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This is a piece of amateur speculation making huge assumptions about advances in technology, and about Uber's ability to adapt to those advances. One crucial t
by vonnik 10y ago
This is a piece of amateur speculation making huge assumptions about advances in technology, and about Uber's ability to adapt to those advances.
One crucial thing to remember, when considering the threat Uber faces from traditional car manufacturers, is that Uber is a software company and they are not. It has a huge advantage in product development, and stands just as good a chance as they do of coming out with self-driving cars for ride-sharing.
- benologist 10y agoWhy is that even important, let alone crucial? Anyone can hire programmers, children can ship products, MLB created a Netflix-like platform to offer media companies as a service, Walmart have made important contributions to open source etc. The number of steps between Uber's competitors becoming as competent as Uber at software is basically "1. decide to".
- vonnik 10y agoAttracting the talent to build a usable product is one of the most important steps in creating any business, or line of business in the case of a large company. That talent is scarce, and tends to prefer certain companies over others. I speak as a former recruiter and current employer, who has had to grapple with the difficulty of hiring good software engineers. The software engineers I have known and tried to recruit tend to want to work for companies that are more like Google and less like General Motors. The statement Anyone can hire programmers, children can ship products is manifestly untrue. It's hard to get the right people, and it's equally hard to coordinate all their activities to get a successful product over the finish line. The companies that have healthy cultures of software engineering and digital product management and design are way, way ahead of everyone else. And those companies are in the minority.
- benologist 10y agoGeneral Motors is another great example of a "non-software" company that effortlessly became staffed to rival Uber's employees - http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/gm-buying-self-driving-tech-startup-for-more-than-1-billion/ http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/gm-buying-self-driving-tech-st...
- vonnik 10y agoYou simply don't know what you're talking about. Effortlessly, first of all, is false. Secondly, while the hiring of thousands of software engineers over the last few years was trumpeted, that doesn't mean GM knows how to manage them. That applies, even more strongly, to the acquisition of Cruise that you cited. That happened three months ago, so it isn't clear how much talent will stay for how long. But the fact that they had to buy it meant they decided they couldn't build it themselves in a reasonable amount of time.
- benologist 10y agoEffortless was referring to how quickly they positioned themselves to compete in an emerging landscape with lots of startups - one deal staffed them up. Whether they can manage those people effectively or ship big projects ... is a problem startups face too.
- vonnik 10y agoYes, but my precise point is that startups lure talent and iterate on product better than most large corporations, with enclaves and exceptions in a few large-ish companies, and virtually none any where else. $1B is the monetary expression of a lot of effort, and it's unclear whether they can actually do anything with what they bought. Most mergers and acquisitions are failures.