A former Uber engineer's disaster story

Re:A former Uber engineer's disaster story by didip on Thursday December 10, 2020 @01:21PM (#25376645)

I have to say, this comment is quite ridiculous. Might as well say that Google is simple because it's just an app with one search field.

I never work for Uber but I can easily imagine the following problems:

* Map data is not a solved problem. Tons of inaccurate data especially on non-english speaking countries.

* As someone mentioned about payments, different country requires different payment platform integrations.

* Payment is just one aspect of money, you need to build a treasure-like logic to run a marketplace between drivers and passengers.

* The matchmaking algorithm itself is interesting enough problem. It has to be efficient for the company to make the most amount of money.

* Tons of internal data are produced and required to be understood. This requires ML/data analytic talents.

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Re:A former Uber engineer's disaster story by grahamburger on Thursday December 10, 2020 @01:28PM (#25376712)

The items you've listed don't appear to be things that would contribute directly to the size (in MB as installed on the device) of the app. I don't think GP was making a comment about the complexity of the product, just the size of the installed app.

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Re:A former Uber engineer's disaster story by qntty on Thursday December 10, 2020 @04:28PM (#25378965)

It seems a little strange to criticize someone for asking a question on a site where most users seem to value curiosity. Not everyone has a background that makes it as easy to imagine problems like these, and while you've given some possibilities, I would also be interested in knowing exactly what accounts for the size.

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Re:A former Uber engineer's disaster story by mikeyouse on Thursday December 10, 2020 @08:18PM (#25381145)

There are far better ways to ask the question than “What does the app even do, just seems like a map with a few dots” which has a heavy implication on the quality of the team that built it..

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Re:A former Uber engineer's disaster story by mensetmanusman on Thursday December 10, 2020 @09:37PM (#25381611)

You may be reading in to it too much. A lot of people would be surprised that Uber is as large as 30 SNES games.

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Re:A former Uber engineer's disaster story by mewpmewp2 on Thursday December 10, 2020 @03:55PM (#25378526)

And how big is Google's web search bundle?

Most of what you mentioned should be server side.

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Re:A former Uber engineer's disaster story by mcguire on Thursday December 10, 2020 @01:40PM (#25376845)

Isn't all of that server-side?

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Re:A former Uber engineer's disaster story by pfortuny on Thursday December 10, 2020 @02:42PM (#25377630)

Not as per the long twitter thread.

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Re:A former Uber engineer's disaster story by mewpmewp2 on Thursday December 10, 2020 @03:53PM (#25378484)

Well... It should be.

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Re:A former Uber engineer's disaster story by ska on Thursday December 10, 2020 @05:10PM (#25379454)

That is a trade off with some pretty deep implications and some subtleties. I doubt it's such an obvious choice.

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Re:A former Uber engineer's disaster story by jay_kyburz on Thursday December 10, 2020 @08:44PM (#25381285)

I've been thinking about pushing more in my client make less work for my servers.

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Re:A former Uber engineer's disaster story by mcguire on Friday December 11, 2020 @02:15PM (#25389509)

Evaluating map data inaccuracy? More than just a payment UI? Driver/passenger matching? Data analytics? (Doesn't that require information from multiple clients?) On the client?

I mean, you could push some of that to the client, but I'd understand why your app is gigantic and doesn't do app-ly job very well with all the background processing. And I'd be surprised the app hasn't been hacked to get at the analytics data, if not the payments.

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