Uber, after buying Postmates, lays off more than 180 employees

Re:Uber, after buying Postmates, lays off more than 180 empl... by onion2k on Sunday January 24, 2021 @02:22AM (#25890063)

We shouldn't ignore the fact that Uber has been going for 11 years though. That's a lot of time to build all that functionality and iterate it to be good. A small team of competent devs could build everything in the comment you linked to in a little over a decade. Probably a lot less.

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Re:Uber, after buying Postmates, lays off more than 180 empl... by darkerside on Sunday January 24, 2021 @08:29AM (#25891859)

Build? Sure.

Build well? These things aren't built perfectly the first time, or anywhere close. You don't always know what you're building until you've iterated on it a few times. It's just ready to forget that you didn't know when you have the benefit of hindsight.

And build well and maintain? Not a chance. This should be obvious.

Maybe we have different ideas off what a small team is. To be, 3-4 devs is a small team. In context, I could say maybe ten developers, but I would consider that a large team. At that point I'd be preparing to split into multiple teams.

In not saying they needed 21,000, but it's likely we just mean completely different things when we talk about a small team. What does it mean to you?

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Re:Uber, after buying Postmates, lays off more than 180 empl... by onion2k on Sunday January 24, 2021 @02:05PM (#25894739)

I guess you missed the word "iterate" in my post. Good software doesn't spring in to existence just because a team has talent. It starts off OK if you're lucky and it evolves in to something good if the team can guide it properly.

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Re:Uber, after buying Postmates, lays off more than 180 empl... by darkerside on Sunday January 24, 2021 @03:48PM (#25895831)

I'll ask again, when you say a small team, what exactly are you thinking about? Order of magnitude is fine. 3? 30? 300?

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