My argument is not that 'I found interview easy and hence not so bad'. My argument is that in Lyfts case engineering hasnt been the problem with why its business is failing.
> Then the question becomes what exactly are you paying top dollar to these engineers for?
Again Engineering is one vector in a company's success but not the only one. It might well make sense for Lyft to pay well for good engineering talent there. Maybe not paying well might have doom'd them much faster.
Your take on OSS is also a naive one . OSS helps in off boarding long term maintenance costs (if the project becomes popular enough) and staves off bit rot. It helps attract talent , creates industry standards etc. Engineering is feature multiplier and for some companies it does make sense to OSS.
Its disingenuous to claim that these engineers werent delivering business value. James Gosling worked on Java at Sun and Sun failed, would you say that Gosling isnt a good engineer ?
Engineering can only work in the bounds of the problems set to it. If the leadership doesnt want to diversify streams , get into delivery for example there is nothing engineering can do there. In the end you need both good business acumen to succeed and engineering is just a multiplier and facilitator there.
This seems to be a common trope at HN where the failure of a company must be because of their hiring practice. Your comment also implies that the current failure has been engineering. This couldnt be further from the truth, Lyft had some of the best and smartest engineers. Lyft paid as well as they did because of the risk these engineers took in moving on from Google/Meta/Twitter what have you.
FWIW, I found Lyfts interviews to be the easiest of the companies I interviewed at.
The companies current downturn stems from the combined blow of COVID and focusing only on rideshare at the expense of not diversifying their revenue streams and their hiring or engineering has had very little to do with it.