Comment by jandrese
At the same time I feel like a lot of companies grow much larger than they need to be simply because of bigger is better mentality. How many of Uber's 30,000ish employees are involved with making sure the app and backend database are working properly? Are they really doing 600 times more work than Craigslist at connecting sellers with buyers?
I'm an Uber hater, but... yes.
Like, sure, they don't need every single one of those 30,000... but they have to have ground teams in every city in the world. Connections with every airport. Connections with almost every restaurant in the world. Customer support and safety (okay I know they don't nail this, but still). They need to pay out drivers in each country. The app needs to work in hundreds of countries, all with different laws, currencies, languages and more. Some places let you pick up anywhere, others require specific locations. And that's not even including marketing, partnerships, HR, finance, etc.
I don't think the employees are the problem with Uber, it's the shareholders. They need to make X back, so that delta is where drivers get squeezed.