$8M sounds like a lot, but (a) the cost of making a material financial mistake c an easily dwarf this, and (b) the cost of the engineers maintaining the system

$8M sounds like a lot, but (a) the cost of making a material financial mistake c an easily dwarf this, and (b) the cost of the engineers maintaining the system was likely about this expensive anyway. And infra is expensive when you're Uber. It all seems rather overblown to me.