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Is the Ride over for Uber?

smartcompany.com.au

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Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#251

Post by pessimizer »

voz_ wrote: post #122
hackernewds wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 worked there for 5 years, it's not that complicated, Uber just made it way too overcomplicated.

I think that HN has crossed a threshold where the stereotypical HN reply is not someone condescendingly declaring that some problem they don't understand is easy, but instead someone who admits that they don't know how hard a problem is, condescendingly assuming that the person they're talking to is as ignorant as they are about it, and admonishing them to respect their betters and to make the assumption that the decisions that have been made and the methods that have been used by bigco X are rational.

This is a weird forum. An argument that a company is big and successful so must have some process for making decisions that works well, so criticisms of those decisions by internet randos are necessarily badly informed and egotistically presumptuous because they can't have the understanding of the people directly involved yadda yadda yadda i.e. a standard status quo argument, generalizable to dismiss any criticism independently of the specific facts of any situation or the institution being defended - when you're making that argument, you could be making it to someone very highly placed or otherwise knowledgeable about the institution that you're defending.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#252

Post by hattmall »

vladf wrote: post #76
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…

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.

I think the point is that it doesn't need to be. We are seeing that the marginal benefits of extreme price optimization is minimal. Taxis have been simply charging flat rates for time and mileage for decades. Certainly there was room for improvement and Uber already did that and continued deep optimization is probably not worth it. 15 is hyperbole of course as any billion dollar company will need more than that but probably not multi-thousands.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#253

Post by pessimizer »

al_mandi wrote: post #145
Teever wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Uber facilitates matching and routing and many other things. Don't you think that those features are worthy of paying for them?

Isn't that just a few well understood algorithms and the acres of servers to run them? Is Uber coming up with new math?

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#254

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gruez wrote: post #40
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food delivery also isn’t very practical in developed country markets without a huge increase in productivity vs labor costs. It’s just too expensive compared to a country like China where it is cheap enough to be ubiquitous. Automation could be disruptive here…someday in the form of food delivery land and/or air drones. It really is the same with ride share: it just isn’t economical considering how much human labor i…

>Food delivery also isn’t very practical in developed country markets without a huge increase in productivity vs labor costs. But pizza and chinese delivery was a thing in the US long before delivery apps were a thing. Clearly it was practical at some small scale in the US. I don't see any reason why it can't be expanded to other restaurants (eg. by sharing delivery drivers so a restaurant doesn't have to have an ent…

Ya it was a thing before when labor costs were cheaper. Will It remain a thing now? We still get delivery, some Chinese places don’t even bother with a dining room, but the costs keep increasing such that I don’t see it lasting for much longer.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#255

Post by pessimizer »

remflight wrote: post #228

Terrible article. It’s basically a negative yelp review masqueraded as some sort of financial analysis. He’s essentially a pissed off ex-customer that on one hand complains that they don’t pay the drivers enough, but also complains that the service is now too expensive. The article is utter garbage. If you look at Uber’s drop in valuation, it’s commensurate with the drop in all tech companies. In fact, the article is…

> they don’t pay the drivers enough, but also complains that the service is now too expensive

You seem shocked that these two things could be true at the same time, when they are often true at the same time.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#256

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

abraham wrote: post #250
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by getting rid of shipping fees. you actually mean "by hiding shipping fees in an annual subscription model carefully tuned to deal with real world customer ordering behavior". Non-Prime customers still see shipping fees for everything.

I'm a non-prime user and I only have to pay shipping on about 20% of orders.

Thanks for that correction. As a prime user, I was clearly ignorant about this.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#257

Post by pessimizer »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #8
prophesi wrote: post #5

Uber's IPO prospectus pretty much says they'd only be profitable if they can achieve a global monopoly to charge their own prices, and/or hope that driverless cars become ubiquitous soon. So this isn't too surprising, and also the status quo for most startups to burn investor cash ad-infinitum until they reach the theoretical gold at the end of the rainbow.

Well they are not the mafia. If Uber has a monopoly, and wants to charge me $50 instead of $10 to get to the city centre, I won't go, or find another (non-ride-sharing) way to get there. I might go 1 in 100 times of course because of urgency. But then regular cabs are still a thing too. This is the problem with being the middleman in a low margin world. I don't want to pay a fortune to get somewhere, and the driver h…

> I won't go,

What if not going costs you more money than Uber? For example, it costs you your job, or visitation with your child? Then you will go.

> or find another (non-ride-sharing) way to get there.

Oh, you'd just do the other thing that is available to do. Why doesn't everyone think of that?

> But then regular cabs are still a thing too.

That would mean that Uber didn't have a monopoly. The goal was for Uber to dump deeply discounted service into the market until the cab companies died. They were pretty successful, because I can't hail a cab on the street anymore. They weren't as successful as they needed to be, because people who drive cabs can do Uber and Lyft at the same time.

> the driver has other jobs they can do if Uber effectively pays below minimum wage.

But if Uber has driven the industry wage down, the other job they do will not be driving you around. They will get a different job, and you will still be paying more.

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#258

Post by moneywoes »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #227
eclipticplane wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> by getting rid of shipping fees. you actually mean "by hiding shipping fees in an annual subscription model carefully tuned to deal with real world customer ordering behavior". Non-Prime customers still see shipping fees for everything.

Uber and DoorDash seem to be doing the same with their annual passes

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#259

Post by lcvw »

alvah wrote: post #66
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…

I screenshot every time a driver accepts the ride, for the almost inevitable dispute later.

How is it that you need the screenshot? Doesn’t the app/backend keep records of matches?

Re: Is the Ride over for Uber?

#260

Post by caseydm »

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…

I agree that a small team of engineers can do big things. But 15 engineers to run Uber ride share in maintenance mode? That's insane. I would love to see a breakdown of each engineer's responsibilities in that scenario.
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