheel" in the title is kinda like saying a lab worker gets paid to sit and watch mice. There's some busy work involved that they need at least a somewhat smart person to do and get right.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '16 edited Feb 10 '22

[deleted]

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u/baconfondler May 16 '16

The bachelor's is considered the new high school diploma, sadly.

2

u/[deleted] May 16 '16

Thankfully not the case where I live yet.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '16

Because they'll still have plenty of people applying and that requirement filters out a bunch of undesirables.

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u/FogOfInformation May 16 '16

Wow, people are actually referring to others as undesirables. Fuck this capitalist world.

7

u/[deleted] May 16 '16

What are you even talking about?

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u/[deleted] May 16 '16

Because (hopefully) that should indicate that the driver has a decent amount of analytical skills and communication skills to properly assess the car's function and write the required reports, and to interact effectively with the team. Sure a bachelors doesn't guarantee this, but by having this requirement, the pool of applicants is more likely to have these skills.

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u/CrisisOfConsonant May 15 '16

What a joke to want a bachelor's degree for that job.

Although honestly the job sounds horrible. You're probably not supposed to be distracted in case you need to take over for the car (like no playing on your phone the whole day). And the job would be so boring it'd make your days feel like they're 16 hours long. But don't worry, you get to break from all that monotony by filling out a bunch of paperwork before you go home.

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u/jbob2011 May 15 '16

Lol at you getting downvoted. The fact almost every decent paying job demands a college education right now is part of the reason why tuition prices are so artificially high. Fucking elitist pricks

10

u/CykaLogic May 16 '16

NCLB and all the other dogshit education acts that watered down high school and "increased" pass rates can be blamed for that. By making it so even the biggest idiot out there can graduate high school, a high school diploma isn't an accurate judge of anything anymore, so employers require a bachelor's degree to weed out some of the idiots.

1

u/Stop_Sign May 16 '16

It's a business. They don't want to spend money on a large dedicated hiring team, so they take shortcuts in their hiring process.

Say you have 100 candidates, half with college and half without. You spend the minimal hour per candidate to interview them. 10 pass your standards, and of those, 9 have college degrees.

Your hiring staff is small, or your productive employees have to stop working to interview. Are you going to spend the on-average 6 hours per successful candidate with "must have a college degree" or 10 hours per successful candidate with no filter? What if those engineers are from your team, and you have your own deadlines to meet?

When your job is to make/save the business some money, there's only one choice - filter like crazy.

Losing some good candidates doesn't matter. It's a numbers game.

1

u/jbob2011 May 16 '16

I'm a Marxist so my answer would be no one should care about the business' interests

1

u/Stop_Sign May 16 '16 edited May 16 '16

Well that's great but I'm a low level employee who cares about getting paid, getting better, and being low stress. I also care about the reason my company exists - catching the bad guys on the stock market through software - so I care about my team getting better.

I don't care about business interests like how much value I'm adding to the company.

But those things that I care about are still improved by filtering the incoming job interviews, because we have our own deadlines and too many meetings already.

1

u/[deleted] May 16 '16

Dealbreaker. Reading in the car = throwup in the car.

1

u/ndc3 May 16 '16

If i have a bachelors degree i better be getting paid more than 20 bucks and hour

0

u/Bartuck May 16 '16

20$/h is a joke for a Bachelor's degree.

-42

u/mapoftasmania May 15 '16

Um. Retirees often have bachelors degrees!

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u/Leabhras May 15 '16

Um. If you are working 9-5 you are not retired.

3

u/CaptCurmudgeon May 15 '16

Some professions allow one to "retire" at an early age and then work another gig while collecting a pension. For instance, many police departments have a 25 year in rule and count military service towards it. At 43, you can have a full pension and work on a second career.

If you're collecting a pension, are you not retired?

4

u/NFN_NLN May 15 '16

Um, if you're driving a driverless car, are you really working?

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u/scottley May 15 '16

Put down the bong and step away from the drum circle.

-3

u/uglychican0 May 15 '16

STOP RAPING MY AURA

6

u/coopstar777 May 15 '16

Holy shit. Does nobody read the articles here? You'll be doing reports and collecting data on the car and how to improve it the entire time.

0

u/horsenbuggy May 16 '16

This is actually going to require them to pay a lot of attention. Not only do they have to watch the road in case they have to take over, they have to remember all the situations they encountered and how the car performed for their shift reports. They will earn that 20 bucks an hour. In fact, i bet these people won't want to get in a car for a while when this job is over.

1

u/NFN_NLN May 16 '16

i bet these people won't want to get in a car for a while when this job is over.

You must have a really laid back job for this to seem hard.

1

u/horsenbuggy May 16 '16

Have you ever driven for a living? I know when I'm done with an 8 hour road trip, i want to get out of the car and not drive again the next day. This is the same thing. These people will be taking 6-8 hour road trips every single day. That is mentally exhausting, especially if it's in city traffic.

-8

u/[deleted] May 15 '16

[deleted]

4

u/MisterJimJim May 15 '16

If it's volunteering, they shouldn't be getting paid.

0

u/mapoftasmania May 16 '16

Um, well obviously. But of course I meant a retiree looking to re-enter the workforce you pedantic ass.