[throwaway-1283]

The irony of Uber and Lyft both losing so much money is Lyft especially is known for paying some of the highest SWE salaries in SF.

[hcnews]

The cost of a SWE is nowhere close to the promotions and incentives rolled out to millions of users (imagine something simple like 5$ per user per month). SWEs are paid a lot in Bay Area but at least in top companies they are very well worth it.

Disclaimer: I am a SWE at Uber.

[woolvalley]

SWE salary is only a part of total comp, and I would be a bit concerned with their stock value compared to the much bigger business that is Uber.

So I understand why the salary portion might be high, to compensate for some of that risk.

[barbecue_sauce]

These companies hire so many engineers and then have them do busy-work like building their own internal versions of Slack or new proprietary databases.