Cat Autonomy 2.0

I wrote about my new role new-job-caterpillar-autonomy a bit a couple weeks ago during an insanely busy time - having just started the role and wrapping up what ended up being side-work, paired with some sleep-deprived ADHD hyperfocus on my new responsibilities and nexus, that post is less of an update and more of a mind-dump. This post is meant to be a calmer update about my upcoming time with Caterpillar Autonomy.

It starts, like all good stories, with Caterpillar's RTO (return to office) mandate and how it has affected a lot of people negatively (in my opinion). I haven't seen one positive remark about it fromanyone making less than $250k a year + Bonus + Equity if you catch my drift...

I know of people who really did lose their jobs at the end of 2025 for refusing to move. My story with RTO is covered elsewhere, I'd been blessed with remote work and was even secure in a remote position in the face of Caterpillar being willing to fire me after-exceeding-expectations-for-4-years.

But time passes and life happens, and the sovereign Lord brought me to this current circumstance: where I'm fully committed to Caterpillar Autonomy, and it feels weird to say it. I'm going to skip the RTO details, if you know you know. Where I'm at right now is on the other side (or very nearly on the other side) of a choice I didn't feel freedom to make because it came from a conviction.

The manager of the group I'm in told me a story about working for another mining company, where he was managing mines in the Congo. These mines can be in the most remote of remote places on earth - in cultures where human life is definitely treated differently than in the first-world midwest USA. Operators of these huge mining trucks in these parts of the world can be smoking meth in the cabs - which obviously leads to unsafe operation. Safety of the mines themselves can be a second-thought as well, they collapse and then the people inside have to be excavated out. Sean told me he had come back to work after a weekend just to be told, as if it was no big deal, that "Motombu died" and to find another operator. Very crass attitude towards human life...

I'm still pretty frustrated at Caterpillar for how they've handled RTO (and corporitisms like "Caterpillar family" and "we bleed Cat yellow" are distracting nonsense), and part of me wants to leave still over the personal offence, but Caterpillar will make the safest mining equipment, without a doubt. And given that Cat will make the safest equipment then the story I was told and the mission I couldn't help but believe in is that rolling out good autonomy software and solutions to these remote mines will save lives.

I was invited (coerced?) into that mission - and my role in it is enabling the Autonomy group to manage data for their software stack. I get to help these engineers be experts in the things they're experts in by offloading some operational overhead (data movement, pipelineing, infrastructure and devops, etc.) so that they can produce the best autonomy software on the planet.