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I’m a software engineer at Uber and I’m voting against Prop 22

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Re: I’m a software engineer at Uber and I’m voting against Prop 22

#11

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

I'm one that believes that we need to unlink health care, child care and sick leave from the jobs we have. It's unfair that just because you have the right job you can get those benefits. I also think that Uber and the like, by passing prop 22, are trying to short circuit the system so they can profit from not having to give benefits to workers by having society pick up the costs of not providing benefits. They need to disrupt the benefits system too and figure out a way for workers to work and get what they need.

Prop 22 is the wrong way to do it. It should not pass.

Re: I’m a software engineer at Uber and I’m voting against Prop 22

#12

Post by legerdemain »

They should fire this person and also his immediate set of coworkers and close associates, to set an example for others.

They probably knew that he was unsupportive of the company, but they failed to report what they saw to their team lead. Employment is at will, no one needs to know. And firing them all will even provide a liability shield: see, the whole team was redundant!

Unsupportive employees are incredibly disruptive to your company. It's worth it to lose ten supportive employees than to keep one unsupportive one. Maybe even eleven.

Re: I’m a software engineer at Uber and I’m voting against Prop 22

#13

Post by eschaton »

hdydhdjdx wrote: post #9
admax88q wrote: post #6

I'd love to see Uber or a competitor embrace the "independent contractors" idea and let drivers and riders bid for service. I think it's possible to implement this in a user friendly fashion. Enter your destination and your max spend, maybe minimum driver rating, drivers bid for the fare. Let "surge pricing" and basic fares actually be determined by market forces rather than Ubers algorithm.

How does bidding matter at all as far as the employee/employer relationship in this context? It'd make more sense to argue that reinvesting in things like self-driving cars is what breaks the dynamic because the "platform" is withholding revenue from drivers to expand in a way completely unrelated to their work.

When their work and pay are dictated by the platform, they are not independent of it, and are de facto employees.

Making the work they do and their pay something they decide and just obtain via the platform (just facilitated by it) then they’re actually independent of it.

Re: I’m a software engineer at Uber and I’m voting against Prop 22

#14

Post by 464736463 »

eschaton wrote: post #13
hdydhdjdx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does bidding matter at all as far as the employee/employer relationship in this context? It'd make more sense to argue that reinvesting in things like self-driving cars is what breaks the dynamic because the "platform" is withholding revenue from drivers to expand in a way completely unrelated to their work.

When their work and pay are dictated by the platform, they are not independent of it, and are de facto employees. Making the work they do and their pay something they decide and just obtain via the platform (just facilitated by it) then they’re actually independent of it.

Except that their work isn't dependent on the platform, they can swap nearly instantly between Uber and any other available gig platform since the requirement for all of them is simply to have a car. Pay is the same basic story, when one delivery platform isn't paying enough the attentive drivers simply hop to another platform.

Re: I’m a software engineer at Uber and I’m voting against Prop 22

#15

Post by admax88q »

warent wrote: post #7
admax88q wrote: post #6

I'd love to see Uber or a competitor embrace the "independent contractors" idea and let drivers and riders bid for service. I think it's possible to implement this in a user friendly fashion. Enter your destination and your max spend, maybe minimum driver rating, drivers bid for the fare. Let "surge pricing" and basic fares actually be determined by market forces rather than Ubers algorithm.

I don't think this works for two reasons. First you're incentivizing the wrong behavior, which would be to complete the ride as fast as possible rather than completing it safely. The second is that it breaks down in small economies where people can easily price fix.

I agree smaller economies could be a problem, but I'm not sure there's a better solution. A small economy is unlikely to have taxi services at all. Small economies are usually geographically smaller meaning taxis will have to compete against just walking or biking.

Adding driver reviews to your bid helps discourage unsafe driving. All transportations services (except public transit) are encouraged to complete rides as fast as possible to then get the next ride.

Re: I’m a software engineer at Uber and I’m voting against Prop 22

#16

Post by chrischen »

admax88q wrote: post #6

I'd love to see Uber or a competitor embrace the "independent contractors" idea and let drivers and riders bid for service. I think it's possible to implement this in a user friendly fashion. Enter your destination and your max spend, maybe minimum driver rating, drivers bid for the fare. Let "surge pricing" and basic fares actually be determined by market forces rather than Ubers algorithm.

I believe "Sidecar" did this. They ultimately failed and I would imagine the user experience of having to choose and filter prices from a list for a something relatively time sensitive (a ride) to have contributed.

Ultimately it'd just boil down to a button that finds the lowest price at the highest rating (of the driver) and the closest distance to me, which is what you get with the current services.

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