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

Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 516 posts

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#391

Post by solveit »

Roritharr wrote: post #344
ALittleLight wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't other people already done the analysis as to why driving for Uber is a bad financial decision? The average driver isn't equipped to do the financial analysis, but surely he could do a bit of reading online about a future career.

Honest question: Have you done the numbers on your career? Researched it to some degree that gives you serenity? Like really doing it in Excel, instead of just looking at ballpark estimates and thinking "yeah that's gonna be enough"? Many people don't think of themselves and their position in life in this fashion and rather have a moralistic view of the world: "If I work a lot, I'll feed my family!" and just assume t…

Not the person you replied to, but I have. And given the venue, I'm guessing many others here have too. Also, Excel is unnecessary and perhaps even harmful; all you're doing is providing false precision because the uncertainty is too big unless you're a public servant or something. Ballpark estimates are all you're going to get for any multi-decade forecast involving literally anything. But none of this is too relevant to your actual point, so I'll move on.

> Many people don't think of themselves and their position in life in this fashion and rather have a moralistic view of the world: "If I work a lot, I'll feed my family!" and just assume that is what is going to happen, based on the values they were taught growing up / in school / on tv.

This is true and unfortunate, but the solution isn't to subsidize this mindset, the solution is to change the values people are taught growing up / in school / on tv. Not because I think it's necessarily bad to hold a moralistic view of the world, but because economics doesn't give a shit and will steamroll any clumsy attempt to provide shelter for the naive.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#392

Post by xenospn »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #259
jacquesm wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They spent $457m last year on autonomous and flying cars with $0 in revenue from those projects. I sincerely hope they weren't expecting any revenue from those for the next decade or two. Anything else would be delusional.

I think both Uber, Lyft and (to some extent) Tesla have been working on autonomous cars because it's not an immediately implausible way for them to turn profitable. I personally agree it's a multi-decade (if ever) thing, but if Uber et al. claim they'll have it in 2 years, without facts on the table it boils down to who the investors believe in.

Can they sustain 5B losses for a decade? Can any investor?

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#393

Post by xenospn »

bsder wrote: post #174
toasterlovin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a reason nobody cares about the taxi industry before ride sharing: it was small because it was too expensive for most people to use outside of special circumstances.

I disagree. Expense was never really an issue for me. My issue was always summoning the taxi . I was generally operating in secondary markets like Las Vegas off-strip, San Diego, or Pittsburgh. You couldn't schedule your trip to the airport because you never knew when the stupid taxi would show up. While I hate many things about Uber/Lyft/ridesharing, they changed the customer service expectation of the whole field.…

I remember trying to use Taxis in LA on a few occasions (never mind the ride back from the airport to WeHo was always a nightmare) and it being a non-starter most of the time.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#394

Post by throwaway382948 »

Can't help but feel schadenfreude after a rather nasty interviewing experience at Uber earlier this year. In the eyes of their recruiter, preferring competing offers that are > $100k higher than Uber's makes you a despicable person who only cares about money, apparently. Coming from a nonprofit I would have felt bad for a second but Uber? Come on.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#395

Post by notSupplied »

core-questions wrote: post #255
xster wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is what worries me about the "mainstream" debate that might be incorrectly framing the whole problem altogether. Here, the rise of the gig economy came from automation. Not in the caricature sense that there are robot automatons that serve your plates in a restaurant, but in a sense that scalable automated processes replaced human dispatchers that answers your phone calls at the taxi companies and radios…

> more and more of this planet's 'productivity' is concentrating more and more in the hands of those who produce the AI automations. Sometimes I think folks who think like this really need to get outside more. Yes, a lot of things are being automated, but (a) consider the janky quality of automation, because it's really not mature yet even in purely-software environments where everything can be controlled, and (b) co…

> why is it exactly that I should owe a massive amount of my economic output to those who aren't outputting anything? At what point do I simply say "fuck it" and stop working too, because some ridiculous percentage of my income has to be applied towards feeding those who won't/can't/don't do anything productive?

There's no easy way of attributing value to invention. Does the inventor / automator really deserve all of the profit that would come from such automation for all of eternity?

What if another person was only 2 months behind in making the same invention? And 2 months after that, a 3rd person was destined to, and within 2 years, the idea would be so obvious that the top 5 percentile of that profession would have been able to come up with the same thing? Why should the first person / company to automate something deserve an eternal monopoly on the output of said automation?

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#396

Post by ALittleLight »

Roritharr wrote: post #344
ALittleLight wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't other people already done the analysis as to why driving for Uber is a bad financial decision? The average driver isn't equipped to do the financial analysis, but surely he could do a bit of reading online about a future career.

Honest question: Have you done the numbers on your career? Researched it to some degree that gives you serenity? Like really doing it in Excel, instead of just looking at ballpark estimates and thinking "yeah that's gonna be enough"? Many people don't think of themselves and their position in life in this fashion and rather have a moralistic view of the world: "If I work a lot, I'll feed my family!" and just assume t…

I'm not expecting people to do their own data analysis. That's my whole point. I do expect that an adult would do something like Google their new prospective career, talk to people about it, or read about it.

That Uber is a bad company to drive for isn't exactly a state secret. A bit of research (e.g. a Google search) will point out some problems.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+money+will+i+make+d...

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#397

Post by refurb »

ghaff wrote: post #330
refurb wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the GP has a point though. It's not as though UBER going under is going to tank the economy, but it will be a major unicorn going under, causing the entire silicon valley money-losing model to be questioned, leading to trouble raising money, layoffs which drag down the rest of the economy. Similar to the 2000 crash.

That's not the world economy though. It's a bunch of highly-paid software developers losing their jobs and a subsequent (though probably rather delayed) crash in Bay Area real estate. Though that really depends on Google, Apple, etc. more than startups. Not great for devs looking for 6 figure jobs in the Bay Area. But not clear how broad the effect would be--unless they were triggered by more serious external events.…

Agree that it’s not the world economy and stable big tech companies wouldn’t be that impacted, but people are looking for any sign that a recession is coming.

Several unicorns going bust could be enough to kill confidence in the markets and cause people to prepare for the worst (I.e. sell investments and stop spending).

Just a hypothesis!

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#398

Post by astuary »

coldtea wrote: post #95

Glad they're down, and hope the whole "gig economy" burns down too. Where gig economy = padding the loss of decent jobs by replacing the bottom end with desperate deals where "non employed" employees, without regular salary, benefits, company provided work tools, etc., make a pittance, while the organizing company gets a cut from millions of transactions. In some cases, no jobs is better than subsistence/dead-end/exp…

I think its important to point out that at least some of the value realized from cheap labor in the form of gig contractors is transferred to consumers. We get goods and services for cheaper than would otherwise be possible.

Uber et al make convenient villains (and for I don't by any means think they are innocent), but we should also recognize the consequences of our collective choices.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#399

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

hos234 wrote: post #385
JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the economic incentive was there, we would have fixed roads and clean water supply, it's a solved problem, it's just not scaled across all of society because it costs $$$. The argument being made is that the drivers of loss of jobs are progress, and the jobs being created as a result of this are not going equitably towards the people displaced. The purpose of life argument isn't saying that you will have clean wat…

If it's a solved problem show me the fixed roads and clean water and I will buy what you are selling. Do it in one town. There is no need to debate and discuss anything more if you have proof for the simplest case.

You want me to show you a road that has been fixed and a water supply that is clean? I mean, look at any major city with significant wealth?

I don't understand your argument at all. It's unrelated to people being automated out of a job and the structure of our society changing. We aren't going towards a utopia where everything is perfect, we are talking about a stumbling forward into the unknown, all our crummy parts bolted onto us.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#400

Post by unreal37 »

lacker wrote: post #128
coldtea wrote: post #95

Glad they're down, and hope the whole "gig economy" burns down too. Where gig economy = padding the loss of decent jobs by replacing the bottom end with desperate deals where "non employed" employees, without regular salary, benefits, company provided work tools, etc., make a pittance, while the organizing company gets a cut from millions of transactions. In some cases, no jobs is better than subsistence/dead-end/exp…

To me your two sentiments seem opposed to each other. If Uber is struggling financially, they will be forced to squeeze their drivers harder, and the drivers will end up with an even worse deal than they have now. So rooting for Uber to lose money is kind of like rooting for a bunch of close-to-minimum-wage workers to make less money. I guess it’s possible that Uber does so badly financially, they cease to exist. I j…

There's another side to the equation of course. Drivers have a choice.

If Uber were to "squeeze drivers", drivers would stop driving for them. They'd drive for Lyft. They'd drive for some other company. They'd stay home.

The supply would crash.

They have no choice but to raise prices.

Post reply on HN