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Developing and maintaining a totally bespoke DB system with that kind of volume even for $5m/yr, spitball you could get yourself 25 top-notch engineers without

by cdchn 2y ago

Developing and maintaining a totally bespoke DB system with that kind of volume even for $5m/yr, spitball you could get yourself 25 top-notch engineers without AI PhDs and have another mil left over for metal. Sounds plenty feasible to have a nice tailored suit for a core part of your business.

inoop 2y ago
> you could get yourself 25 top-notch engineers without AI PhD Not in the US though. According to levels.fyi, an SDE2 makes ~275k/year at Uber. Hire 25 of those and you're already at $6.875MM. In reality you're going to have a mix of SDE1, SDE2, SDE3, and staff so total salaries will be higher. Then you gotta add taxes, office space, dental, medical, etc. You may as well double that number. And that's just the cost of labor, you haven't spun up a single machine and or sent a single byte across a wire.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  Work from home doesn't mean that home has to be in the US.
- cdchn 2y ago
  "and have another mil left over for metal" was the part accounting for hardware, infrastructure, etc. And you can fudge the employee salary a mil or two either way, but the point is that spending that much on a team to build something isn't infeasible or even unreasonable.
- cthalupa 2y ago
  > Then you gotta add taxes, office space, dental, medical, etc. You may as well double that number. Economies of scale help a bit with this for larger companies, so it's probably not quite double for Uber, but yeah, not too far off as a general rule of thumb. Probably a 75% increase on the employee facing total comp to get fairly close to the company's actual cost for the employee.
aeyes 2y ago
It doesn't sound like they needed to implement a new DB system for this. This is using existing features of Docstore which is Uber's own DynamoDB (sharded MySQL) which they seem to be using for almost everything.
davedx 2y ago
Is accounting really a core part of Uber's business? They're a transportation company not a bank. I kind of question the premise really
- cdchn 2y ago
  Uber is a technology company that tracks 'rides' between drivers that are contractors and customers, and accounts for taking money from one and giving it to another. I wouldn't just call it a core part, I'd go so far as it say it is the intrinsic essence of their business. They're not a bank, but they're not running a branch with tellers taking cash and running ATMs, either.
  - shermantanktop 2y ago
    They are in the transportation market serving transportation needs for a transportation-seeking customer base. How they accomplish that is obviously interesting, but their attempts to move laterally haven’t been amazing from what I can tell (though I don’t follow them closely). They are structured and run like a tech company but imo they don’t produce a tech product.
    - bobby_the_whal 2y ago
      > They are structured and run like a tech company but imo they don’t produce a tech product. This kind of comment could kill their stock :P Uber said they were going to produce self-driving cars, so technically they are a failed tech company, which is now just a company. I am surprised they didn't get crushed by a competitor that didn't waste their capital on worthless stuff. So much for capitalism working. Uber should have gone bankrupt. There is just no way that their database is actually technologically novel. Uber just doesn't have the expertise.

by cdchn 2y ago

inoop 2y ago

> you could get yourself 25 top-notch engineers without AI PhD Not in the US though. According to levels.fyi, an SDE2 makes ~275k/year at Uber. Hire 25 of those and you're already at $6.875MM. In reality you're going to have a mix of SDE1, SDE2, SDE3, and staff so total salaries will be higher. Then you gotta add taxes, office space, dental, medical, etc. You may as well double that number. And that's just the cost of labor, you haven't spun up a single machine and or sent a single byte across a wire.

silverquiet 2y ago
Work from home doesn't mean that home has to be in the US.
cdchn 2y ago
"and have another mil left over for metal" was the part accounting for hardware, infrastructure, etc. And you can fudge the employee salary a mil or two either way, but the point is that spending that much on a team to build something isn't infeasible or even unreasonable.
cthalupa 2y ago
> Then you gotta add taxes, office space, dental, medical, etc. You may as well double that number. Economies of scale help a bit with this for larger companies, so it's probably not quite double for Uber, but yeah, not too far off as a general rule of thumb. Probably a 75% increase on the employee facing total comp to get fairly close to the company's actual cost for the employee.

aeyes 2y ago

It doesn't sound like they needed to implement a new DB system for this. This is using existing features of Docstore which is Uber's own DynamoDB (sharded MySQL) which they seem to be using for almost everything.

davedx 2y ago

Is accounting really a core part of Uber's business? They're a transportation company not a bank. I kind of question the premise really

cdchn 2y ago
Uber is a technology company that tracks 'rides' between drivers that are contractors and customers, and accounts for taking money from one and giving it to another. I wouldn't just call it a core part, I'd go so far as it say it is the intrinsic essence of their business. They're not a bank, but they're not running a branch with tellers taking cash and running ATMs, either.
- shermantanktop 2y ago
  They are in the transportation market serving transportation needs for a transportation-seeking customer base. How they accomplish that is obviously interesting, but their attempts to move laterally haven’t been amazing from what I can tell (though I don’t follow them closely). They are structured and run like a tech company but imo they don’t produce a tech product.
  - bobby_the_whal 2y ago
    > They are structured and run like a tech company but imo they don’t produce a tech product. This kind of comment could kill their stock :P Uber said they were going to produce self-driving cars, so technically they are a failed tech company, which is now just a company. I am surprised they didn't get crushed by a competitor that didn't waste their capital on worthless stuff. So much for capitalism working. Uber should have gone bankrupt. There is just no way that their database is actually technologically novel. Uber just doesn't have the expertise.