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by chillacy 2648 days ago
Maybe not at the same scale but imo their core system has a lot of tech challenges:

* Lots of realtime

* Resource scheduling problems

* Route optimization problems (especially with shared uber or shared lyft rides)

1 comments

ok, but:

* Everything they do is low data (no video, image or anything high bandwith).

* Their whole model can be subdivided into smaller local problems (all users//drivers in the bay area have nothing to do with the users//drivers currently in NYC).

yes there is a couple of algorithms to develop for Uber Pool, and for the real time matching but everything else looks like a fairly simple app backend to me.

> Everything they do is low data (no video, image or anything high bandwith).*

So is everyone else? Storage and CDN isn't nearly as complex as ad serving on Facebook (Which is like Uber's matching - it's a realtime marketplace). Ad serving takes up relatively little bits.

I'm not a network engineer so I'm unfamiliar with how problems scale by bandwidth. I do know that solving NP hard problems is difficult, so I respect Uber engineers for that at least.