Levandowski (left) and his attorney Miles Ehrlich exiting federal court in San Jose, California on Aug 27, 2019. Levandowski thrived with actions that would have gotten most employees fired – until his boundary-pushing involved pilfering Alphabet documents on his way to start his own autonomous-vehicle company and quickly selling it to Uber Technologies Inc, according to the indictment. — Bloomberg
Silicon Valley has a split personality about “brilliant jerks”. These are the kind of abrasive, boundary-pushing executives whom the industry (and often the media) lionises – until they push boundaries too far and are kicked out of the tech Garden of Eden.
Consider Anthony Levandowski, a former executive in Alphabet Inc’s self-driving vehicle project whom the US government charged this week with stealing the company’s trade secrets.
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