I want to know how many of the total 3600 engineers are just maintaining the main uber app and how many are off in other ventures (self driving etc.)
Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate
181–190 of 225 posts
Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
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.
Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
You cannot get the same talent in India that you get in the U.S., at scale.
not true. Eastern Europe has great engineering talent, India, southeast asia all have great engineering schools and talent. If there is a scale, it is outside US, it just requires some footwork to find and hire people - which most managers are too lazy to do. Because they are nog saving their own money, it is shareholders money so who cares?
I’ll believe it when I start to see powerful startups becoming global brands out of those places.
Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
not true. Eastern Europe has great engineering talent, India, southeast asia all have great engineering schools and talent. If there is a scale, it is outside US, it just requires some footwork to find and hire people - which most managers are too lazy to do. Because they are nog saving their own money, it is shareholders money so who cares?
I’ll believe it when I start to see powerful startups becoming global brands out of those places.
branding != engineering. Want to evaluate technical competencies - compare technical artifacts
Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is definitely a shortage of good quality Engineers in SF. That's the key reason why the engineering salary is so high. Also the weird housing laws. The same engineer who is making 30k in India makes 5 or 6 times the salary when moved to the SF office. Similarly the Engineer who makes 200k+ in SF gets 4 or 5 times less when moved back to India. Comparing Mercedes to Honda is not the right comparison. There are g…
Sounds like African automobile tariffs when you put it that way
Let me put it this way.
Is the reason why a 1 bed room house price in SF is 5 times or more higher than that of a similar house in Kiev or Bangalore because it's 5x+ the quality?
No. It's mainly because the supply of housing cant keep up with the demand.
As you can see, the housing price started to drop as more and more companies are going remote.
Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We should really divorce politics from this discussion. that's a common technical people pitfall. politics permeates society, and ignoring it is only to your own detriment exposing you form exploitation of those whom play the political game, of which you most assuredly participate in, whether you want an active role in it or not.
> politics permeates society No, it's a pitfall people fall into when they read politics into any topic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics
Politics permeates society, and by design.
Also this thread is about employment and moving jobs across countries, which is an extremely politically changed topic.
Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience working with outsourcing agencies - "talent available" in India is filling headcount numbers. Good developers ask for similar wages as EU based ones and are equally hard to find, probably even harder because the market is filled with scammers (eg. on several occasions I would interview a competent guy and then the work would clearly get delegated to someone inexperienced)
Sure, scammers are abound and the bad to good ratio is pretty high but due to the population size, the number of good developers is high as well.
> the bad to good ratio is pretty high but due to the population size
This is not how ratios work.
Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the cost of an engineer is way less than 80K in India. Here in the Netherlands a senior SE would be $80K. I see no reason to go to India instead of western Europe then.
I am in Germany (where software engineers are ridiculously undervalued) and would consider 80k an underwhelming mid-level salary. According to levels.fyi, salary in the netherlands is quite a bit better.
Why is SWE undervalued in Germany?
Are other engineering disciplines valued higher?
Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should those engineers be paid $150k if they're generating more than $300k of value? For that matter, why should an Indian engineer be paid $80k if they're generating $300k of value minus whatever hidden costs you want to assign (surely not $220k)?
Why should an engineer be paid that value they produce when they assume none of the risk? If the company goes bankrupt, will the engineer be willing to bail the company out? The engineer is paid less than the value they produce because they don't assume any of the risk. If the product they produce turns out to be worthless or break, they don't have to pay their salary back.
> Why should an engineer be paid that value they produce when they assume none of the risk?
Engineers are never fired? Not even when the company shuts down?
> If the company goes bankrupt, will the engineer be willing to bail the company out?
Sometimes yes, with their (and mine) taxes.
Re: Uber CEO Wants to Shift More Engineering Jobs to India, Sparking Internal Debate
#190It's hard to ignore the siren song as a business person of comparing your 300k a year engineers to a senior engineer that costs $80k in India (regardless of the potential hidden costs of cultural and time zone differences). This gap should probably narrow as more remote work becomes normal, and more people move out of the Valley and can actually live decently on 150k, rather than 300k.
Why should those engineers be paid $150k if they're generating more than $300k of value? For that matter, why should an Indian engineer be paid $80k if they're generating $300k of value minus whatever hidden costs you want to assign (surely not $220k)?
How many engineers are able to directly convert their work into a revenue number? It's not like a Sales job where there are ever increasing targets and money coming in is recorded meticulously.