Comment by dragonsh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonsh | Hacker News Reader

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Gojek is a super app in Indonesia serving a population of 264 million. They can afford this level of engineering and are required to do it, to stay competitive. They have millions of motorcycle driver (called gojeks) for whom they are trying to find jobs while idling waiting for passengers to transport.

If uber built these no one will question them why don't they use some off the shelf solution. Gojek is a google cloud customer and under their startup program - surge. So I am sure they are aware of the solution proposed.

They don't call themselves technology company but company which helps gojek drivers to find jobs and earn extra. In the process they became a food delivery, transportation, payments, courier company. In spite of this they still focus on their primary objective to find jobs for gojek and let them earn extra for better living.

Before Gojek app most of the drivers were just idling waiting for passengers, now with a $25 Kai OS feature phone [1], they can just receive a message and earn instead of just idling, they don't have to use iPhone or Android or some heavy OS. Indeed based on social survey some of the drivers could increase there earning 3-4 times based on how willing are they to take up additional jobs.

I believe the beauty of Gojek lies in its model to focus on finding jobs and developing solution to help those motorcycle drivers using technology. Although they extended it to cars. I am intrigued by their idea since its not a copy of Uber, but a solution to a problem local to Indonesia, which can extend to any country in the world finding jobs to do while idling and earn more.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS

I don't think the other answers here question the impact Gojek has on millions of people.

> If uber built these no one will question them why don't they use some off the shelf solution.

If it's over-engineered, they probably would.

Disclaimer: I work at Gojek.

> They can afford this level of engineering and are required to do it, to stay competitive

> If uber built these no one will question them why don't they use some off the shelf solution

Uber and Gojek don't have the same talent pool so we can't compare them as Apple-to-Apple.

It is a risky move for Gojek and not for Uber because of the talent pool in their respective area.

Why would you think Gojek will not have a talent and cannot manage engineering?

If you have used their app and done a review of their platform comparing it with Uber, can you please share.

Indeed Uber did try to enter Indonesia they failed, they were out of most of South East and East Asia, because they don't have enough engineering talent to build a system for those specific countries, local companies like Grab in Singapore, Gojek in Indonesia, Didi in China beat them. So why would you think those companies do not have a talent to build systems better suited to their own environment than Uber.

> Indeed Uber did try to enter Indonesia they failed, they were out of most of South East and East Asia, because they don't have enough engineering talent to build a system

Because they don't understand the local market, period. Nothing more than that. It has zero relationship with Uber not able to hire engineering talent. They simply don't know the market.

If you put the smartest engineers in the room but they don't know the business domain, they will fail from Day-1. I think people put Engineers over everything else where in majority of the situations, business-domain-knowledge trumps engineering excellence.

That is one reason. The other reason is that Local will choose Local (China with tons of Chinese only service). Indonesian President, Mr. Joko Widodo, for sure will promote Gojek more than Uber.

> So why would you think those companies do not have a talent to build systems better suited to their own environment

You have to understand the context here.

Why do you think Gojek opened a huge "lab" in India?

Why do you think Grab opened a "lab" in Seattle and hired Steve Yegge?

You may not realized this but they are not the only South East Asia "Unicorn"/"Decacorn" who opened R&D Labs outside their "homebase".

I can't share much of the details why these companies (_and_ a few others) decided to do so but feel free to guess a bit here and there.

> Because they don't understand the local market, period.

Uber couldn't iterate the platform and technology according to local market requirements and conditions, engineering is one of the reason for failure. They then tried with money and didn't work either. It's a combination of business and technology platform due to which Uber failed.

If you prefer to live in a bubble its fine, there is no better engineering talent anywhere in this world except Uber. But ground truths are already there in the markets from which they retreated.

Gojek opened centers in India because it's cheaper than Singapore.

Grab costs in Singapore and Malaysia is higher too compared to India.

So like any other USA firm which has opened centre in India to save costs, they did too.

Eh... Grab opened an R&D lab in Seattle and hire Google folks. That's breaking the wallet big time in terms of employee compensation.

Grab isn't the only one from SE Asia that opened the lab in North America. There are at least 2 more from Indonesia that opted North America instead of Singapore/Malaysia/India.

Can't share details other than "talent pools just not there".

Feel free to disagree with the execs.

> Grab opened an R&D lab in Seattle and hire Google folks. That's breaking the wallet big time in terms of employee compensation.

Sure they will open in Seattle as it's 30% or more cheaper than Singapore. Grab's largest R&D team is in Singapore. They did bring in talent from around the world here. But as the cost in Singapore is very high, to get an expat is very expensive. [1]

So it does make sense to open in cheaper location an R&D, it also shows they have engineering talent from around the globe.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.sg/most-expensive-cities-in-the-...

Cheaper in Seattle? I don't have the exact number how expensive it is to hire folks in Singapore but I can tell you this: those google folks cost at least 150k USD base without bonus and RSU. Someone like Steve Yegge will have total compensation north of $500k USD at Google so Grab should at least pay him 700k-1M USD.

Google Fresh Grad total compensation should be between 150k - 300k usd in Mountain View. Fresh grad. Seattle usually cost 10-15% less total compensation compare to Mountain View.

Heck even recent Microsoft offer for fresh grad base:110k, bonus 10-20%, and rsu. That's MSFT, not FAANG. FAANG will give you signon bonus on top of that ranging from 50k-100k.

Keep in mind Grab RSU is paper money at the moment.

I highly doubt Singapore engineers, given the same level, make that much. Probably only the top 0.5%.

I don't see a good discussion as you still think that these folks don't come to North America and open R&D lab because it's cheaper than Singapore since that logic does not make any sense out of the gate: India is way cheaper, why not grow there and don't even bother opening a lab in Seattle. You do know that it is damn hard to grow an R&D Lab in the USA due to regulations and immigration policies right.

In order to avoid repeating the facts on the field, I would suggest you to reach out to the executives in those companies and ask why they do so as I have done before to avoid confusion, assumptions, and guessing games.

You guys missing the bigger picture. Uber didn't fail in Southeast Asia. The competition was so steep that Uber and Grab were losing a lot of money through aggressive marketing. I know how aggressive they were as I'm from Malaysia. So, Uber and Grab came to an agreement, where Uber sold off their business to Grab for 27.5% stake and a seat on the board. It have nothing to do with talent. It's pure business. Instead of lose-lose situation, they created a win-win situation for both.

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