I've heard anecdotes that this is indeed the case at Uber. Lots of senior engineers / techs are burned out but can't afford to quit without abandoning their opt

I've heard anecdotes that this is indeed the case at Uber. Lots of senior engineers / techs are burned out but can't afford to quit without abandoning their options. Many of them don't do any work at all, and Uber is fine with it because they don't want a mass exodus before the IPO. This is not uncommon around the Valley, but I hear it's especially problematic at Uber. I'm sure it's a continued drag on earnings, but probably not big enough to make a dent in the driver payment gap. But I honestly doubt that Uber will ever make it to IPO; at least not an IPO that pays off employees in any meaningful way. Their business model is basically "buy for $10 and sell for $8" -- it's fundamentally flawed, and they're about to get a whole bunch of competition in the form of self-driving fleet management. New challengers wouldn't have the overhead of Uber's legacy infrastructure / driver incentives / etc. and much of the tech that made Uber unique has been commoditized. I doubt their IPO will even cover the late-stage investment they've received; much of their valuation was based on brand value which has been thoroughly destroyed by recent scandals.