Gergely Orosz · 7 min read · Product Teams
Scaling Uber with Thuan Pham (Uber’s first CTO)
Read the original on newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com →
In this episode, Thuan Pham—Uber’s first CTO and now CTO of Faire—describes how he rebuilt Uber’s engineering from a fragile monolith to a scalable microservices platform, and how he scaled the organization during hypergrowth. He discusses the platform–program split, the Helix app rewrite, and how those choices enabled Uber to launch in China quickly, plus what this means for leading teams today and applying AI at scale.
Key Takeaways
- Professional reputation and prior relationships can compound into key hiring decisions and trusted teammates.
- The platform–program split came before microservices; cross-functional platform teams accelerate delivery as organizations scale.
- Microservices were a survivability strategy for hypergrowth—new work was built outside the monolith to avoid blocking others, a process that took years.
- In-house tooling and platforms are essential to support rapid growth and enable AI-enabled engineering.
Excerpt
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