Helping Waymo Create The World's Most Experienced Driver
Pros
As a Senior Autonomous Specialist at Transdev working for Waymo, you will get to directly experience and make valuable contributions to one of the top autonomous vehicle technologies in the world. You'll be good at this job if you love people, driving, technology, cruise control, typing, writing, and video games. The role has competitive pay and benefits when compared to rideshare or taxi driving. You'll have opportunities to get to know some co-workers very well (during dual-driver missions). There are many opportunities for advancement with regular internal hiring announcements including instructor roles and salaried management positions within Transdev. If you're introverted and like being alone in a car to listen to music, podcasts, or audiobooks, there are single driver paths, but they may not lead to promotions and your hourly rate will cap out after a couple of years. You can apply for travel opportunities to temporarilly work in new cities being developed for the Waymo One service. You will get to know the cities you work in like the back of your hand. There is also a tractor-trailer division called Waymo Via that you can transfer into. It is pretty easy to get hired into the entry-level Autonomous Specialist role, but you need to be diligent, patient, persistent, and work well with others to be promoted into the Senior AS role. There are pay bumps every 6-months. Most drivers seem to be first- or second-generation immigrants from all around the world which is pretty awesome because you can hear their stories about their native country. Although it is a very ethnically diverse work environment, there seem to be a lot more men than women, so if you’re a woman, you may actually have an easier time getting hired here.
Cons
After you pass the initial training, the first year or more can be lonely with a majority of single-driver assignments. When you have passengers, you have to turn off your speaker, and the passenger might not talk to you (because it is a simulated driverless experience), so that’s worse than Uber driving where you can initiate conversations if your passengers want to chat and you have more ability to play music, etc. The entry Autonomous Specialist role has a high turnover rate. While it is easy to get hired it is also very easy be exited for policy violations such as touching a mobile device when the car is not in park. There's also a merit point system so if you do get penalty points, you won't get the pay bumps and won't get interviews for promotions. Not so easy to get the points back either, slowing your career path. There are multiple shifts running 24/7 and when you're first hired, you might end up in a shift that conflicts with your normal sleeping hours. There is no clear path for being hired into a "white badge" (direct employee) position at Waymo or Google, it has happened to some employees of Google's vendors, but it is not a common thing.
