Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 229 posts

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#101

Post by baddox »

mbreese wrote: post #19
kerng wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. For Uber both riders and drivers are their customers. So keeping drivers happy and paying them well would pay off long term.

It’s a strange market dynamic though — if Uber pays drivers more per mile, you’d have more people that will want to drive for Uber. This would mean fewer rides (per driver), which would cause the average take-home pay for a driver to be lower. Which would cause drivers to leave, but everything would eventually equilibrate. But if you also lower the per-mile rate (and total take home pay), then drivers won’t have much…

> if Uber pays drivers more per mile, you’d have more people that will want to drive for Uber. This would mean fewer rides (per driver), which would cause the average take-home pay for a driver to be lower.

How so? Uber can and does control the number of drivers on their service at any given time.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#102

Post by Forge36 »

kbos87 wrote: post #51

I remember talking to a driver back in the early days of Uber X (probably 2012-ish) who told me he was on track to make $80k driving for Uber that year. Wow have things changed.

The trick today or to drive more during surge pricing hours. One of my drivers claimed to be making close to that. I suspect a large factor is also the city you drive in.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#103

Post by PopeDotNinja »

koolba wrote: post #40
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #9

If I were Uber, or any ridesharing service, I'd be optimizing to pay driver's as much as possible. But that's just me.

In what world would that make business sense? Apparently they already lose money (counting marketing costs and incentives) per ride, how can they expect to operate a going concern by striving to increase expenses?

If you need drivers to stay on the platform, and acquiring drivers is extremely expensive, paying them less won't help with driver retention (unless you're making them so rich they retire). If you engage in a race to the bottom on rates with your competition, you'll end up having to spend more on driver acquisition and retention.

If you take care of your drivers, they will want to drive for you more frequently, and your rides will have more drivers available. Sure, the price of rides will be a bit higher, maybe a lot higher, but it'll be sustainable.

And here's me speculating... there's only one case where lowering driver pay makes sense, and that's lowering your prices to drive someone else out of business. If Uber is facing so much competition from Lyft & others, they won't be around once people get sick of giving them money. And by pissing off their drivers, they're creating a spot in the market for a higher end competitor to come in. Once a socially responsible, fair trade competitor gets established, it'll be hard for Uber to raise their rates again, because they have a bottom of the barrel reputation.

Of course I'm not in charge of running a ride sharing company, and there are plenty of people who have good intentions at suck at business. Maybe I'm one of the people that naturally walks the path of good intentions that leads straight to hell. Who knows.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#104

Post by smileysteve »

alistairSH wrote: post #32
adamio wrote: post #21

This must impact quality at some point. Either driver competence will decline or vehicle maintenance will be dangerously put off.

That’s a scary thought. My experience with Uber has already shown both terrible driving and crappy cars (for normal rides - Uber black has been fine).

I can confirm this with my own anecdote. (Note, this is also true of most us taxis I have been in)

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#105

Post by PopeDotNinja »

goatsi wrote: post #29
kerng wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. For Uber both riders and drivers are their customers. So keeping drivers happy and paying them well would pay off long term.

The long term plan for Uber was to replace drivers with self driving taxis. They were open about this for a long time, though after the recent problems with their self driving program (killing someone), I'm not sure how on track the plan is.

I am skeptical that self driving cars will be a real thing anytime soon. Too many edge cases to worry about.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#106

Post by chii »

Barrin92 wrote: post #49
reilly3000 wrote: post #47

Its like they see developers and drivers as two different species. For every twenty something dev that makes $132K, there is a fourty something trying to rebuild a life post-trauma, doing their best to net $13K. Since insurance and gas aren't cheaper, the driver now will net $6K next year, while the dev would jump ship to another company if they didn't get a $6K bonus. While my head understands the economic principle…

Same with canteen workers, janitors and so forth. It's the reality of this economy without any intervention. >my heart doesn't understand how such a thing needs to happen. That's why developers, who have the economic leverage, should stand up for everyone working at their companies, including staff that isn't involved in technical work.

So would the tech workers cut 10% of their salary and gift it to those working for low pay in other roles?

I think it's overwhelmingly no. The option where the company shareholders take less profit is not even on the table - and that's what needs tackling, and the only way to tackle that is via a mix of govt welfare and unions. But the cultural narrative has shifted to the right so much that even mentioning the word union will cause a chilling effect on your career. No ones' gonna do it.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#107

Post by mdorazio »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #95
tunesmith wrote: post #54

So many parallels to the music industry here. You have a vc-funded company, operating at a loss, commoditizing the "talent" (drivers/musicians), thereby conditioning the audience (passengers/listeners) to expect an unsustainable cost for the service, using that loss leader mentality to drive other solutions out of business, until they argue or take action that the talent should expect even lower rates than they've hi…

They aren't profitable because they're burning money on crap outside of matchmaking riders with drivers.

Do you actually have numbers to support that assertion? I have a hard time believing it.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#108

Post by chii »

creato wrote: post #73
usaphp wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know what you do but to me working as a programmer, thinking all day and solving problems, is much harder than just driving around people.

Programming is certainly harder than most jobs in the sense that fewer people are capable of doing it, which is the one that matters for economics. That doesn't mean other jobs are not harder in other ways that matter too.

> not harder in other ways that matter too.

those ways don't matter to the company doing the paying of wages. The only "way" that matters is the scarcity of people willing to perform said job. This is what our society has currently come to, and no individual can make that change without making a personal sacrifice.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#109

Post by grecy »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #42
grecy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for many people, driving for Uber beats not being able to pay bills, going hungry or being homeless. So then nothing here is Uber's fault, and Uber shouldn't get any blame. The problem is the the country that make people unable to pay bills, get food or housing, right? I wish Americans would lampoon their own government/country as much as they lampoon big businesses.

> So then nothing here is Uber's fault, and Uber shouldn't get any blame. Interesting that this is the line of thought that you decided to follow and refute, despite the fact that I never claimed that Uber was at fault for those particular problems a person may face. I'm not really a fan of engaging strawmen. It's entirely possible that for some people, driving for Uber is a rational choice. It is also entirely possi…

> Interesting that this is the line of thought that you decided to follow and refute, despite the fact that I never claimed that Uber was at fault for those particular problems a person may face

Sorry, I wasn't trying to say that you did say Uber was at fault... I was just trying to clarify the train of thought and understand the conclusions that we can draw.

i.e. corporations are not at fault for people being poor and homeless and unable to get better jobs - that's clearly a government problem.

Every minute we spend blaming Uber/WalMart/McDonalds/etc for that is another minute we're distracted from the actual cause of the problem, and identifying a fix.

Re: Uber is dropping rates for drivers down from 80 cents/mile to 60 cents/mile

#110

Post by Forge36 »

ars wrote: post #37
fiblye wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A slave owner gives an otherwise hungry man food and housing. That doesn't mean slavery is at all justifiable. Uber pays people who otherwise might not have a job at all. That doesn't mean paying them incredibly low wages is something that should be free of criticism.

> A slave owner gives an otherwise hungry man food and housing. That doesn't mean slavery is at all justifiable. Slave by its very definition implies lack of choice by the other person. > Uber pays people who otherwise might not have a job at all. That doesn't mean paying them incredibly low wages is something that should be free of criticism. Yes, actually, it does mean that. That's the nature of choice . If someone…

I'm not following your logic, are you suggesting you wouldn't ask for a raise?

There are a lot of moving pieces. The abolishment of slavery didn't end slavery and it's conditions. It changed the name and the rules. Many slaves became trapped in indentured servitude without enough pay to cover the cost of housing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servitude Eventually this became illegal as well, another tactic was paying employees through company credits to buy goods at the company store. Eventually this too became illegal. During all of this Jim Crow laws were made to prevent further integration, schooling, and the advancement to higher paying jobs. The origin of the phrase grandfather clause came about as a way to prevent voting for representatives who could represent them. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause

This hasn't ended either, we now deal with gerrymandering.

I don't believe the ability choose a log of last resort means that job can be free of criticism. Yes it provides a vital service: given that service is insufficient to meet basic needs, improvements are needed. That may mean better services to provide jobs or providing a minimum pay with which basic needs can be guaranteed.

Post reply on HN