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The most important factor that is completely lost in this argument is "scale". Simple looking things are very complex at large scale. Even if no new features

The most important factor that is completely lost in this argument is "scale". Simple looking things are very complex at large scale. Even if no new features were built, the current api and apps won't scale to meet the demand as the user base continues to grow. And at any point in time there are thousands of bugs that need to be fixed within months before they cause big issues. 15 engineers will take years to fix them. Another big factor is cyber security. This alone will require more than 15 people. Monitoring and defending against active threats, updating libs with patches and migrating from deprecated dependencies spanning 100s of services.

voz_ 4y ago
Uber won't ever 2x, let alone 10x.
astrange 4y ago
Uber was designed to be incredibly overcomplex and scaled from the beginning; you can read people’s accounts of the fancy technology they invented to scale other employees’ stuffing code in nonstop. Of course, those other employees had no reason to write that code, and were just doing it because Uber had a lot of money and decided to hire a lot of people to do random busywork. If “it could be done in a weekend with less people” is true for anyone it’s true for Uber. They should be replacing systems with ones that may scale worse but are cheaper. Scaling=complexity comes from companies like Google/Meta where the engineers practice promotion-based development.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  The problem is legal regulations. Wanna know why SAP is so successful despite their software being practically a legend for horrible UI, slowness and other nightmares at an absurd-seeming price point? Because they invest an absurd amount of money into lawyers, process engineers, developers and QA to keep track on law, judicial precedent and XO changes all across the world, so that their customers only have to pull in the latest monthly update and their processes (assuming they didn't deviate too hard) are automatically compliant with all possible kinds of bullshit. Uber, AirBnB, Amazon FBA and other globally active marketplace companies deal with the same thing - their business is in facilitating other people's business without having to think about local laws and regulations. Payment alone is a real hard thing: people wish to pay with whatever payment card scheme is most popular in their specific home country - which may not be the usual Mastercard/Visa duopoly -, they may wish to do so in wherever country they are at the moment, there may be international sanctions at play, different regulations about CC fees, clawback periods, taxes, VAT...
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Wasn't Uber famous for shirking regulations until it had cornered markets? And FBA appears to be borderline fraudulent for both producers and consumers as Amazon comingles inventory with no guarantees. That said I can see the legal-based marketing pitch. Not sure how well companies who advertise that actually deliver. There's also the risk it becomes theater or regulatory capture
  - astrange 4y ago
    Uber was mainly successful by just ignoring the regulations nobody liked and hoping it’d work out, though. It really looks like they just managed to convince everyone that taxi routing is hard and can only be done by hiring 1000 geniuses to write 1000 queueing systems in Scala.

voz_ 4y ago

Uber won't ever 2x, let alone 10x.

astrange 4y ago

Uber was designed to be incredibly overcomplex and scaled from the beginning; you can read people’s accounts of the fancy technology they invented to scale other employees’ stuffing code in nonstop. Of course, those other employees had no reason to write that code, and were just doing it because Uber had a lot of money and decided to hire a lot of people to do random busywork. If “it could be done in a weekend with less people” is true for anyone it’s true for Uber. They should be replacing systems with ones that may scale worse but are cheaper. Scaling=complexity comes from companies like Google/Meta where the engineers practice promotion-based development.

mschuster91 4y ago
The problem is legal regulations. Wanna know why SAP is so successful despite their software being practically a legend for horrible UI, slowness and other nightmares at an absurd-seeming price point? Because they invest an absurd amount of money into lawyers, process engineers, developers and QA to keep track on law, judicial precedent and XO changes all across the world, so that their customers only have to pull in the latest monthly update and their processes (assuming they didn't deviate too hard) are automatically compliant with all possible kinds of bullshit. Uber, AirBnB, Amazon FBA and other globally active marketplace companies deal with the same thing - their business is in facilitating other people's business without having to think about local laws and regulations. Payment alone is a real hard thing: people wish to pay with whatever payment card scheme is most popular in their specific home country - which may not be the usual Mastercard/Visa duopoly -, they may wish to do so in wherever country they are at the moment, there may be international sanctions at play, different regulations about CC fees, clawback periods, taxes, VAT...
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Wasn't Uber famous for shirking regulations until it had cornered markets? And FBA appears to be borderline fraudulent for both producers and consumers as Amazon comingles inventory with no guarantees. That said I can see the legal-based marketing pitch. Not sure how well companies who advertise that actually deliver. There's also the risk it becomes theater or regulatory capture
- astrange 4y ago
  Uber was mainly successful by just ignoring the regulations nobody liked and hoping it’d work out, though. It really looks like they just managed to convince everyone that taxi routing is hard and can only be done by hiring 1000 geniuses to write 1000 queueing systems in Scala.