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Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

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Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#191

Post by bhavyapruthi »

tomkit wrote: post #135

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

It's human tendency to glorify the past and undermine the present",

I vehemently disagree with the statement that HN is declining in quality. concluding that HN is declining is like concluding that we live in a chaotic world, while globally violence is at an all time low [1] . Or undermining Dale Steyn in comparison to Malcolm Marshall or Dennis Lillee [2]. Cricket and Football fans would laugh at comparisons of Kohli with Tendulkar or Neymar with Ronaldinho while records speak otherwise [3] [4]. Aren't we falling prey to the same cognitive bias here.

[1] : http://www.slate.com/.../the_world_is_not_falling_apart... [2] : http://www.espncricinfo.com/mag.../content/story/603756.html [3] : http://www.hindustantimes.com/.../story... [4] : http://www.goal.com/.../neymar-matches-ronaldinhos...

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#192

Post by bobosha »

tomkit wrote: post #135

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

rosy retrospection bias.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#193

Post by Sacho »

Bakary wrote: post #174
salesguy222 wrote: post #53

Haha wow, meanwhile at Oracle, having our commissions miscalculated by a team of experts is a feature, not a bug. And somehow those miscalculations are NEVER in our favor, and always result in delayed payment. It's like working for Crytek, but even worse.

What's specifically bad about Crytek?

They didn't pay their employees for long stretches of time, the last such ending in their almost-bankruptcy.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#194

Post by bogomipz »

tomkit wrote: post #135

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

Or you could also try to add to the discussion and enumerate those facts and sentiments that you feel are being overlooked in the discussion.

It's amusing that you have chosen to break your own self-imposed moratorium on participating in order to wag your finger and criticize everyone else while not contributing anything meaningful yourself.

It sounds like you might live in your own self-righteous echo chamber honestly.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#195

Post by mpeg »

memmcgee wrote: post #136
bonzini wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would not be abhorrent if it were the only source of income for Uber, which would basically be earning the bid-ask spread. Adding fees on top of that, though...

Except they also penalize drivers for not accepting many rides. So if you want to continue driving for Uber, you have to "sell" your driving services at some point, even if the price isn't good for you.

As well they should, otherwise it'd be impossible to get ubers from certain places or at certain times.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#196

Post by jorvi »

yeukhon wrote: post #165
aetherson wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm as negative as the next guy on Uber, and that's a great narrative, but they are losing vast quantities of money. Any dastardly deed that they do has to square itself with the fact that they are losing vast quantities of money. A predatory auto-loan company is not a $70B business.

I said this before, Uber should seriously consider closing down its operation in other countries. It is expanding virtually exponentially (they have a huge engineering team) for the type of company they are running. They need to focus on the U.S. market. They are losing way too much money everywhere combiend.

Microsoft did this with the Xbox One (almost all the extra features they advertised were US only) and it completely destroyed their market share, making the PS4 sell 2-to-1. WhatsApp went the other way (the US doesn't matter, you want the global market) and it got them a $19 billion sticker price. The US is a market, not the market.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#197

Post by Applejinx »

rhizome wrote: post #114
potatolicious wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What your driver was talking about may not be a bug/math error like stated here. After rolling out guaranteed whole-ride pricing (as opposed to metering) Uber is allegedly testing algorithms to bid different prices for rides to both driver and passenger. i.e., passenger sees a fare of $X, while driver sees a fare of $Y, where presumably $Y Passengers' fares can be "optimized" by estimating a specific passenger-trip's…

So by this they're just throwing "let's see if we can run an arbitrage on the concept of price sensitivity itself" against a wall and see who will fund it?

Yup. Wall Street will like everything about this, so the success or fail of it will be measured by 'can you survive if ONLY Wall Street likes you'.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#198

Post by BearGoesChirp »

gaius wrote: post #42
SilasX wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Someone else pays for the upkeep of those roads, without which their business could not exist. Everyone pays gas taxes that scale with the amount driven and therefore their use of the roads. Any unusually high driving would be made up by the higher gas consumption and the resultant taxes thereon. If anything: 1) Taxi routes are concentrated in cities, where they have lower miles per gallon and thus pay more taxes pe…

No, the government collects income taxes from everyone to provide universal health care through the NHS. Uber's drivers pay the social insurance taxes on their income. You've clearly not researched just how much Employer's NI is. It's a lot more than an employee pays. It's clearly not a subsidy if a company is paying their fair share in taxes. Also here in the UK we have workers on income support (welfare) because th…

>You've clearly not researched just how much Employer's NI is. It's a lot more than an employee pays.

While I'm not familiar with how Employer's NI works else where in the world, given the way it works in the US I'm fine with it being cut. The way it works in the US is great for hiding the true rate of tax from the employee by having it taken out of their paycheck before the employee ever sees it. I think it works better if the employee sees the full amount their employer pays them and exactly how much the government taxes that rate.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#199

Post by BearGoesChirp »

gaius wrote: post #42
SilasX wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Someone else pays for the upkeep of those roads, without which their business could not exist. Everyone pays gas taxes that scale with the amount driven and therefore their use of the roads. Any unusually high driving would be made up by the higher gas consumption and the resultant taxes thereon. If anything: 1) Taxi routes are concentrated in cities, where they have lower miles per gallon and thus pay more taxes pe…

No, the government collects income taxes from everyone to provide universal health care through the NHS. Uber's drivers pay the social insurance taxes on their income. You've clearly not researched just how much Employer's NI is. It's a lot more than an employee pays. It's clearly not a subsidy if a company is paying their fair share in taxes. Also here in the UK we have workers on income support (welfare) because th…

>You've clearly not researched just how much Employer's NI is. It's a lot more than an employee pays.

While I'm not familiar with how Employer's NI works else where in the world, given the way it works in the US I'm fine with it being cut. The way it works in the US is great for hiding the true rate of tax from the employee by having it taken out of their paycheck before the employee ever sees it. I think it works better if the employee sees the full amount their employer pays them and exactly how much the government taxes that rate.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#200

Post by BearGoesChirp »

gaius wrote: post #42
SilasX wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Someone else pays for the upkeep of those roads, without which their business could not exist. Everyone pays gas taxes that scale with the amount driven and therefore their use of the roads. Any unusually high driving would be made up by the higher gas consumption and the resultant taxes thereon. If anything: 1) Taxi routes are concentrated in cities, where they have lower miles per gallon and thus pay more taxes pe…

No, the government collects income taxes from everyone to provide universal health care through the NHS. Uber's drivers pay the social insurance taxes on their income. You've clearly not researched just how much Employer's NI is. It's a lot more than an employee pays. It's clearly not a subsidy if a company is paying their fair share in taxes. Also here in the UK we have workers on income support (welfare) because th…

>You've clearly not researched just how much Employer's NI is. It's a lot more than an employee pays.

While I'm not familiar with how Employer's NI works else where in the world, given the way it works in the US I'm fine with it being cut. The way it works in the US is great for hiding the true rate of tax from the employee by having it taken out of their paycheck before the employee ever sees it. I think it works better if the employee sees the full amount their employer pays them and exactly how much the government taxes that rate.

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