81–90 of 120 posts
This is the kind of guy you want to be your CEO. Someone who doesn't spend their time shopping for the best suit or glad handing unnecessarily. For those in the hunt for a CEO, take note here. Curiosity, exploration, not afraid to get dirty, a desire to understand and learn. Well done.
This kind of article title is really starting to piss me off. Especially for this particular article where nothing "happened". It's just a QA with a new driver.
So let's do the math. $21/hour for 7 hours, $150/day, gross. I found some estimates online that a taxi driver might drive about 150 miles per day. Let's say 125 since this was sort of a short day. The IRS mileage allowance is 56 cents per mile - this is supposed to be an "all-in" number that includes all of the costs of owning and operating a vehicle. So that's $70/day for vehicle costs which the operator will have t…
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I'd personally be annoyed if my UberX driver came in a Wrangler; one of the most uncomfortable-as-passenger cars on the market. A Camry or something is totally fine; doesn't have to be a Tesla, but should be something relatively quiet and comfortable.
Really? Americans have gotten soft. I once had a date who questioned what I was driving; I took out her roommate instead. I guess we all have our own "Comfy" zone though?
Understatement of the millenium.
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In general, rating systems where the top vote is the "normal" vote are fucked up. There's always noise in how each party perceives the transaction. As the supplier, the only thing you can do is kiss the ass of everyone in hopes of placating the overly negative ones. And as a buyer, you're unable to reward truly above-and-beyond service.
I think ideally the ratings should be done by machine learning instead. Rather than returning an average of previous ratings, return a prediction like "there is a 50% chance you will like this and 10% dislike it (40% chance you don't rate it at all.) 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…
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I'd personally be annoyed if my UberX driver came in a Wrangler; one of the most uncomfortable-as-passenger cars on the market. A Camry or something is totally fine; doesn't have to be a Tesla, but should be something relatively quiet and comfortable.
Really? Americans have gotten soft. I once had a date who questioned what I was driving; I took out her roommate instead. I guess we all have our own "Comfy" zone though?
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Sidecar does something like this, They ask if it was bad, good or exceptional. If you say good, they ask what could've been improved -- and I usually find myself selecting "nothing in particular" That gives a very accurate picture of the driver. It's cool that sometimes my sidecar driver gives me candy and tells jokes, but that's not why I use the service.
I wonder what "exceptional" even means? I expect a driver to get me from A to B, and notice whether I'm interested in talking (in which case talk and be friendly) or not interested in talking (in which case don't talk please). A half-pint of water is nice but hardly necessary - it won't convert a horrible ride into a great one, and its absence doesn't make a great ride a bad one. So much is outside the control of the…
In my experience with cab drivers if they don't offer unsolicited conversations about religion or politics that's an exceptional experience. When I say conversations I mean they just drone on and on one sided about how great God is and how Obama is ruining the country.
"it feels really productive to take my kids to school and get paid to drive home" Drivers using Uber to fill free time or excess capacity is a radical shift away from how Uber started, with professional drivers using it to make a living. A friend of mine does this with Lyft. Imagine how many cars are on the road right now with only one driver and the rest of the seats empty. Lots of potential new drivers...
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You raise some interesting points. As an employer, do I have a moral obligation to help an under performing employee through a bad period? Many, though not all, would say, "yes." Let me rephrase the question. Do I have a moral obligation to pay said employee more than the current value he is providing to me? Now, most economists would say, "No," though there may be an argument about the present value of what the empl…
Do I have a moral obligation to pay said employee more than the current value he is providing to me? Now, most economists would say, "No," I seriously doubt that. After having gotten to know some actual economists (you know, academics; not the ones who pretend to know about economics on TV) I have learned that most of them are actually quite different from the "hooray free markets all the way" stereotype. In fact, I…
It's not that Uber is paying $21 an hour. It's that they're allowing the driver to go on and be matched with people who want that service. It might average out to $21 an hour for some set of hours (I imagine it's higher on the weekends and lower at low peak times). The fact you can back out dollars per hour from someone providing services on a marketplace doesn't really change things.
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Or you can just as easily phrase this the other way around. If you were completely satisfied by your service, why should you give less than the highest rating available? Are you just subtracting stars because the driver didn't do things which you wouldn't expect the driver to do?
It seems pretty stupid to have a multi-point rating scale that doesn't distinguish between the driver that gave you polite, timely and safe service and the driver that did all that but additionally gave you fantastic advice about the city and insisted on carrying your luggage up a flight of steep steps at the end. It's even worse to have a points scale where not awarding the first driver the same as the second moves…