What happened when the CEO of a Boston burrito chain became an Uber driver

It's a bit more nuanced than this, but the fundamental dilemma is:

• An overly negative review essentially dooms someone to never working again.

• An overly positive one leads to sticky questions from the next person to hire them (whom you probably know socially).

Clarke's solution is to write ... very closely ... an accurate but difficult to parse recommendation. As I recall, the essay ends with him noting that a household servant he'd dismissed some years before (pursuing a "flim" career) had since returned, to the pleasure of both parties.

Sadly I can't find a copy online -- seems that at a $1.78 purchase price the friction of commerce is excessive here for a 50 year old essay.

I didn't communicate my point well.

My point wasn't that "it's OK to treat people like crap because: PROFIT!!" I'm the last person to claim that profit justifies everything.

My point was: If Uber doesn't impose serious quality control on its drivers, then even the best drivers will fail to make a living wage, because the perceived value of the Uber service (by customers) will drop with every bad experience.

Uber is creating a market for its service by being better than a taxi. Better in all ways. It takes serious differentiation to convince people to change their current habits.

>Otherwise, there needs to be a certain degree of compromise.

If you're talking about non-customer-facing jobs, or even basic retail jobs where the expectations aren't high, then absolutely.

If you're a giant corporation and someone has been working with you for years and they go through a bad spot, then sure.

If you're trying to create a "new kind of taxi" and part of your business plan is that everyone has a superb experience, then you have no choice but to fire people who can't live up to your goal.

The ex-CEO had a rating of 4.3 (the cutoff mentioned in the article was 4.5), but they didn't "immediately fire him;" he had a chance to bring his rating up, and he did. It sounds like there's some compromise already built into the system. Not to mention the minimum 40 ratings before they require a 4.5.

At the end of the day, it's a business with specific goals. Some businesses can employ people who only rate a 3.0 and still meet their goals; some can't.

>you go through a really messy breakup and perform at 50% capacity for six months.

Two months in my case (happened once; was going to leave the job in 2-3 months regardless, but it's the only job I've ever had that they weren't begging me to stay). But you are right that, with my awesome specialized software skill-set, I was able to pick up a new job in just a couple months, and at this point I can practically write my own ticket.

If your hypothetical break-up survivor is pissing off customers, though, Uber has no choice but to fire him or her if they want to meet their goals. How else are they going to keep the fleet-wide ratings at or above 4.5 stars, which is likely their goal?

Honestly I do wonder where people in, say, the bottom percentile of job or interpersonal skills (or both) can get work. I'd fully support a "living wage for everyone" concept, at least if it can be shown to work at some scale, to sidestep this problem. Or a government "works" program that guaranteed a job to everyone who wanted one (in conjunction with a disability system, of course, that could provide support to people who didn't have the mobility or brain function to perform even menial labor).

But how the system works when it's working well (i.e., prior to the 1970s [1]) is that there are more jobs than employees, and so the jobs have to make due with who they can find, and/or the jobs have to be attractive enough to get the applicants. It's how the programming market is right now: I know that most developers have really basic skills compared to mine (probably only 1 in 20 professional developers that I encounter are even in the same ballpark), but even the least productive developers get great salaries and benefits.

And how the system needs to change is that workers need to own the companies they work for. Then their personal motivations line up with that of the company, and employee/owners who have a bad breakup maybe spend six months collecting a lower salary and working part time until they get back on their feet. Or maybe because of their closer support network (employees who own a piece of the action probably will stick around longer -- and care more about their coworkers) they don't take six months to get over a break-up.

I agree that things need to be fixed. I don't agree that a company should be required (morally or otherwise) to shoot itself in the foot to achieve social justice.

[1] A long watch, but totally worth it if these questions are of interest to you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-KqeU8nzn4

This way a small sample size doesn't distort the rating too much, and predictions can be customized for every individual, and it's somewhat resistant to fake reviews, if they can be picked up on by the computer. It also gives you an incentive to rate and what you actually think.

The problem here is that you're asking economists moral questions.