Is the Ride over for Uber? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#81

Post by hackernewds » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 1:29 AM UTC

flatline wrote: post #6

I was on work travel last week. No Uber from the airport - three cancelations then I caught a Lyft. It was over $500 for a 50 mi ride to a neighboring city which I was mostly looking at out of curiosity. My friend was recently held up (well, attempted) by an Uber driver in Nashville who had canceled last second so he could not even find who the driver was to file a complaint. It seems like the former gap in user expe…

this reads like recency bias, discounting how terrible and experience hailing a cab used to be

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#82

Post by nanidin » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 1:33 AM UTC

hackernewds wrote: post #80

vladf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, strong disagree. Having interviewed a couple of candidates from this space, even for just rideshare pricing for both demand and supply sides is an incredibly sophisticated statistics and economics problem, where appropriate modeling can have long term revenue impact. Even within this vertical it seems you’d need a lot more than 15 engineers.

It's mind boggling how most people think it's a simple matching FIFO matching algorithm, instead of how mind bogglingly complex making ride-sharing happen at scale is I would know.

Maybe the world needs a ride share matching game, in the same vein as Elevator Saga[0]?

[0] https://play.elevatorsaga.com/

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#83

Post by kareemsabri » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 1:33 AM UTC

Jistern wrote: post #24

RL_Quine wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What economies of scale? Their primary expenses, workers, are fixed cost.

Quoted post unavailable.

Engineer here. Despite your condescension it doesn't appear you understand economies of scale. Economies of scale means the cost goes down when volume goes up.

An Uber driver can only drive one passenger at a time (put aside pool, which requires a price discount to get people to use it). So the number of drivers required to serve N passengers simultaneously is N. Costs scale linearly with rides per hour.

UPS has economies of scale because one driver puts 500 packages in a single truck, so the driver's wage is fixed and the revenue increases with the number of packages in the truck.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#84

Post by siliconc0w » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 1:35 AM UTC

stephc_int13 wrote: post #57

Food delivery is, in my opinion, an expensive, almost always disappointing and ultimately unhealthy habit. I can see why it might seem to be an attractive business, food addiction is legal, socially accepted and the harmful side is slow enough that most people don’t notice. But this is not a “service”, it does not add value for the customer, same category as cigarettes. I don’t think that businesses riding on addicti…

I've seen people 'get addicted' to takeout to the tune of thousands of dollars of month in food costs. The fees are absolutely egregious for the cold mediocre food you get. Every once in awhile I'll get something I know travels well but wherever possible I'd rather order direct and local and pickup than use the apps.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#85

Post by nanidin » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 1:36 AM UTC

eclipticplane wrote: post #60

potemkin_buster wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it, I make a decent amount of money and haven't used their service prices crept up.. $43 usd for $22 usd in fast food burgers is insane

And it only takes a few times going through checkout to ask, wait, I got a $10 burger and $4 fries, how is my order $30? Nah, I ain't _that_ hungry for a luke-warm burger and soggy fries. Amazon won online retail, and changed online retail behavior, by getting rid of shipping fees. The price you see on the product is the price you pay (sans sales tax, but at least in the USA no one is used to seeing tax included).

Don’t have to tip Amazon delivery drivers either!

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#86

Post by jollybean » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

voz_ wrote: post #25

Uber is an example of a company that wants to be a tech company, but (1) really shouldn't (2) kinda lacks the technical leadership to really be one. It feels like the right call, around 2017, was to either: (A) double down and build a platform for every kind of physical multisided marketplace (matching as a service, maps+routing+locations+geofences as a service, physical product ops as a service, etc) Where Amazon we…

No, they have very competent technical people, and, it's not a simple problem to solve.

They reached too far, raised to much money, raise too much ire, sang too big a tune.

If they had of stayed 'visionary but rational' they'd be doing just fine.

And they will probably end up doing just fine in the long run, expectations have to settle down somewhere.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#87

Post by rexf » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

voz_ wrote: post #61

johnebgd wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber crushed themselves in food. As a customer, I would get the wrong food about half the time in NYC even pre-pandemic. I complained and got a refund the first couple of times but then they stopped refunding me when it kept happening. Clearly thought I was fraudulently trying to get meals for free. Thing is, I’ve been a customer since the black car only days. Been Uber VIP for my high rating as a customer. Problem w…

I think your NYC centric anecdote kinda reinforces my point, in an old-man-yells-at-cloud kinda way. The eats usecase was supposed to be around delivery for places that did not already offer it. If you are talking about the eats experience vs in house delivery, that's kind of an edge case...

Disagree. If a restaurant is listed on uber eats, the customer (johnebgd) should expect to get their order right the vast majority of time.

Why should it be the customer's problem to figure out the implementation detail (delivery for new places, not in-house)?

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#88

Post by charrondev » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 1:39 AM UTC

hackernewds wrote: post #80

vladf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, strong disagree. Having interviewed a couple of candidates from this space, even for just rideshare pricing for both demand and supply sides is an incredibly sophisticated statistics and economics problem, where appropriate modeling can have long term revenue impact. Even within this vertical it seems you’d need a lot more than 15 engineers.

It's mind boggling how most people think it's a simple matching FIFO matching algorithm, instead of how mind bogglingly complex making ride-sharing happen at scale is I would know.

Sometimes I wish it were simpler. I’ve had multiple situations where I couldn’t get a ride into my local city recently.

The app says there are rides within 10 minutes, shows me a cheap rate and I hit yes. In 10 minutes no matches have been found. In 10 more minutes it finds someone 20 minutes away. 15 minutes later the driver cancels and I’m back to square one.

Now the thing is the cost of the ride is a pittance and I would gladly pay double the cost just to get to my destination in a reasonable timeframe. Instead I just call a cab now, request a pickup at a certain hour and they send a driver.

FWIW I’m 20 minutes drive from downtown Montreal, so this is not like I’m out in the sticks or anything, and couple years ago it was much easier to find a ride. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s even another ride sharing company taking the drivers, it’s just a lot of drivers pivoted to doing Uber eats instead.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#89

Post by cameronh90 » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 1:40 AM UTC

martinald wrote: post #56

cheriot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Food delivery... works great "inhouse". but > Plus they also want to take 30-50% commission for the privilege. If food delivery works great in house then why do restaurants pay Uber so much? I'd wager employing drivers is impractical for a lot of restaurants.

Well, McDonalds was a crazy amount of UberEats business. I heard as much as 50% of it. McDonalds is now in the UK offering their own inhouse delivery service. Clearly they've let Uber do all the hard work proving it works and now want that commission back.

At least in my area, McDelivery is provided by Uber Eats.

All this seems to mean in practice is I get a crappy Uber Eats delivery but have to order it through the McDonalds app, which is somehow even worse than Uber Eats.

I've just looked at the McDonalds app, and it says my local McDonalds is 24/7 and lets me order to collect from there. I know for a fact that it's shut right now, and the official store locator also says it's shut.

I stick to Deliveroo and Just Eat where possible because their apps and service tend to be pretty decent.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#90

Post by Teever » Mon, Jul 04, 2022, 1:40 AM UTC

hackernewds wrote: post #80

vladf wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, strong disagree. Having interviewed a couple of candidates from this space, even for just rideshare pricing for both demand and supply sides is an incredibly sophisticated statistics and economics problem, where appropriate modeling can have long term revenue impact. Even within this vertical it seems you’d need a lot more than 15 engineers.

It's mind boggling how most people think it's a simple matching FIFO matching algorithm, instead of how mind bogglingly complex making ride-sharing happen at scale is I would know.

I think people don't care about it because at the end of the day all this mind bogglingly complex stuff just exists skim money off a transaction that should ideally be done between two individuals -- a buyer and a seller.

Uber is nothing more than a rent-seeking middle man and no one cares about how complicated their rent-seeking activities are behind the curtain.

Why can my ISP string up fiber optic all over my city and put routers and switches or whatever in boxes that can survive all kinds of inclement weather and end up charging me $100 a month for gigabit internet? Isn't that a much harder business than Uber?