Is Waymo Winning the Self-Driving Race? Nike’s 'Winning Isn't for Everyone' Campaign, and What if My Talents and Skills Don’t Align With a High-Paying Job?
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Welcome to the Prof G Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer your questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. Hey, Prof G. Hey, Scott and team.

Hey, Scott. Hi, Prof G. Hey, Prof G. Hey, Prof G. Hi, Professor G. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursatprofgmedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatprofgmedia.com. So with that, first question. Hi, Prof G. Long time listener dating back to the We Crashed days. Anyway, I'm Ruth. I'm from the Bay Area, San Francisco, and originally from New Zealand. My question relates to the conversation earlier

you have often about Tesla not reaching its milestone in regard to self-driving autonomous cars. My question is, why isn't there more discussion about what Waymo has already achieved? I get that Alphabet isn't a car company, but if you look at the streets of San Francisco, it seems now that every fifth car is a Waymo. So why aren't we saying that Waymo's cracked it and that they have the potential, should they wish, to go...

into business with Jaguar and sell autonomous cars. That's very interesting. I had trouble focusing on your question because you have such a lovely voice. Put a shrimp on the bottom. Oh, wait, that's Australia.

Anyway, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat announced that Alphabet is investing an additional $5 billion into its self-driving car unit, Waymo. Porat said in the company's Q2 earnings call, this new round of funding will enable Waymo to continue to build the world's leading autonomous driving company. This announcement follows Waymo's second citywide expansion in San Francisco. Just in June, Waymo removed its waitlist and opened Waymo Rides to all San Francisco users.

What are the numbers? Waymo currently provides 50,000 paid trips weekly in San Francisco and Phoenix and has completed 2 million trips to date. Waymo's unit within Alphabet generated $365 million in revenue in Q2 of this year. That's up 28% year-on-year, but incurred losses of $1.1 billion, up from $813 million the previous year.

Some context on what the rest of the industry looks like. General Motors Autonomous Vehicle Unit Cruise recently announced it's indefinitely delaying the production of the Origin, which is a self-driving shuttle meant for city use. This came after Cruise lost its permit to operate in San Francisco due to an incident with a pedestrian. When they say incident, meaning it ran over a pedestrian, and I think like a bull backed up behind it to make sure it had finished the job.

Also, Bloomberg reported that Tesla is delaying the launch of their Robotaxi by two months. I think self-driving, it's not quite up there with this consensual hallucination of headsets in terms of shitty business decisions. But on a cost basis, this or a shareholder basis, this has probably been a disaster for these companies. And because GM just doesn't have access to the type of cheap capital where they can keep losing billions of dollars, their adventures in self-driving, I would imagine, come to an end. They just don't have the money.

And Waymo, the reason why this gets so much attention is Elon Musk. And that is he has been, investors or shareholders of Tesla are literally like a person on the corner trying to get home or get to a dinner or whatever. And they've been waiting for their taxi for 11 years. I think he started talking about self-driving. According to Elon Musk, it's always kind of manana, manana, like next year, this year, next year. And it never is. Tomorrow is never today. Right.

Anyways, self-driving has been a gigantic head fake. It kind of falls under the line of what Bill Gates said, that things are supposed to take three years, take 10 years. This is definitely taking 10 years. The other thing I don't buy around Tesla and the excitement is that how would Tesla, and this goes to your question, be able to capture, even assuming that self-driving gets here at some point, it gets ubiquity that everyone is thinking it's going to get, how does Tesla control Tesla?

self-driving to the extent that it captures the margin. I don't get it here because it seems like Waymo, to your point, is in the lead. It doesn't get nearly the attention it probably deserves. They made a tactical mistake, and that is they started in San Francisco. In San Francisco, while having a ton of innovative companies, the population in the zeitgeist here is very suspicious of corporations and big tech. I bet they get a lot less pushback in Phoenix, where people are just like, well,

on my way to the, I don't know, what are they doing? Phoenix. By the way, I love Arizona. My dad lived there. Beautiful sunsets. Anyways, it's coming. I always thought it should happen in airplanes because about 80 or 90% of air crash disasters or air disasters are pilot error. And then it seems to me you'd want a computer up there, but that won't happen because people need to see some old guy with thick gray hair who just makes you feel safe and have him come on the

intercom and say, folks, just a little light shop, nothing to worry about. Please make sure your seatbelts are fastened. Anyways, that makes me feel better.

Self-driving, it'll be here at some point. It's not going to nearly live up to the hype, I don't think, around the economics of it. Tesla is using it as a weapon of mass distraction. Google has probably spent more money than they would like, but they're sort of all in here. I don't know. I mean, the only thing I would say about Waymo not getting as much attention is that the founders of Alphabet aren't tweeting about their ketamine or calling their

their daughter dead to them because she went through transition or saying ridiculous things or launching rockets into space. I mean, you must just get so much attention around anything he does. And Tesla bulls are looking for an excuse to justify how this car company, which should trade at 15, 20 times earnings, is trading at 100 times earnings. Anyway, sorry for the meandering question, but love your voice. Go, New Zealand. Start a podcast. Start a podcast. Question number two.

Hey, Prof G. I'm John from Portland, Oregon. I recently started listening to your pod and I really appreciate the practical insights you give on business, marketing, and life. Particularly the insights you give around raising two young boys. I'm a father of two little boys myself, Curran, who's 10, and Townes, who's 8. Both of them love sports, especially soccer.

Recently, we've been watching a lot of the Summer Olympics together. And while we were watching the games, a new Nike ad titled Winning Isn't for Everyone came on. Now, as a father, I've tried to instill the values of empathy, respect, and kindness to my boys. When they compete on the soccer field, I have them focus on their effort, not the outcome of the match or other people's opinions.

However, the messaging I watched them soak in from Nike was the complete opposite of this. Now, my charitable assumption is that Nike was trying to communicate how difficult it is to be the best at something. However, what they described to me was not greatness, but an immature, anxious individual bent on power and dominance.

But my question to you is as a father who's trying to instill empathy, kindness, and generosity into his boys, how would you address this ad by Nike to them? Do you think the ad missed the mark? And what are alternative messages Nike could have communicated about competing at the highest level?

Thanks again for all the insights in the pod. If you're ever in Portland, Oregon, I'd love to buy you a drink. First off, John from Portland. Thanks for the thoughtful question and congratulations. I believe that when I'm at the end, I'm going to look back and that the days I'm going to miss, the salad days, if I get to go to something called heaven, which I won't, and I'm fairly certain that doesn't exist, another talk show, but

is that heaven for me would have been going back to my house where I had young kids. I just think the noise, the chaos. I remember my son coming into our bedroom with a basket of his cars, almost like an offering that if you let me come in bed with you, you can have these cars. And just these moments of like, I just felt so...

I don't know, like I had a purpose, like I was working for a reason. And these, I mean, really God does reach into your soul and turn on a switch you never knew existed. But anyways, congratulations. I hope you have the presence. I did mostly to realize these are the salad days and what you'll look back on is the happiest time in your life. Not that you're not gonna be happy the rest of your life, but boy, young kids at homes, boys, oh, I'm jealous. My boys are now about to be 14 and 17. My 17 year old is into his own thing. That's great.

My 13, about to be 14, still hugs me, still wants to hang out with me, which is nice, but you're in the sweet spot. Anyways, back to your question. So Nike's gotten kicked literally in the nuts for the last five years that stock has been cut in half. It's gone from being the premier marketer to sort of what I think is probably an activist target at this point. I actually love this ad, and that is I think that there is a balance between

Kids having a certain amount of empathy and especially boys having a little bit of what I'll call a killer instinct. And I realize how obnoxious that sounds. But the sort of everyone gets a trophy zeitgeist that I think is developed in athletics has gone a little bit too far. I do think there's something to success and competitiveness that the Nike brand has.

and bodies that I think is actually healthy for young people. And I mean, when you think about branding, Nike and Adidas have much different positionings, but they both work. Adidas is the joy of sport, and it's more track and field. It's more, I would argue, their premier sport right now that defines them is probably football, or as you Americans call it, soccer. A team sport, it's competing, it's greatness in the agency of others. It's a little more socialist, a little bit more European. And

Nike is Michael Jordan, individual achievement. And the statement that summarizes the Nike brand for me is you didn't win silver, you lost gold.

And I think there's, I kind of like that positioning. And in the ad you're talking about, I actually really like. It's like, I'm not there to be on a team. I'm there to be a monster. And I think a little bit of that, especially among young boys, probably among young girls too, I think competitiveness is built into our species because it's important. It's key to innovation and moving the world forward.

I'm competitive with the other members of the marketing faculty at NYU Stern, and I think that's a good thing. And I also realize that competition and cooperation are sort of this gangster wanting to achieve for yourself individually and having some of that competitive spirit and some of that monster inside of you in conjunction with cooperation and winning and then having empathy for people who maybe can't compete. I think that's a nice positioning, and I think Nike has basically accurately perceived competition

that everything's gone a little bit too far in terms of competition, you know, has become less quote unquote competitive. I think there's room for both. So I kind of like the ad and I don't think there's anything wrong with building a little bit of that killer instinct into your son's DNA. Does that mean they can't have empathy? Does that mean they shouldn't cooperate? No, but I like having a little bit of grit, a little bit of

a little bit of like, I don't know, killer instinct in them. But again, thank you for the question. And isn't it wonderful? What a blessing to be a father of boys. We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.

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Welcome back. Question number three. Hey, Prof G. This is Nick coming in from Chicago. Longtime listener to the podcast.

I just read through your new book, The Algebra of Wealth. I thought there were a lot of great insights from you in there. One insight I particularly loved was following your talents, not your passions, and how you should follow what skills and talents you find in your early 20s into your 30s and act on those that separate you. My question is, what happens when the skills and talents that you find you have

are not aligned to high income earning careers. In my particular case, I've worked in education for over the last five years. I really enjoy it. I think the interpersonal skills and mentoring of young people is something I'm really good at. The problem is I don't see it aligning with the highest salary in the long term. So if the goal is financial security, which I want as much as anyone else, how would you frame aligning your talents and skills in education?

And industries like education that don't particularly pay as well as others. Thank you, Prof. Chi. Really appreciate you and your work. No, this is a tough one. If you're the best at anything, you'll generally find a pretty good way to make a living. I have a friend who's now a principal of a junior high school. It's a fair to call him a friend. I haven't talked to him in a long time. He started out actually in investment banking.

His name is Ed Hayek. He's this tall, handsome guy. And he, like me, started investment banking. He didn't like it. Ended up in education. I doubt he made a lot of money, and now he's principal. I think of a junior high somewhere or a high school. About to retire. But my guess is he's made a pretty decent living for himself. You're not going to be a millionaire or multimillionaire in education. I mean, it's very kind of situational dependent. I think some school districts have pretty good ways of helping teachers get wealthy slowly, and that is usually a pretty good retirement plans program.

But you have to assess whether or not the psychic income compensates for the lack of financial income that you might get in another industry. In terms of teaching, if you're a good teacher, you can translate those skills to a lot of different things, whether it's going back and getting an MBA, you sound pretty young, and becoming a consultant. I'm a teacher. My gangster competence is the gangster competence in our economy that you likely have, and that's an ability to communicate well.

and capture the attention of individuals in a classroom. I think anyone who can keep the attention of a 15-year-old for an hour talking about history or math or biology or whatever it is you teach can probably be a pretty decent consultant, probably be someone who's in communications. But at the end of the day, you're a storyteller. And can you translate those skills to something else? Sure.

But I would have just an open and honest conversation around what your income expectations are, where potentially in a school district you could make good money. And also, I don't know if you have any interest in teaching in college, but I decided to teach at NYU. I decided, okay, I thought at the time I'm done economically, what do I want to do with my life? I thought I want to teach.

And I joined the faculty at NYU. My first year, I made $12,000 as an adjunct professor because universities have decided that in order to pay this really inefficient, unproductive, corrupt guild called tenure, they need to draft people who want, dream of teaching at college and pay them much less than market. And that's, like I said, is market, but adjuncts, clinical faculty, etc.

But I was very good at it. It was arrogant. Whatever. I'm good at it. And I put more and more butts in more and more seats. And colleges are a business. And slowly but surely, I got to the point where I think I was making probably the benefits, housing, matching pension, all that shit. I was probably making around 300 grand a year. I'd say was seven years ago.

Virtue signaling alert. I gave back all my compensation for the previous 15 years such that I could continue to bite the hand that feeds me as I'm doing now. Anyways, the best at anything usually figures out a way to make a good living. So I think this involves some soul searching, some discussions with people you trust, an open and honest relationship with your partner to get alignment. And also, I don't know if you've thought about an MBA or graduate school, but graduate schools love teachers as they should, as they demonstrate a lot of skills and

and a lot of concern for the Commonwealth. I'm sorry I can't be more prescriptive here. I appreciate the question. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursatproptimedia.com. Again, that's officehoursatproptimedia.com.

This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropGee Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our PropGee Markets Pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday. Canva presents The Killer.

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