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Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

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Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#181

Post by passivepinetree »

smcl wrote: post #179
tomkit wrote: post #135

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

I think the use of "product" here is a bit of a stretch, and what "moderators" are you pleading to? AFAIK it's only dang, and I'm not sure what we can expect him to do when the criticism levelled at him is "the comments aren't as good as I remember" Also worth remembering is that when companies as polarising as Uber are in the news, there's gonna be heated discussion with lots of strong opinions and anecdata. No amou…

I believe dang isn't the only one. Isn't sctb (just from the top of my head) a mod as well?

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#182

Post by Karunamon »

burkaman wrote: post #28
Jabanga wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue not all laws are moral and that following immoral laws is emphasising your own interests over those of humanity. If abiding by the law was people's only priority, there would be no widespread usage of public key cryptography (it was extremely illegal in the early 1990s, and only gained legal acceptance after cypherpunks pushed back against the laws and proliferated its use), which would have prevented…

I understand, but your initial attitude should be "let's try to work within society's boundaries to achieve our goal", not "what can I break". There are certainly cases where laws are outdated or wrong, and breaking them is the most efficient and harmless way to get them changed. I'm just saying "move fast and break things" is not the only way to succeed, should not be a goal in and of itself, and Uber could have bee…

but your initial attitude should be "let's try to work within society's boundaries to achieve our goal"

Why on earth is that the case? This viewpoint imbues "society's boundaries" with some kind of a-priori correctness, when really it has the same as any other concept: 0, until proven otherwise.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#183

Post by mcftd »

tomkit wrote: post #135

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

i've only recently joined the hn community, and i'm interested by this thought because i find the comments generally inquisitive, regardless of how much someone has posted. upon further research of when the golden age of hn may have been, i found an article talking about whether or not app developers should listen to hn (i'm not linking it because it wasn't particularly enlightening). it lead to the hn comments in reply to the advent of dropbox, where i notice the same structure you're describing here, ten years ago. i suppose i just wish you would provide links to what you're describing as the 'height of hn' if you're describing how it has 'deteriorated over the years' it seems pretty amazing that a conversation like this takes place in the comments section to Uber ?

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#184

Post by bonzini »

memmcgee wrote: post #136
bonzini wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would not be abhorrent if it were the only source of income for Uber, which would basically be earning the bid-ask spread. Adding fees on top of that, though...

Except they also penalize drivers for not accepting many rides. So if you want to continue driving for Uber, you have to "sell" your driving services at some point, even if the price isn't good for you.

Indeed, and that's an extension of "if it were the only source of income for Uber". If Uber proposed too high a spread, it's Uber that should be penalized.

IOW it's not the spread mechanism that's wrong, it's everything on top of it.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#185

Post by dullgiulio »

potatolicious wrote: post #95
pjmorris wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's astounding to me that they can't make it work based on the convenience of the service. I understand the strategy of wanting to buy market share quickly, and to bet on self-driving cars. That they can't compete on the convenience of the service at a fair price and playing by the rules of the districts they operate in is just astonishingly bad management.

I'd argue they did - I was around San Francisco when Uber was getting off the ground, and the initial service is exactly that: convenient, high-quality, provided professional drivers with commercial insurance. It was also expensive, and nowadays known as UberBlack, and is a market many times smaller than Uber's ambitions. UberBlack was a great product with unit economics that would allow for a high-quality product th…

Absolutely agree. Another part of the problem is the need to become a unicorn at any cost.

Why prefer having a huge valuation (based on thin air) when you can have a more modest but totally profit generating business?

This is a question that many in the Valley should answer honestly.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#186

Post by Dylan16807 »

Bakary wrote: post #177
abrookewood wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is fair. The mods want the site to be successful and the parent is pointing out something that should be a cause for concern for them. No one wants HN to turn into the next Slashdot.

Surely the mods are able to figure out what the site needs better than any regular user, by virtue of their continued monitoring?

It's somewhat more likely but I wouldn't say "surely" at all. There are a lot of other factors.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#187

Post by dagw »

abrookewood wrote: post #158
avaer wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome back! One of the worst parts of open source is when someone who has been happily getting value out of your free product for 4 years opens an issue to complain about how quality has gone downhill, and you need to fix a few things.

I don't think this is fair. The mods want the site to be successful and the parent is pointing out something that should be a cause for concern for them. No one wants HN to turn into the next Slashdot.

But a bug report that says "Your program seems to have gotten slower over the past four years and I feel like it's crashing more often. Please fix it" isn't very useful. A couple of concrete examples of specific problems with some suggestions on what should have been done in those cases would have made the post much more informative.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#188

Post by speedplane »

chipgap98 wrote: post #3

That's a huge "bug" not to notice for presumably a long time. I recently had a Lyft driver in NYC talk to me about how he quit uber after doing the math on what his fare should have been when a passenger told him how much they were being charged. He brought it up to uber and then quit when they didn't fix it. Anecdotal story but seems extremely relevant now

Calling it an inadvertent bug is such a giant public relations fail. Uber should have said they're re-evaluating their payment plans to make sure drivers earn even more money, and for their driver's loyalty, they will make this pay increase retroactive.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#189

Post by rimliu »

tomkit wrote: post #135

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

I have a suspicion that moderation is at least partly responsible for the current state.

Re: Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

#190

Post by Houshalter »

tomkit wrote: post #135

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

Literally every forum I have ever been on, when it gets old enough, complains about declining quality and new users. There was a big discussion about this on a popular IRC I used to hang out on. And I spent the weekend setting up a bot to replay messages from 4 years ago in real time. And the general opinion was that the quality wasn't any higher back then.

Same thing with a default subreddit I moderated. We got endless complaints about declining quality. Using web archive to go a few years back, and the quality was just the same or worse!

All the time I read old discussion threads on HN. Either through the search feature or the "past" button. And I really don't see any difference between the old HN and the current one.

If anything it's slighty improved. I think many of the complaints discussed 4 years ago here aren't relevant any more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6747373 When was the last time you saw a "_____ in js" post? Honestly I miss those a bit.

Ideally I'd love to do statistics and see if stuff like average comment length or political words have increased over time. Maybe I'll try that sometime.

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