Uber's app technology is struggling to keep up with demand
The technology that powers Uber's app is "hanging by a thread," according to a new report from The Information's Amir Efrati. Uber has grown so rapidly over the past few years that its technical infrastructure has struggled to keep pace, according to this report. Efrati notes, "Uber is growing so fast that every three months, what was peak traffic becomes its average traffic." In addition, Uber has two different systems; one that dispatches cars, and one that is a backend system for fare calculations and customer emails. Apparently the engineers in charge of these systems have been "at odds," which has created friction.

May 13 was one of Uber’s darkest days.

The computer system used by its business-operations employees ground to a halt, for the whole day. The cause: a bug in one of Uber’s databases, which set off a chain reaction that took down other systems and was made worse by human errors in response to the cascading problems, according to internal emails reviewed by The Information.

Uber’s chief technology officer, Thuan Pham, later wrote to his staff that the mistake “reflects an amateurism with our overall engineering organization, its culture, its processes, and its operation.”