It is fair to say that when you have R&D headcount in thousands it better be something really impressive.
Boeing 747 design team was 4500 engineers and they were done in 29 months.
Boeing 747 design team was 4500 engineers and they were done in 29 months.
It’s a different type of systems engineering, that’s more akin to sorcery, than to actual physics.
The hardware is, of course, limited by physics, like the speed of electrons and heat dissipation. But once you get past that, your computer system is a collection of bytes that you reassemble to form whatever it is your imagination desires.
And while the 747 is a magnificent plane, it did have the benefit of over 50 years of aviation and aeronautical science behind it, all figured out.
Whereas software is still somewhat in its infancy right now. And every few decades, it seems to revolutionize itself, as newer and faster hardware become available.
But let's say designing for scale is 100 times harder than a taxi app for just one national taxi service. Based on my 23 year career in trenches I seriously doubt that's the case, but let's be generous.
That would net us into ballpark of €60M expense. Non-negligible, but it translates into a hundred developers pulling €100k a year for 6 years, still at least an order of magnitude below Uber.
Very obviously it does not scale anywhere near linear. There has to be a severe case of diminishing returns in technical hiring.