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Lyft Files S-1

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Re: Lyft Files S-1

#211

Post by python300 »

halbritt wrote: post #172
doctorpangloss wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If those issues aren't in your company's core competencies, it's not necessarily efficient to invest in building out all of that. Maybe that's just the story cloud providers tell you. Until you try, do you really know if it's all that complicated? People have been running datacenters for a long time, and not all of them work for Amazon. But there may be also a beneficial side effect of having gearheads around, and…

Having done a bunch of bare metal, I can tell you the calculus isn't really that hard. Bare metal will save you money. Operating bare metal at scale requires talent that doesn't exist, not necessarily at an engineering level, but at all levels. As an example, I worked at a place that had a large bare metal deployment, i.e. >1MW worth of compute. It was woefully inefficient and costly to operate. The product that they…

From a Lyft engineering perspective would rather focus on things like how do I make sense, process, extract the ton of data. How do I focus on customer experience rather than how do I save money in data-center, how do I keep my data-center stack updated and many more

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#212

Post by [deleted] »

SeanAppleby wrote: post #34
CondensedBrain wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think investors are mostly betting on self-driving cars being closer than anyone thinks. The first company to get rid of its drivers wins.

eh, I read a paper a while back that argued that ridesharing in a world with self-driving cars will be a hyper-competitive commodity market akin to the airlines, and it made a lot of sense. I don't think there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow here, as the services will likely have little moat to defend themselves outside of competing to the death on price.

[deleted]

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#213

Post by asdfafd2sdf »

throwawaymath wrote: post #185
halbritt wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having done a bunch of bare metal, I can tell you the calculus isn't really that hard. Bare metal will save you money. Operating bare metal at scale requires talent that doesn't exist, not necessarily at an engineering level, but at all levels. As an example, I worked at a place that had a large bare metal deployment, i.e. >1MW worth of compute. It was woefully inefficient and costly to operate. The product that they…

Feel free to ignore this, but would you shoot me an email? I'm working on a project that uses bare metal and would like to pick your brain. EDIT: To whoever downvoted this, the commenter hasn't listed an email address, or I would have reached out directly. This is an honest attempt at communication that doesn't require someone to break anonymity.

You were probably downvoted for using the term 'pick your brain'. I am sure they want their brain 'picked'.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#214

Post by Areading314 »

dwild wrote: post #204
throwaway-1283 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how these companies will stop losing $1b+ a year each year. The public markets will not be too kind. The end game was supposed to be autonomous taxis (cutting the driver out). I don't see how that's going to happen before they run out of money unless they 1) significantly raise prices or 2) take increasingly bigger cuts from drivers. Personally I will be shorting as soon as I can.

> I don't see how these companies will stop losing $1b+ a year each year. The public markets will not be too kind. Are you saying taxis can't exist? As far as I know, any taxi dispatcher take a similar cut (30%) as them and their cost seems way higher (no automation at all, require people on phone, etc..). Theses loses are either because they are considered unlawful somewhere (I never heard of this issue with Lyft bu…

Right, but the market for taxi dispatchers is a much smaller market than the market for taxis. Riders aren't the customer, drivers are. And price in this competitive market will tend towards a fixed monthly subscription cost, not a % cut of their rides.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#215

Post by munchbunny »

privateSFacct wrote: post #197
doctorpangloss wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If those issues aren't in your company's core competencies, it's not necessarily efficient to invest in building out all of that. Maybe that's just the story cloud providers tell you. Until you try, do you really know if it's all that complicated? People have been running datacenters for a long time, and not all of them work for Amazon. But there may be also a beneficial side effect of having gearheads around, and…

I'm actually curious how AWS is able to scale support so well with what seems reasonable quality. I had an issue (my fault in end), got excellent support - and they didn't tell us to take a hike at end when it turned out not AWS fault. Conversely, with GCP 4 years ago now had some support issues - didn't come away impressed - I'm convinced even internally GCP isn't well doc'd or something.

I think it comes down to Amazon vs. Google's company cultures around customer support, which informs attention and resource budgeting. GCP isn't the only Google product where people hate its customer support, and AWS isn't the only Amazon product where people love its customer support.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#216

Post by diminoten »

qxi wrote: post #188
KerrickStaley wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lyft's load varies wildly, with significantly higher traffic on Friday and Saturday nights than e.g. 4 AM on a Tuesday, plus spikes on certain evenings like Halloween and New Year's Eve. Having cloud hosting where we can dynamically grow and shrink based on load saves us a lot compared to having fixed infrastructure that is always provisioned for the NYE peak. Source: I work at Lyft.

Why not employ an hybrid architecture of bare metal for base load augmented by cloud-based infrastructure for peaks, constructed via a polyglot union of taped-together tools and lubricated by the daily tears of a hundred college hires only to regret it after the engineers who designed it have successfully used it as a springboard for promotion and departed with their accumulated arcane knowledge (and vested shares) f…

Oh come on, you know the performance profile of a streaming service is wildly different from a mobile ridesharing app...

Their surges are nothing like yours.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#217

Post by munchbunny »

asdfafd2sdf wrote: post #213
throwawaymath wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feel free to ignore this, but would you shoot me an email? I'm working on a project that uses bare metal and would like to pick your brain. EDIT: To whoever downvoted this, the commenter hasn't listed an email address, or I would have reached out directly. This is an honest attempt at communication that doesn't require someone to break anonymity.

You were probably downvoted for using the term 'pick your brain'. I am sure they want their brain 'picked'.

Sure, it's an overused term, but the ask is pretty clear. "I'm doing something and it looks like you've done it before, can I get advice?"

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#218

Post by mopeloi »

meowface wrote: post #176
cabaalis wrote: post #28

> In 2017 and 2018, certain of our named executive officers provided rides to riders using the Lyft platform in a similar manner as other drivers. We believe that these driving activities provide the named executive officers with substantial practical insight into how our platform serves drivers. I thought this was a pretty interesting point. I was about to call it dogfooding but not quite, since it's more of an expe…

Airbnb does this too. They give all of their employees an annual stipend to travel via Airbnb, so that they can regularly experience the app from the perspective of a guest. I think they also provide benefits for employees who host guests, for the same reasons. When you think about it, it seems so obvious that companies should do things like these, yet it still seems so rare. It's easy to fall out of touch with your…

Wouldn't the equivalent be incentivizing employees to rent out their own place on Airbnb? I'm sure that plenty of Uber and Lyft employees are customers without it being a Big Deal.

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#219

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

phamilton wrote: post #61
us0r wrote: post #12

>In January 2019, we entered into an addendum to our commercial agreement with AWS, pursuant to which we committed to spend an aggregate of at least $300 million between January 2019 and December 2021 on AWS services. If we fail to meet the minimum purchase commitment during any year, we may be required to pay the difference, which could adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations. Not as bad a…

100M/year is ~8M/month. Some perspective on that, it could by you one of: ~400PB of data in S3. ~2600 bare metal "x1 type" ec2 instances running 24/7, 3 year upfront reservation. ~60M Write IOPS in dynamodb ~300M Read IOPS in dynamodb ~3500 16xl RDS aurora instances Again, each of those is spending the entire budget on a single service, but that seems like a nonsense level of spending. Maybe they really have that muc…

Everything seems reasonable except...

~3500 16xl RDS aurora instances? I worked at one of the 100 biggest websites on the internet (a search engine), and we only had 3. Why/how would Lyft need 1000x that!?

Re: Lyft Files S-1

#220

Post by buboard »

throwawaymath wrote: post #209
buboard wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't own cars, doesnt employ drivers, doesnt own hardware, doesn't own compute or storage , doesnt develop software. What is lyft after all?

It's just an idea. This is a little tongue in cheek, but: Lyft is an abstraction. It doesn't own anything or have any customers because it's a market maker. Lyft is an efficiency mechanism for maximizing liquidity and minimizing bid-ask spreads in hyperlocal ride trading :)

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