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Comment by Ozzie_osman | Hacker News Reader

This is kind of about whether Uber views itself as a FAANG type software company (software as core competency, strong recruiting brand for tech-hub engineers) or a more operational business (software as a cost center).

Most companies end up having to choose one. If you're the latter, you absolutely don't try competing with FAANG for the same talent.

(I do think Amazon is a rare example of a company that both developed software as a core competency but also real world operations)

That said, I'm always happy to see companies diversifying their geographic footprint. Smart, conscientious people exist everywhere, not just in Western tech-hubs. And I hope in the future the choice isn't viewed as "to be one of the best software companies in the world you have to be in Silicon Valley, but if you want low costs, go to India, etc"

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The real question for me is why would Uber investors put the kind of management that view software as a cost center? In this context that's a pessimistic signal for their future, at least for their current valuation, if not the sign of a death spiral.

Because they are competing against competitors with equal level of product but with majority od developers in low labor cost countries. Thats a recipe for sure loss.

In the US the only real competition is Lyft, who is definitely not treating software as a cost center.

Well, im not sure about that. You should look at their hiring page right now and see that they are heavily increasing their presence in european tech centers.

Additionally, Uber is focusing on being a global superapp company, not just the US (its just their cash cow).

I'm surprised Uber considered itself a software company at all. They are a contractor management company.

I don't see any reason (except for juicing their valuation) to consider Uber as a software company. Their product is not software: it's taxi cabs.

A ride hailing app is more or less a commodity, see all the Uber clones out there: Lyft, Gett, Arro, Flywheel, Kapten...

>Uber as a software company. Their product is not software: it's taxi cabs.

That's not accurate. They have software to match riders to drivers while optimally setting the price of the trip based on the current demand/supply. It has to work in many different cities while preventing fraud and/or gaming of the system. It's a legitimately hard engineering problem that requires sophisticated software solutions.

But do they sell that software/technology? As far as I can tell they sell taxi rides, software "just" helps/supports their core business.

Fundamentally, their product is an app that the riders and drivers pay them to use. I don't think the fact that they use it to do something in the real world changes that Uber is a software company.

I think that's a very short-sighted answer. Besides their actual core business, they are also building technology for self-driving cars. I would say, Yes, they are selling technology/software.

It is not that hard, however. Every copycat mentioned above replicated it using a few dozen programmers, as did Yandex and Didi and Bolt.

The competitive advantage does not lie in the software quality for Uber, but in other things (customer install base, driver base, brand awareness).

That's true for all the FAANGs except Apple and parts of Google. For example, a few dozen programmers can easily whip up a credible competitor to Facebook. The problem is getting enough users to compete.

I would tend to disagree with this. Facebook's customer is advertisers, which inherently requires scale/ad placements + live auction system + the FB graph matchmaking. I am not familiar with the internals of Uber, but they earn revenue if they can get a rider in a car, pay both parties, and then take a cut.

> For example, a few dozen programmers can easily whip up a credible competitor to Facebook.

This is one of those oft-repeated tropes on HN that needs to be out out to pasture for good.

No, you can't do the same job with a few dozen engineers that is currently taking the market leader many thousands of engineers to pull off. That's just hubris. The reality is that it's more complicated than you yet realize, and if you were to really delve into it you'd see the fractal complexity.

We've seen Snapchat, Reddit, Instagram, and Twitter off the top of my head build out competing social networks with dozens of engineers (or less).

And then the problem is scaling rapidly enough to handle those users. A whole lot of the engineers at FAANGs are running infrastructure that, for the startup with zero users, doesn’t exist.

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