The point stands... 350 engineers is an army of engineers... for $8mm monthly, it wouldn't be unreasonable to achieve 500+ engineers depending on salaries.
Lyft could definitely build and maintain their own infrastructure for this kind of money... probably do it better (customized to their needs) and cheaper.
All of that is ignoring payroll taxes (for your new, very large staff), shifting all of your tax-deductible operational expenses into tax limited capital expenses.
Businesses don't flagrantly throw around money just to upset people. There are huge advantages to offloading non-primary business costs to other businesses.
Netflix is doing this too. I think we can assume not all of them are just idiots that haven't figured out they could build this themselves.
> Businesses don't flagrantly throw around money just to upset people.
But businesses do throw around money for the wrong reasons, and keep on doing so if that's the status quo. No one gets fired for buying IBM.
> Netflix is doing this too.
IBM stuff was bought by a lot of people.
> I think we can assume not all of them are just idiots that haven't figured out they could build this themselves.
That statement is very misguided and misses the problem. For example if you built your infrastructure around a specific solution then you also end up building a team of professionals whose livelihood is tied to a specific supplier of said infrastructure.
> But businesses do throw around money for the wrong reasons, and keep on doing so if that's the status quo. No one gets fired for buying IBM.
Businesses are wasteful because that's the natural status of a bureaucracy. They aren't throwing away money on infrastructure because they are unaware, they are spending more than they potentially have to because infrastructure isn't their core business.
> IBM stuff was bought by a lot of people.
That's such a tired argument. Just because they could save money doesn't mean it's a good idea, and with Enterprise pricing from Amazon combined with tax advantages, you honestly have no idea how much "cheaper" it really is.
> That statement is very misguided and misses the problem. For example if you built your infrastructure around a specific solution then you also end up building a team of professionals whose livelihood is tied to a specific supplier of said infrastructure.
No, the fact that you think this is a "problem" is the problem. Do you honestly think dev ops guys couldn't figure out how to use a different tool? By your own logic, you also shouldn't build data centers because you end up building a team of professionals whose livelihood is tied to managing your own infrastructure.
> Businesses are wasteful because that's the natural status of a bureaucracy. They aren't throwing away money on infrastructure because they are unaware, they are spending more than they potentially have to because infrastructure isn't their core business.
That's not true at all. The "isn't their core business" argument is meaningless and absurd. Any company, big or small, does not want to waste 300M dollars on something they don't need, whether it's their core business or not, particularly when said company is still far from turning a profit.
> That's such a tired argument. Just because they could save money doesn't mean it's a good idea
You are aware you're stating that baseless assertion on a discussion on how a company which is burning through cash and looking for investors is needlessly wasting 300M on infrastructure costs.
> No, the fact that you think this is a "problem" is the problem.
Needlessly spending 300M dollars is a problem in every single business in any corner of the world. I have a hard time understanding how someone can throw around the baseless assertion that this sort of inefficient while operating at this particular scale is not a problem, and pointing out this problem... is the problem? That's crazy.
Probably they will do a lot of optimization once they go public. That will improve financials over a year which will help the stock unless it comes at the expense of growth. The name of the game is growth that’s what gets you the high multiples.
Lyft could definitely build and maintain their own infrastructure for this kind of money... probably do it better (customized to their needs) and cheaper.