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Comment by Legend2440 | Hacker News Reader

Even if Uber really did double developer productivity, would it translate to quarterly results?

Ultimately they make money selling rides, not selling software. The Uber app is mature and adding new features is unlikely to significantly increase sales.

Writing 2x more code doesn't translate to 2x more revenue unless it results in 2x more rides.

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> Even if Uber really did double developer productivity, would it translate to quarterly results?

It would if it meant they then fired half their software engineers, which is the ultimate goal.

Even if they lower costs to 0, it means nothing

Topline growth matters more than costs.

Mathematically - There is no limit to topline growth But cost cutting has a ceiling, which is the current costs.

You can only make(save) so much money with cost cutting

Topline growth is upper bound by total energy in the universe though.

Topline growth is more realistically bounded by the number of people willing to take an Uber at a given price. You can't expand forever.

Lowering costs to run the infra would show up as increased profits without any change in rides.

Do you really need AI for that? Seems like the thing any existing engineering team could do if it was prioritized.

Would it? How much of Uber’s cost is software infrastructure vs paying humans?

How much is infra spending compared to revenue/other expenses? I honestly can’t imagine it’s that high, they’re not running something like Netflix or YouTube… But maybe I’m underestimating it.

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