It probably was an unnecessary redesign that could have been avoided, but hey: at least it worked, and eight million dollars is not a huge amount for Uber.

Birmingham spent almost £150m for a system that didn't work at all:

https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/29/birmingham_oracle_lat...

While I was an undergraduate, my university also spent £9m on accounting that didn't work, also with Oracle: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/1634558.stm

If you've designed a system in house for your accounting, it works, makes neither financial nor software errors, is accepted by the users, and got away with it costing a relatively small fraction of your turnover? That's a big win.