Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#111

Post by fg137 » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

orf wrote: post #70

internetter wrote: post #6

I know I'm responding to AI right now, but > which means figuring out if the company can afford this level of productivity at scale. If it was actually productive, then the revenue would increase and affordability wouldn't be a question.

Not every change a developer makes increases revenue, and the changes that do often have a lag time.

I'd argue it's often the contrary -- since it's easy to ship features and fixes, people often ship things without questioning if it makes business sense to support a use case, or if the design is solid. Now you have exactly the same revenge but more things to maintain

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#112

Post by robotresearcher » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

sikozu wrote: post #65

Verdex wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's my take as well. I've had my unPRed branches grabbed up and blindly merged by an agent twice now. The guy doing it was shocked both times that his PR had my change sets in it. Also one engineer is treating the code as assembly. I've asked some pointed questions about code in his PR and the response was "yeah, I don't know that's what the agent did". Edit: To everyone freaking out about the second guy. Yeah, I…

So he's being paid and is sitting there letting an AI tool do his work for him? Insanity.

We didn’t mind when typesetting was automated. Or when compilers were invented. Why is this different?

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#113

Post by ambicapter » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

fidotron wrote: post #26

MichaelNolan wrote: post #3

> 95% of Uber engineers now use AI tools monthly with 70% of committed code originating from AI. Well, that’s to be expected when using AI tools becomes relevant in your performance evaluation.

It's actually incredible the extent to which non devs imposing KPIs on devs underestimate how badly this will get gamed, whether it's AIs, PR/line counting or whatever.

Someone at my job uses AI tools to reformat his code...

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#114

Post by AlotOfReading » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

some-guy wrote: post #73

brokencode wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really depends on the repo you’re working in. If it’s very large, especially if the tool needs to refer to documentation for a lot of custom frameworks and APIs, you often end up needing very large context windows that burn through tokens faster. If it’s smaller or sticks with common frameworks that the model was trained on, it’s able to do a lot more with smaller context windows and token usage is way lower.

I'm currently in repos where the context window required is so large that the output is almost always "wrong" for the problem at hand. Quite a few people at my company burn through tokens this way, and it certainly isn't providing value to the company.

As always, improving accessibility for humans makes automation more effective. If the humans need to remember a PhD's worth of source code/documentation to contribute effectively, your codebase stinks.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#115

Post by cassianoleal » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

> Uber's unexpected budget burn matters because it signals how valuable AI tools have become to engineering productivity

That's a bit of a logical leap with no demonstrable increase in productivity.

All this shows is that they're spending a lot more on AI than they budgeted for. Nothing else.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#116

Post by steveBK123 » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

Verdex wrote: post #57

swiftcoder wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are they just copy/pasting their entire ticket description into Claude Code and having it iterate until they land on something that works? That is exactly what they are doing, yes

That's my take as well. I've had my unPRed branches grabbed up and blindly merged by an agent twice now. The guy doing it was shocked both times that his PR had my change sets in it. Also one engineer is treating the code as assembly. I've asked some pointed questions about code in his PR and the response was "yeah, I don't know that's what the agent did". Edit: To everyone freaking out about the second guy. Yeah, I…

My friend is a CTO at a non-tech company and he's now dealing with code from non-SWEs trying to self serve with LLMs.

But it's like a kid running a lemonade stand. Total DIY weekend project quality stuff that they are demanding go live. Hardcoded credentials, no concept of dev/qa/prod environments, no logging, no tests, no source control.

I'm not really sure teaching basic SWE practices / SDLC / system design to people whose day job is like.. accounting makes sense compared to just accelerating developer productivity.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#117

Post by geetee » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

No mention of if it actually improved outcomes.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#118

Post by Cyphus » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

> what started as an experiment in productivity became a runaway success

Successfully burning through cash and tokens, alright, but what have they gotten out of it?

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#119

Post by giantg2 » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

quaintdev wrote: post #105

brokencode wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really depends on the repo you’re working in. If it’s very large, especially if the tool needs to refer to documentation for a lot of custom frameworks and APIs, you often end up needing very large context windows that burn through tokens faster. If it’s smaller or sticks with common frameworks that the model was trained on, it’s able to do a lot more with smaller context windows and token usage is way lower.

Begs the question if we should move on to minimal microservices so that whole project lives in context of llm. I hardly have to do anything when I'm working with small project with llm.

Orchestration between those services and the integration testing for any reasonably complex change can still be quite large.

Re: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

#120

Post by mlsu » Fri, May 01, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

quaintdev wrote: post #105

brokencode wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really depends on the repo you’re working in. If it’s very large, especially if the tool needs to refer to documentation for a lot of custom frameworks and APIs, you often end up needing very large context windows that burn through tokens faster. If it’s smaller or sticks with common frameworks that the model was trained on, it’s able to do a lot more with smaller context windows and token usage is way lower.

Begs the question if we should move on to minimal microservices so that whole project lives in context of llm. I hardly have to do anything when I'm working with small project with llm.

Why not take it a step further? Make each function in the codebase its own project. Then the codebase can fit into the context window easily. All you have to do is debug issues between functions calling each other.