This will surely bring them to profitability. Exactly the innovation the food delivery space was looking for.
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."
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?
Also, I’m totally fine with them using all that investment money for R&D rather than lobbying or returning to shareholders among other things.
(In reality, there were zero comments, so w/e)
While this doesn't mean that they can continue to be unprofitable forever, it means that they have latitude to engage in R&D (like this post) while also moving towards profitability, at the same time.
This documented project's usefulness to the tech community is totally independent from its balance sheet. It's not like NOT publishing this eng blog post makes some material difference in Uber's long run ability to turn a profit...
vs
At Uber we face technical challenges that afford our engineers the opportunity to design and build world class software, make a significant impact in OSS, and tell their peers about it in major conferences. We have an excellent team of engineers and are looking for more!