How Uber Got Lost • Hacker News Board

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#71

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 1:30 PM UTC

dumbfoundded wrote: post #15

I think NYT misses the point. The problem with Uber isn't some cultural issue, it's that they're in an extremely tough and competitive business. It's really a race to the bottom. The logic I kept hearing repeated is ride-sharing is a winner take all market. Like once you have a network of drivers setup giving people the lowest times for rides, you can force other competitors out and raise prices. Time has proven how…

"It's almost impossible to stop competitors in ride-sharing because the cost of switching for customers is low, there are no legal or capital ex competitive barriers, and you can be picked apart city by city."

This is so true. I only ever take rideshare to/from airports, and those trips are sufficiently expensive that it makes sense for me to spend the extra minute to launch the four different ridesharing apps I have installed and comparison-shop the cheapest one. It's a no-brainer to spend a minute to potentially save $40 or more, depending on surge conditions.

And four might be a little extreme, but I hardly know anyone who uses rideshare at all who doesn't at least have both Lyft and Uber installed. And even two players in a competitive market can drastically fight prices to the bottom. Ridesharing is not a duopoly situation.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#72

Post by bradleyjg » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 1:33 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #16

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #9

I feel deeply uncomfortable taking Ubers, especially in Seattle. The drivers are inevitably working class folk, just trying to scrape by. They inevitably mention the increasing rent and cost of living. They inevitably ask what I do and I have to respond that I'm one of the asshole carpetbagging tech people who come in and raise the cost of living, raise the rent. Services like Uber are placing the class barrier front…

You didn't do that. It's not tech that's increasing housing prices in Seattle, it's the people that have houses and don't want to have to share their city that are causing rising prices. The US is a nation of immigrants and migrants, and the cities that have decided "no we are full and only care about current residents" are the ones who have created this situation, not you. Do you have a paid off house, own land and…

> We have let class and racial segregation become an acceptable and even expected state of matters in our cities.

A white-flight situation is one thing, even if one advocates for busing as I do, there are practical limitations. But there's absolutely no excuse for micro catchment areas within a single municipal jurisdiction. That's just blatant pandering.

(Sorry to have gone off on a school segregation tangent in an uber thread ...)

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#73

Post by cryptica » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 1:37 PM UTC

Uber didn't get lost. It simply was never the kind of company that could acquire a monopoly big enough and fast enough to justify a multi-billion dollar valuation.

I'm starting to think that many of the most successful tech companies of the past decade are not real monopolies but succeeded purely because the centralization of capital made it difficult for alternative projects to compete for a limited period of time. Even projects with strong network effects are unlikely to last forever.

The reason why all these dominant companies won't last forever is simply because every new generation of ambitious workers needs a way to legally take ownership of the capital which was accumulated by the previous generation. People who inherit free capital from their parents or relatives will never be as smart, hard working, determined or as capable as those who've had to struggle all their lives; especially now with an internet where essentially all knowledge is in the public domain. As monopolies get bigger and stronger, smart and ambitious people will adapt to the environment in extreme ways and find legal ways to subvert them.

When you see extremely high valuations which assume that the company will have a monopoly in 20 years, it's a red flag because in 20 years' time, political and economic control will have already been passed on to the next generation; a generation which will have no skin in the game and 0 interest in seeing that company succeed.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#74

Post by throwaway9281 » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 1:38 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #17

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #9

I feel deeply uncomfortable taking Ubers, especially in Seattle. The drivers are inevitably working class folk, just trying to scrape by. They inevitably mention the increasing rent and cost of living. They inevitably ask what I do and I have to respond that I'm one of the asshole carpetbagging tech people who come in and raise the cost of living, raise the rent. Services like Uber are placing the class barrier front…

Do you do the same complex class calculation every time you interact with a cashier, talk to a receptionist, or pass a janitor? People do honest work and earn a living, no shame in that. Your life must be exhausting if you have a class-based panic attack when you hop in an Uber!

Very well put. lol

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#75

Post by geofft » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 1:38 PM UTC

dhnsmakala wrote: post #22

dumbfoundded wrote: post #15

I think NYT misses the point. The problem with Uber isn't some cultural issue, it's that they're in an extremely tough and competitive business. It's really a race to the bottom. The logic I kept hearing repeated is ride-sharing is a winner take all market. Like once you have a network of drivers setup giving people the lowest times for rides, you can force other competitors out and raise prices. Time has proven how…

This makes a lot of sense. A large business doesn't rely on the average employee. The employee relies on the business for food, shelter, healthcare...everything. It's just an inherently large imbalance, and the only way it doesn't exist is if there is a shortage of employees in the sector and the ROI per employee is high. This is a pretty small percentage of jobs. Unions are one way to try to curb exploitation, but I…

> I don't know how effective they are in practice. If retail workers tried to unionize what is to prevent the millions of people who are equally qualified from replacing the entire union?

See the strike of grocery workers at Stop and Shop earlier this year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Stop_%26_Shop_strike

They are effective in practice.

(Some possible first-principles reasons why this might be true: training replacement workers is hard and the labor market is not quite that liquid; new workers will want union representation too; new workers will want good wages too; the fact that the Teamsters respected the strike and union truckers refused to deliver across picket lines meant they'd have to find replacement non-union truck drivers too.)

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#76

Post by yourapostasy » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 1:39 PM UTC

cactus2093 wrote: post #40

jrockway wrote: post #2

The infrastructure they've built their business on is crumbling. Every so often I'm running late and think to myself "I should just drive" (by which I mean take an Uber). I check the driving times in Google Maps and it's as long as waiting for the subway and walking. There are just too many people on the roads for cars to be a competitive mode of transport; people only drive when there is absolutely no other option.…

Evil is a little extreme. The drivers are still doing it, so they clearly prefer giving you a ride to not. To add in some more anecdotal stories — the only times I really take a lot of Ubers and talk to the drivers are when traveling, and I’ve found the opposite. In Austin and Portland recently I talked to quite a few drivers that were happy with the job. And they all mentioned the flexible hours as a perk. One guy w…

> ...is very unlike any non-contract second job you could get.

I suspect there is a business opportunity lurking here. Setting up the financial, legal, and political infrastructure to stand up this kind of "non-contract second job" structure in as many jurisdictions and as consistently as Uber did is a gargantuan accomplishment. Uber is only monetizing it in a few, narrow, specific ways. This overall platform is useful in many other contexts that other businesses would use, but Uber hasn't opened up to them, AWS-like. There are plenty of other competitors that are trying to reproduce Uber's technical and non-technical infrastructure for other verticals, but I don't see recognition of the value of delivering the infrastructure itself for ad hoc, rapid, emergent workforce for general utilization by other smaller enterprises.

Prosaically for example, if a utility company that hasn't yet switched to entirely-Net-based meter reading yet could distribute their meter reading activity using Uber's infrastructure, then it would save tremendous wear and tear on the centralized meter reading teams' capital equipment and let them transition into more supervisory, QA, and customer support management roles. Uber worked out the logistical details of background checking, badging, etc. and leverages the same experience to apply to the new, distributed meter reading workforce.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#77

Post by braythwayt » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 1:40 PM UTC

goatinaboat wrote: post #53

ma2rten wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think see the point of owning a car, if it's used by other people for most the day. I think there is going to be a big company that owns most cars. Uber could raise the capital for it on the stock market. The problem that I see is that Uber doesn't have the technology. In a world where self driving cars are a commodity, Uber's brand could be an advantage. But in reality, by the time Uber gets access to the te…

This is a key bit of psychology that is often overlooked. People who get Ubers exclusively think that a car is a metal box on wheels that goes from A to B. But most people who own cars see them as a self-propelled room of their apartment or house, a personal space in other words. Like if you have a kid and drive your kid to places in your car then you probably leave loads of kid stuff in your car, and if the kid spil…

Owning a car is a luxury, and part of the psychology of a luxury good is its exclusivity. Obviously, a “production” sports car limited to 25 examples is one kind of exclusivity, but a car that is exclusively for your personal use is another kind of luxury.

And with that exclusivity comes the right to personalize your experience, from features to things for your kids to bumper stickers to blasting your music rather than having to ask the driver for another station or listen to your music on air pods.

The luxury of owning your own car may not appeal to everyone, but I do not see car shares and ride shares replacing cars for everyone at this time, it would take a major cultural shift and then several generations to age out of the market and die off before it ceases to be an economic factor.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#78

Post by braythwayt » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

grzm wrote: post #32

kerng wrote: post #30

I always wonder how HN does de-deduplication. Sometimes it works automatically, sometimes it doesn't. This was already submitted yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20778994

The earlier submission likely didn't attract enough attention for the later submission to be rolled in.

I suspect this is the issue. When you submit shortly after another submission, it gets turned into an upvote. Or of the other submission makes it to the front post, it gets all the attention, and nobody will vote for a duplicate or want to discuss the matter again.

What it takes for this to happen is a second submission some time after the first, when the first didn’t attract attention. This gives the article a “second chance,” and HN is actually interested in good articles getting second chances.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#79

Post by freehunter » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #68

dumbfoundded wrote: post #15

I think NYT misses the point. The problem with Uber isn't some cultural issue, it's that they're in an extremely tough and competitive business. It's really a race to the bottom. The logic I kept hearing repeated is ride-sharing is a winner take all market. Like once you have a network of drivers setup giving people the lowest times for rides, you can force other competitors out and raise prices. Time has proven how…

If it's so easy to compete, why aren't there more competitors with a larger market share? I don't know of any ride share market with more than two major players. US: Uber / Lyft South East Asia: Grab / GoJek Australia: Mainly just Uber (lots of smaller players but none with very significant market share)

It's easy to compete with the company, but hard to compete with the VC money Uber pulls in. Uber's only competitive advantage is the $24b they were given to keep them alive.

If VCs keep funding Uber, Uber is unstoppable. But as soon as that money runs out, they're just another taxi company. Except they're a taxi company who loses $350 million dollars every month. That's not hard to compete against.

Re: How Uber Got Lost

#80

Post by Barrin92 » Sat, Aug 24, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #17

_hardwaregeek wrote: post #9

I feel deeply uncomfortable taking Ubers, especially in Seattle. The drivers are inevitably working class folk, just trying to scrape by. They inevitably mention the increasing rent and cost of living. They inevitably ask what I do and I have to respond that I'm one of the asshole carpetbagging tech people who come in and raise the cost of living, raise the rent. Services like Uber are placing the class barrier front…

Do you do the same complex class calculation every time you interact with a cashier, talk to a receptionist, or pass a janitor? People do honest work and earn a living, no shame in that. Your life must be exhausting if you have a class-based panic attack when you hop in an Uber!

awful comparison because the chance is pretty high that these people have health insurance and are regularly employed.

When it comes to companies that try to avoid the social obligations that employers in my country traditionally have or that try to win by monopolizing markets then yes I make the decision to not use them. This includes Uber, Amazon and a few others.