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Comment by CydeWeys | Hacker News Reader

It easily could help them on their way to profitability if this works better than their previous system and allows faster, less hassle builds, i.e. you get more productivity out of the same number of engineers.

This tech negativity seems out of place on HN.

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> This tech negativity seems out of place on HN.

Why? Cynicism tends to make the source look smart. And the HN comments section is mostly filled with people (me included) trying to look smart.

While it's possible to stick to commenting only on topics we know a lot about, that's not the most efficient way to farm karma. The best way is to take a big cynical dump on whatever new thing people are trying to do. And under no circumstances should we show optimism - we won't look smart if we do.

Here are two comments from this thread. Ask yourself, which person seems smarter.

1. "I wish my company was at the scale of Uber to work on all these kinds of tech. Makes me want to leave my current job just to go to Uber."

2. "This will surely bring them to profitability. Exactly the innovation the food delivery space was looking for."

Do you really think so? Do you think the rate at which uber is able to ship new features is the reason why they're not profitable? If yes, then shouldn't Lyft or Flywheel or some new company that can ship much faster be better off than Uber?

From what I've heard of Lyft, they definitely do not ship faster. One (probable) reason is that their infrastructure and tooling is a mess.

I don't see this as a new feature, I see it as cost control. Fixing technical debt brings your long-term carrying costs lower. They're increasing the efficiency of their developers so they can do more with fewer of them, which helps reduce total compensation costs.

> then shouldn't Lyft or Flywheel or some new company that can ship much faster be better off than Uber?

Isn't that the general startup success story: small scrappy team adapts faster to changes and the market, giving them some advantage over slow-moving megacorp?

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