This is a hallmark of a scaleup which assumes it will become a massive company in a short amount of time, and sets up its structure accordingly.
There are times when a gamble like this pays off. Take how Uber built their organization and systems similar to how Google did it, even when they were smaller.
In the case of Uber, their approach, you could argue, paid off in the sense that Uber did get traffic that would have been non-trivial to handle, and complex business use cases that it could handle easier thanks to it's structure.
My view is that this approach is an all-or-nothing setup and it might end up poorly - and spending WAY more money than needed - than if taking it one step at a time.
Also note that Uber did operate in an environment when it could raise ridiculous amounts of money as it scaled up. This doesn't seem to be the case in the current funding environment of 2022, which has cooled down considerably from 2021.
Great points on both. Uber, indeed, did not have engineering levels beyond senior engineer until year 2 or 3 as far as I know (I joined later, but talked with several early engineers while there).
I was trying to play devil's advocate but I have to agree that pre-product-market-fit, these levels are likely an overkill and distract from the real problem: validating product-market fit.
There are times when a gamble like this pays off. Take how Uber built their organization and systems similar to how Google did it, even when they were smaller.
In the case of Uber, their approach, you could argue, paid off in the sense that Uber did get traffic that would have been non-trivial to handle, and complex business use cases that it could handle easier thanks to it's structure.
My view is that this approach is an all-or-nothing setup and it might end up poorly - and spending WAY more money than needed - than if taking it one step at a time.
Also note that Uber did operate in an environment when it could raise ridiculous amounts of money as it scaled up. This doesn't seem to be the case in the current funding environment of 2022, which has cooled down considerably from 2021.