Re:Uber cuts 3000 more jobs, closes 45 offices
by rockostrich on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @10:39AM
(#23235342)
Eh, they're solving different problems. I don't think you can necessarily call Uber's problem more complicated just because it's an order of magnitude more volume. I worked at a small ad tech start-up with a team of 5 engineers on a real-time bidding platform that was serving 1k requests/second and moved to a travel company that's now 100+ engineers that serves maybe ~250 requests/second at peak traffic, but the travel company's infrastructure is a lot more complicated even though the volume is smaller.
These are complete guesses for the pre-covid era, but it gives an idea of scale difference. The average Airbnb user probably books 2-3 times per year. The average Uber user probably books 2-3 rides per week. At 50x the volume, the infrastructure is different, and probably more complicated to handle the volume.