Uber is pretty bloated in the engineering department, because they are suffering from NIH syndrome, and had to implement custom solutions for everything. They could certainly be much leaner in that regard.

NIH is such a disease.

I work on a SaaS product, we have a really small team. Accordingly we can't afford a lot of NIH when it can be avoided.

I talked to a semi-competitor and they noted they built a thing, we have that thing too ... 24 different devs on that project and they do have some extra features ... but it took them 9 months of 24 devs (not all full time granted) and my boss and I hammered it out in a week.

Our customers are using it, meanwhile they haven't sold it to anyone.

Now I'm sure there are advantages to their work but as far as what it does ... pretty much the same thing as far as core functionality goes :O

The amount of cycles NIH can scoop up is astounding.

It was interesting that recruitment was called out specifically. If 3700 people make up only 14% of the workforce that puts their pre-layoff total around 26k. I wonder how many recruiters a company of that size needs.

Uber has a physical building in my neighborhood and I have absolutely no clue what possibly happens in there. I've never seen activity. It's not even an office buiding, looks like an old Karate gym or something.

Maybe they're really a front for money laundering?