So remember that it's not that they burned $1.5B this quarter; they burned $3.5B (net revenue of $2B, $1.5B loss).
If their average employee costs them $500,000 a year (surely a generous estimate), then that's $125k per quarter. A $2B spend on salaries would suggest then that they had 16,000 employees (not counting drivers, who aren't part of this equation -- they're the difference between the $9.7B "gross bookings" and the $2B net revenue).
Uber employs apparently "more than 12,000 people," which is shocking, but salary still can't plausibly be the entire story here.
How about driver bonuses? Would those count as expenses, pr as the difference between gross bookings and net revenue?
I know sometimes (especially in new markets) Uber let drivers keep 100% and then add bonuses on top of that.
I believe that bonuses and other incentives, to drivers and passengers, are the source of a huge amount of expenses and are counted out of the $2B net revenue, not included in the difference between bookings and revenue.
If their average employee costs them $500,000 a year (surely a generous estimate), then that's $125k per quarter. A $2B spend on salaries would suggest then that they had 16,000 employees (not counting drivers, who aren't part of this equation -- they're the difference between the $9.7B "gross bookings" and the $2B net revenue).
Uber employs apparently "more than 12,000 people," which is shocking, but salary still can't plausibly be the entire story here.