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Let’s be honest, Uber massively over hired in tech, either to create the illusion of being a tech company (to help raise VC), or because some within the company

Let’s be honest, Uber massively over hired in tech, either to create the illusion of being a tech company (to help raise VC), or because some within the company truly believed they were. They are no more a tech company than WeWork or Airbnb is. The company blog gives a clue to this, they seem to do an awful lot that is cool and fun and completely unrelated to regulatory arbitrage (or booking taxis). Uber could ditch anywhere between 50-90% of their techs tomorrow and it would not impact their operations one iota. Anyone working in tech there needs to polish up their resume and hope that the many scandals at Uber hasn’t tainted them too.

ulfw 7y ago
Not that I want to defend Uber. I do agree with you. Yet the same can be said about most large companies though. Even large "real" tech companies. Googles revenues wouldn't drop a bit for years if 50% of engineers were gone. That's just the reality of large enterprises.
- pkaye 7y ago
  There is a lot of "make work" kind of project at some of these companies. Lets design a whole new logging infrastructure or database instead of adopting or improving something that already exists. Or lets overanalyze the the font that we use for our webpage or design a new font because we have a lot of VC money and nothing better to do.
  - walshemj 7y ago
    Redesigning a font and saving say 20% of its size is a worth while saving - you wont believe how much the average website is bloated by using fancy fonts.
  - r00fus 7y ago
    I see it as cargo-cult facade that they hope will attract the kind of engineers that work for FAANGM.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  Google, especially, has a lot of side projects that don't contribute to search, adwords, g-suite, gcp, or youtube, and their moonshots have failed to materialize. The fact that they're the #3 player in the cloud space speaks to what they'll overlook.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  That's just the reality of large enterprises. Yes, even with the best will in the world you can't escape Amdahl's Law. And when an engineer finds him or herself working on some fun project that isn't clear how it relates to the bottom line the mindset should always be "enjoy it while it lasts".
- Moto7451 7y ago
  As someone who’s helped on both the technical and hiring side of a company that’s scaling, I agree and will add that a lot of hires are made in order to make life easier for existing hires. A team completely composed of 1:1 developer to team/role need is one vacation, child birth, or illness away from unnecessary added stress. From a purely technical side of things we crib it as “bus factor” and try to negate that with documentation and knowledge sharing. A great way to disillusion your management hierarchy (flat or otherwise) is to have them constantly juggle supporting their reports’ needs and the business asks when functionally understaffed all year. Having some “extra” headcount while remaining ROI positive is good for the humans even if it doesn’t make 100% accounting sense. It’s also a good way to make space for deep work and interesting innovations you get by having the luxury of unlimited ping pong time... Er I mean water cooler chats.
dehrmann 7y ago
> Uber could ditch anywhere between 50-90% of their techs tomorrow and it would not impact their operations one iota. It depends how many that is. Operating a system like that at scale with zero downtime takes a surprising number of people. Projects at that scale tend to be harder and more complex, so they take more people. Things like pickup optimization are complex multivariate problems that can have a real business impact. So maybe, maybe not, but the tech operation at Uber is non-trivial.
langitbiru 7y ago
But I am thankful for their opensource contributions: https://uber.github.io/ https://uber.github.io/
tempsy 7y ago
Uber actually has a much more difficult engineering problems than both WeWork or Airbnb in the sense that they are operating a real time service that requires near perfect uptime 24/7 and work across multiple timezones in multiple languages, payment methods, and currencies with varying connection speeds. That isn’t easy.
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  they are operating a real time service that requires near perfect uptime 24/7 and work across multiple timezones in multiple languages, payment methods, and currencies with varying connection speeds. That isn’t easy It isn’t easy, but there are dozens of companies that have been doing it successfully for 40-50 years. Credit cards, airlines, telcos and more. Those challenges are a matter of meticulous application of well established best practices, and none of those are “tech companies”. I mean, Interflora probably has as good or better uptime than Uber!
  - tempsy 7y ago
    Do you really believe that Uber is run on a technology stack that is 40-50 years old? It’s not just real time but streaming data. Handling millions of concurrent trips, and processing all those trips in real time is not something that any of the industries you’ve mentioned do.
    - goatinaboat 7y ago
      Do you really believe that Uber is run on a technology stack that is 40-50 years old? Of course not, but I do believe - because it’s demonstrably true - that those challenges are not unique to Uber, and that they have been solved many, many times over. For example sure, Uber handles a lot of trips. But every one of those trips is backed by a credit card processor, without the latter even breaking a sweat. I guarantee that Mastercard or whoever barely even notices the additional workload they get from Uber.
      - adt2bt 7y ago
cloud226 7y ago
I believe you have never worked for major tech company? In the company this size, they have multi product line (Uber, Uber Eats, Uber Freight, ATG etc) which are supported by their platform and infrastructure. It requires tons of eng work. Unlike smaller company seeks existing solution like open source, Uber needs to solve many of these themselves, which means build from scratch and also build tools to support it from scratch. Also, being the leader, you'll need to gain edge over competitors, e.g for Lyft or others, it’s sufficient to use Google Map or some other third party vendor as routing and ETA service, but Uber has its own Map team to improve the user experience. Hope this helps you understand
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  Hope this helps you understand Uber’s operations are orders of magnitude less complex than the supply chain and logistics of any major manufacturer. Or government or military. Or the post office or the phone company. Even McDonalds keeping its restaurants supplied and ice-cream machines working. All the cool tech Uber developed they did for fun. Because they had nothing better to do. Hope this helps you understand.
  - morningcovfefe 7y ago
    Good god you sound ignorant. Uber isn't a post office with multi day SLA. It's a realtime service with second-SLAs that needs to know where you are, where the closest 20 drivers are, the map of the area, places of interest and a dozen other things - for millions of users in hundreds of cities - and that's just one part of the company. Payments is a whole chunk of the tech industry in and off itself. Food delivery is a whole of the tech startup scene in an off itself. As is Freight.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      > realtime service with second-SLAs that needs to know where you are, where the closest 20 drivers are, the map of the area, places of interest and a dozen other things - for millions of users in hundreds of cities That's actually "for thousands of users in one city" executed a few hundred times, and map/PoI/pathfinding parts can be (are?[0]) outsourced to a third party. -- [0] - I don't use Uber as a matter of principle, but the competitor I use utilizes Google Maps for these parts. So do food delivery companies I use.
gagabity 7y ago
I believe on the Fragmented podcast there was someone from Uber who said they had 200 Android engineers, blew my mind.
sverhagen 7y ago
I completely share your sentiment. For that reason I have yet to wrap my head around the news of Uber's rival spending $80 million a year on AWS. What are these people doing??? https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/lyft-plans-to-spend-300-million-on-aws-through-2021.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/lyft-plans-to-spend-300-mill...
HellDunkel 7y ago
I thought the uber vc-backed business plan was to expoilt their drivers until they can be replaced by homegrown autonomous vehicles- if this is true they have a huge engineering problem to solve.
- madeofpalk 7y ago
  yeah but all their redis experts aren't going to make self driving cars.
coredog64 7y ago
> Uber could ditch anywhere between 50-90% of their techs tomorrow and it would not impact their operations one iota. We may yet see this if the share price tanks. A PE firm like TPG can buy a large stake (or even go private), ruthlessly force efficiency, and then sell out.

ulfw 7y ago

Not that I want to defend Uber. I do agree with you. Yet the same can be said about most large companies though. Even large "real" tech companies. Googles revenues wouldn't drop a bit for years if 50% of engineers were gone. That's just the reality of large enterprises.

pkaye 7y ago
There is a lot of "make work" kind of project at some of these companies. Lets design a whole new logging infrastructure or database instead of adopting or improving something that already exists. Or lets overanalyze the the font that we use for our webpage or design a new font because we have a lot of VC money and nothing better to do.
- walshemj 7y ago
  Redesigning a font and saving say 20% of its size is a worth while saving - you wont believe how much the average website is bloated by using fancy fonts.
- r00fus 7y ago
  I see it as cargo-cult facade that they hope will attract the kind of engineers that work for FAANGM.
dehrmann 7y ago
Google, especially, has a lot of side projects that don't contribute to search, adwords, g-suite, gcp, or youtube, and their moonshots have failed to materialize. The fact that they're the #3 player in the cloud space speaks to what they'll overlook.
goatinaboat 7y ago
That's just the reality of large enterprises. Yes, even with the best will in the world you can't escape Amdahl's Law. And when an engineer finds him or herself working on some fun project that isn't clear how it relates to the bottom line the mindset should always be "enjoy it while it lasts".
Moto7451 7y ago
As someone who’s helped on both the technical and hiring side of a company that’s scaling, I agree and will add that a lot of hires are made in order to make life easier for existing hires. A team completely composed of 1:1 developer to team/role need is one vacation, child birth, or illness away from unnecessary added stress. From a purely technical side of things we crib it as “bus factor” and try to negate that with documentation and knowledge sharing. A great way to disillusion your management hierarchy (flat or otherwise) is to have them constantly juggle supporting their reports’ needs and the business asks when functionally understaffed all year. Having some “extra” headcount while remaining ROI positive is good for the humans even if it doesn’t make 100% accounting sense. It’s also a good way to make space for deep work and interesting innovations you get by having the luxury of unlimited ping pong time... Er I mean water cooler chats.

dehrmann 7y ago

> Uber could ditch anywhere between 50-90% of their techs tomorrow and it would not impact their operations one iota. It depends how many that is. Operating a system like that at scale with zero downtime takes a surprising number of people. Projects at that scale tend to be harder and more complex, so they take more people. Things like pickup optimization are complex multivariate problems that can have a real business impact. So maybe, maybe not, but the tech operation at Uber is non-trivial.

langitbiru 7y ago

But I am thankful for their opensource contributions: https://uber.github.io/ https://uber.github.io/

tempsy 7y ago

Uber actually has a much more difficult engineering problems than both WeWork or Airbnb in the sense that they are operating a real time service that requires near perfect uptime 24/7 and work across multiple timezones in multiple languages, payment methods, and currencies with varying connection speeds. That isn’t easy.

goatinaboat 7y ago
they are operating a real time service that requires near perfect uptime 24/7 and work across multiple timezones in multiple languages, payment methods, and currencies with varying connection speeds. That isn’t easy It isn’t easy, but there are dozens of companies that have been doing it successfully for 40-50 years. Credit cards, airlines, telcos and more. Those challenges are a matter of meticulous application of well established best practices, and none of those are “tech companies”. I mean, Interflora probably has as good or better uptime than Uber!
- tempsy 7y ago
  Do you really believe that Uber is run on a technology stack that is 40-50 years old? It’s not just real time but streaming data. Handling millions of concurrent trips, and processing all those trips in real time is not something that any of the industries you’ve mentioned do.
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    Do you really believe that Uber is run on a technology stack that is 40-50 years old? Of course not, but I do believe - because it’s demonstrably true - that those challenges are not unique to Uber, and that they have been solved many, many times over. For example sure, Uber handles a lot of trips. But every one of those trips is backed by a credit card processor, without the latter even breaking a sweat. I guarantee that Mastercard or whoever barely even notices the additional workload they get from Uber.
    - adt2bt 7y ago

cloud226 7y ago

I believe you have never worked for major tech company? In the company this size, they have multi product line (Uber, Uber Eats, Uber Freight, ATG etc) which are supported by their platform and infrastructure. It requires tons of eng work. Unlike smaller company seeks existing solution like open source, Uber needs to solve many of these themselves, which means build from scratch and also build tools to support it from scratch. Also, being the leader, you'll need to gain edge over competitors, e.g for Lyft or others, it’s sufficient to use Google Map or some other third party vendor as routing and ETA service, but Uber has its own Map team to improve the user experience. Hope this helps you understand

goatinaboat 7y ago
Hope this helps you understand Uber’s operations are orders of magnitude less complex than the supply chain and logistics of any major manufacturer. Or government or military. Or the post office or the phone company. Even McDonalds keeping its restaurants supplied and ice-cream machines working. All the cool tech Uber developed they did for fun. Because they had nothing better to do. Hope this helps you understand.
- morningcovfefe 7y ago
  Good god you sound ignorant. Uber isn't a post office with multi day SLA. It's a realtime service with second-SLAs that needs to know where you are, where the closest 20 drivers are, the map of the area, places of interest and a dozen other things - for millions of users in hundreds of cities - and that's just one part of the company. Payments is a whole chunk of the tech industry in and off itself. Food delivery is a whole of the tech startup scene in an off itself. As is Freight.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > realtime service with second-SLAs that needs to know where you are, where the closest 20 drivers are, the map of the area, places of interest and a dozen other things - for millions of users in hundreds of cities That's actually "for thousands of users in one city" executed a few hundred times, and map/PoI/pathfinding parts can be (are?[0]) outsourced to a third party. -- [0] - I don't use Uber as a matter of principle, but the competitor I use utilizes Google Maps for these parts. So do food delivery companies I use.

gagabity 7y ago

I believe on the Fragmented podcast there was someone from Uber who said they had 200 Android engineers, blew my mind.

sverhagen 7y ago

I completely share your sentiment. For that reason I have yet to wrap my head around the news of Uber's rival spending $80 million a year on AWS. What are these people doing??? https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/lyft-plans-to-spend-300-million-on-aws-through-2021.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/01/lyft-plans-to-spend-300-mill...

HellDunkel 7y ago

I thought the uber vc-backed business plan was to expoilt their drivers until they can be replaced by homegrown autonomous vehicles- if this is true they have a huge engineering problem to solve.

madeofpalk 7y ago
yeah but all their redis experts aren't going to make self driving cars.

coredog64 7y ago

> Uber could ditch anywhere between 50-90% of their techs tomorrow and it would not impact their operations one iota. We may yet see this if the share price tanks. A PE firm like TPG can buy a large stake (or even go private), ruthlessly force efficiency, and then sell out.