Nobody got fired for Uber's $8M ledger mistake? • Hacker News Board

Re: Nobody got fired for Uber's $8M ledger mistake?

#81

Post by array_key_first » Wed, Apr 22, 2026, 10:42 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #18

hilariously wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think that the social climbers who approved these obviously crappy projects learned anything? I have worked with all levels of engineers who come into a project glassy eyed about some technology, sure, but if you are part of the team approving a project and you cant produce a realistic budget then your management is bogus as hell. I have worked on a ton of these vanity projects, and when I voice my concerns it…

> Do you think that the social climbers who approved these obviously crappy projects learned anything? Just the framing of this question makes it seem like you simply don't like people in management / decision-makers, and you want something bad to happen to them. Maybe that's wrong, hopefully it is, but the rest of the comment doesn't do much to dissuade me of that impression either.

I don't think it's that managers or decision makers are bad, I think moreso it's that, for most companies, the criteria for promotion are absolutely busted. And, it creates a culture of self-preservation, which affects ICs, too.

What I mean is that people are selected for leadership based not off of their leadership ability, but rather their political ability and ambition. The reason we see increasingly delusionally confident people as we climb the corporate ladder is because the people promoting them are forced to make their decisions based off of small, distilled data.

So, basically, bullshitters rise to the top. It only makes sense given the constraints of the system. Metrics help, sure, but firstly those arent use too much for management promotions. And secondly, they can be gamed, and often are.

At the very tippy top you have c-suite, who are often so delusionally confident it borders on psychosis. After a certain point it just becomes lying, but the truth is that people like to hear good things. We just can't help it.

And, for self-preservation: most companies have an absolutely rotten, toxic, and even evil culture. For most companies, the majority of employees are focused on self-preservation. And nobody will say that out loud!

But when managers get into that self preservation mindset, it can get really ugly. It becomes lying, organization sabotage, fudging documents, in-fighting, etc to try to stay afloat. Especially as the organization appears to be less stable.

Re: Nobody got fired for Uber's $8M ledger mistake?

#82

Post by smrtinsert » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 12:43 AM UTC

paphillips wrote: post #51

This article does not make convincing arguments to match the strong criticism. Engineering decisions are difficult, especially in high-growth orgs, where one must balance many constraints and risks including opportunity cost. Handling payments is part of Uber's core product. The financial criticism ('napkin math') appears to estimate DynamoDB costs of USD $8 million for 2017 to 2020. Uber revenue for the same period…

Did the author even mention what they thought should have been used instead?

Re: Nobody got fired for Uber's $8M ledger mistake?

#83

Post by duxup » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 1:10 AM UTC

alemanek wrote: post #37

simonw wrote: post #2

Firing people for bad architectural decisions is generally a terrible idea - especially decisions that shipped and ran in production for several years. This article also doesn't make a convincing case for this being a huge mistake. Companies like Uber change their architectural decisions while they scale all the time. Provided it didn't kill the company stuff like this becomes part of the story of how they got to whe…

Also the article doesn’t attempt to explore the business and resourcing constraints they were operating under at the time. I have been in situations where I was told “don’t worry about cost just get it done”. Then a few years later the business constraints shift and now we need to “worry about the cost”. It ignores that decisions made under a different set of constraints were correct, or at least reasonable, at the t…

Amen, right now I’m rewriting some code and parts of an application after running for years. So I have all the advantages of knowing the bugs and history.

There is zero chance anyone who wrote this the first time would do what I’m doing.

Some things I’m simplifying because it never becomes a spot that the previous devs thought would be a big pivot point for customization and heavy use….

Re: Nobody got fired for Uber's $8M ledger mistake?

#84

Post by paul_h » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 6:36 AM UTC

simonw wrote: post #2

Firing people for bad architectural decisions is generally a terrible idea - especially decisions that shipped and ran in production for several years. This article also doesn't make a convincing case for this being a huge mistake. Companies like Uber change their architectural decisions while they scale all the time. Provided it didn't kill the company stuff like this becomes part of the story of how they got to whe…

TL;DR:

  There once was a ledger at Uber
  On DynamoDB it ran like a dream,
  Fast writes at great scale,
  But costs set sail,
  And consistency wasn't what it seemed.

I could not work "find someone to fire" into it, but I did not try that hard to be honest. I would not like to work with someone who'd leave a blameless postmortem with "those as asshats wouldn't apportion blame" tale to tell their smug crew later.

Re: Nobody got fired for Uber's $8M ledger mistake?

#85

Post by pc86 » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 2:54 PM UTC

array_key_first wrote: post #81

pc86 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think that the social climbers who approved these obviously crappy projects learned anything? Just the framing of this question makes it seem like you simply don't like people in management / decision-makers, and you want something bad to happen to them. Maybe that's wrong, hopefully it is, but the rest of the comment doesn't do much to dissuade me of that impression either.

I don't think it's that managers or decision makers are bad, I think moreso it's that, for most companies, the criteria for promotion are absolutely busted. And, it creates a culture of self-preservation, which affects ICs, too. What I mean is that people are selected for leadership based not off of their leadership ability, but rather their political ability and ambition. The reason we see increasingly delusionally…

> What I mean is that people are selected for leadership based not off of their leadership ability, but rather their political ability and ambition.

Leadership is political - you have to get people to want to follow you. So it makes sense the people successful at getting into and advancing through leadership positions are able to do that.

As far as ambition, does that mean anything other than "wants the job?"

It sounds like you're arguing better leaders would be people who can't lead and don't want the job in the first place?

Re: Nobody got fired for Uber's $8M ledger mistake?

#86

Post by array_key_first » Fri, Apr 24, 2026, 4:29 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #85

array_key_first wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's that managers or decision makers are bad, I think moreso it's that, for most companies, the criteria for promotion are absolutely busted. And, it creates a culture of self-preservation, which affects ICs, too. What I mean is that people are selected for leadership based not off of their leadership ability, but rather their political ability and ambition. The reason we see increasingly delusionally…

> What I mean is that people are selected for leadership based not off of their leadership ability, but rather their political ability and ambition. Leadership is political - you have to get people to want to follow you. So it makes sense the people successful at getting into and advancing through leadership positions are able to do that. As far as ambition, does that mean anything other than "wants the job?" It soun…

Ambition is good, but too much ambition becomes clawing, desperation. It's pathetic mostly, but it works. Because, again, people like hearing good things. So their leaders like hearing that they want the job really really badly and would do anything for it.

I think you're misinterpreting me. I spelled it out pretty clearly, I think. By politics I don't mean being liked, I mean being manipulative. Which is a related, but different, thing.

The delusional confidence is also a form of manipulation. Basically you influence others perception of you by lying and distorting reality. And you use emotions as a weapon. People like good feeling emotions, so you do actions to make those emotions appear in people. Flattery, deception, undeserved confidence, that type of thing.

The best leaders are people who are honest, rational, level-headed, and have a community based outlook. Meaning, they put the needs of the company and their team first.

The leaders we actually get are almost the exact opposite. They're individualistic, selfish, deceitful, and emotionally manipulative.

The reason that happens is because of how we decide promotions and the culture of the company.