They are in a race: Be the first with self-driving taxis and go for the monopoly, or run out of cash. I don't want to sound pessimistic, but my bet is on the latter. It's just such a hard problem, especially in cities. I just hope there won't be a kind of AI winter when some of these startups run out of money.
> Be the first with self-driving taxis
This is thrown out all the time. How exactly does this save them?
Are they going to spend billions to purchase and maintain a fleet of their own taxis? Are they going to be paying people to "borrow" their self-driving cabs? Something else?
I just don't see how this suddenly changes the equation in a meaningful way. People aren't going to spend more for a self-driving ride and the costs can only go down so much.
> Remarkably bad at human and helping humankind. I would say that the way how Uber aggressively expanded throughout the world has massively helped humankind. Because of Uber, many countries have changed their taxi laws, and many local competitors have sprouted up. More efficient taxi and ride-sharing services help save the environment and make cities nicer. Of course this is quite theoretical but I believe Uber was t…
Was making more taxis on the road with more downtime and increasing congestion really an improvement in cities? A Recent study found that 50% of all cars in lower manhattan were rideshares. Is that really a better world? Ridesharing in cities has been absolutely proven to increase pollution rather than reduce while carpooling in rural areas helps reduce pollution. The problem with rideshares is that they are jobs bas…
There is surplus value to the customer that you aren't accounting for. Mass transit is a far worse experience than Uber.
I don’t get why Uber isn’t profitable. Their marginal cost is only higher than zero because they choose to lose money. Their fixed costs are servers and engineering. If they set their prices higher than what drivers are willing to accept they should make money. I don’t see how “basic economics” is the enemy. Their enemy is setting expectations too high. If they were happy with a profit of $100M a year they would be s…
The basic economics argument assumes that there are not price points that are both higher than what drivers accept and that consumers are willing to pay. The existence of Lyft plays a role here, but both are in the same boat - they either need a new product line with better margins to take off that has some synergies with the ride-sharing business, or the unit economics of ride-sharing need to get bad enough for both…
The fact that taxi cabs existed for decades and were profitable means that this price point exists. That was the whole reason lyft and uber entered the market in the first place.
> Saying they're ~ "culling the low performers" can be entirely true Even if it isn't they have just branded everybody with 'Uber' on their CV that is on the market a low performer. Think before you speak.
So? They could lie (which is far worse) or say nothing and let people speculate. A job candidate with solid skills will be able to show their value to employers, and if an employer puts more weight on this quote over a candidate's qualifications then it was a bullet dodged.
> if an employer puts more weight on this quote over a candidate's qualifications then it was a bullet dodged
I generally agree with this, except when the candidate in question needs the money paid from a job more than they need a good job.
> It doesn't really cost anything... Depending on context, sure this could be true. Like if you're comparing the cost of releasing some small OSS module of Uber's to Uber's annual revenue, sure, it's going to be a negligible cost. But if you compare against the cost of developing the module in the first place, it can easily be an equal expense. For example I spent several months on a BLE library for Android ( https:/…
100% agreed, I started doing this for a small project my company has. We don't really use it anymore, but it would be helpful to many hobby projects however we are now sitting here saying 3 weeks work to just give this code away? ick.
A lot of this work is self made at companies although.
It doesn't really cost anything to open source something though. These are all projects which are developed for a reason: the commercial version might be prohibitively expensive at Uber scale, or not technically capable of operating at Uber scale, or just plain doesn't exist yet. At that point you can engage with the tech community and offer it as OSS (not to mention make your engineers happy), or you can keep it to…
That's not true. It costs quite a bit to open source a product if you're a commercial entity.. It needs to be reviewed (by legal, security, engineering, etc) and approved.. You're not just flipping the public/private flag on the repo.
Why would you give your open source code a tighter security and engineering review than your in-house code? Are you hoping for security through obscurity? And quality through obscurity?
It's especially a dick move when everybody already knows they're hurting for cash, and the official position could be "we just can't afford all these people" without the company losing any face. They aren't fooling anybody by pretending it's not about the cost.
If you're going to lay off people in a cross cutting manner, who would you choose?
People who aren't critical to the core product, or whose projects aren't big revenue generators. They might be high performers while being technically unprofitable.
I don’t get why Uber isn’t profitable. Their marginal cost is only higher than zero because they choose to lose money. Their fixed costs are servers and engineering. If they set their prices higher than what drivers are willing to accept they should make money. I don’t see how “basic economics” is the enemy. Their enemy is setting expectations too high. If they were happy with a profit of $100M a year they would be s…
Driving people from point A to point B is a commodity. The only reason taxi drivers were able to command a premium was restricted supply through licensing/medallions and whatnot. Uber destroyed that, so now competition will drive the prices down to the actual cost of driver wage + petrol/vehicle operating costs. Uber will see their margin squeezed down to nothing because they add nothing of value to the transaction:…
> Any random cab company can buy a dispatch app.
That is actually the case in many markets - in Russia local city cab companies all have their apps, so you have three-four installed and you're good to go. And Russian Uber (aka Yandex.Taxi) is here as well
I don’t get why Uber isn’t profitable. Their marginal cost is only higher than zero because they choose to lose money. Their fixed costs are servers and engineering. If they set their prices higher than what drivers are willing to accept they should make money. I don’t see how “basic economics” is the enemy. Their enemy is setting expectations too high. If they were happy with a profit of $100M a year they would be s…
They’re valued on growth, so if they decide to stop growing their valuation will plummet. If they raise prices then quantity of rides will go down. If quantity of rides goes down, it becomes harder to earn a living as a driver. If it is harder to earn a living as a driver, there are fewer drivers. If there are fewer drivers, then the cost of drivers goes up. Not to mention the fact that if uber becomes 10% more expen…
Honestly, the price increase on both platforms recently has pushed my household (Wife + Me) back to Muni/Driving. Previously, if one of us used ride sharing it was ~$5-8 each way. Now for the same ride we regularly hit $12-20. It was so bad the last week of my wife using them that she paid ~$18-20 each way, when I reminder her that that was $200 for the week just to get to work, she was shocked. At 4 weeks in the month thats a decent Mercedes payment, getting close to insurance+gas locally.
Now we only use it for the occasional night out where we just factor in the expense as entertainment. These services only have a marginal value that is approximately 2-3x public transit. In SF that is Muni at $2.50-$3, so $5-9 one way. Once you cross the $10 and creep into $15-20, you have a problem and the business crashes and burns.
In my twenties I remember working at a bar near chinatown. I would get off and my feet would be killing me. It was only maybe 6-8 blocks up Sutter to get to my old place, but every once in a while I would waste money on a Taxi. I remember it killing me that they started the meter at $3.50 and it would end like $8-10. Always felt like if they just flat rated it at $5 for my 6-8 blocks, I would take it everyday to and from (Uber sort of did just that and I rode it like crazy for a while), but at $10 it was a special treat and the rest of the time I schlepped up Sutter, feet be damned.
So? They could lie (which is far worse) or say nothing and let people speculate. A job candidate with solid skills will be able to show their value to employers, and if an employer puts more weight on this quote over a candidate's qualifications then it was a bullet dodged.
> if an employer puts more weight on this quote over a candidate's qualifications then it was a bullet dodged I generally agree with this, except when the candidate in question needs the money paid from a job more than they need a good job.
I hear wendy's is hiring.
Edit: In reality, if someone leaves uber and cannot find a job, and willing to take a bad job just to make money, they are doing something wrong.