Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate • Hacker News Board

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#211

Post by mikeash » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #168

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this misses something crucial to how most of these arrangements work: the worker is unable to put value on the gig. That is the real asymmetry. The gig worker's car wears down, requires gas, oil changes, and gets beat up by the road, but from his perspective he sees $25. Do you think Uber would even try to estimate that number?! (which they almost certainly could). Its essentially capitalization on a huge…

What happened to personal responsibility? Is that out the window as well? Or do we need intervention, similar to how parents point their kids in the proper direction to go?

A giant corporation with entire departments dedicated to calculating pay, customer demand, fuel costs, maintenance, and depreciation, and figuring out the optimal way to screw people out of as much as possible, versus desperate people who happen to own a car: who wins?

I’m sure that a lot of people make good money driving for these companies, but I’d bet there are a lot of people who don’t understand what it really costs to drive a car and end up essentially acting as a conduit for money from their car’s value to Uber’s bank account. Uber knows this and does nothing. In any other context, we’d call it a scam. When a scammer is operating, do we have any obligation to stop them, or is “personal responsibility” it?

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#212

Post by bradhe » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

They've been slowly hikin' rates in my geo for months now. Used to charge me $6 to work one way. Three months later it's now double that.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#213

Post by orangep » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

throwaway_loss wrote: post #98

jcdavis wrote: post #2

No doubt they are struggling to show a path to profitability, but $3.9B of that is a one-time recognition of all their stock comp which makes look much worse than it should (Assuming that a 1.3B loss is more "normal")

From their S-1: >We incurred operating losses of $4.0 billion and $3.0 billion in the years ended December 31, 2017 and 2018, and as of December 31, 2018, we had an accumulated deficit of $7.9 billion. Now they have accumulated a deficit of $13.1B. You might say, well they shrank their loss from $4B to 3B to $1.3B (giving you the extra $3.9B one-time stock comp). Except one has to keep in mind they cut expenses and r…

$4B and $3B is for the whole years of 2017 and 2018. $1.3B is just for this quarter.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#214

Post by TAForObvReasons » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #194

eanzenberg wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to personal responsibility? Is that out the window as well? Or do we need intervention, similar to how parents point their kids in the proper direction to go?

The point in having a society at all is the recognition that by agreeing on a set of rules, organizing ourselves to cooperate, people are better off. The "what about personal responsibility" can be applied to most things society offers you. Law enforcement? Buy your own gun and defend yourself. Firefighters? Buy your own water hose. Exploitive employers? Grow your own backbone.

Automation? Make your own AI, aka "learn to code". At least in this one case, there's strong cultural pushback

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#215

Post by buildzr » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

patcon wrote: post #209

eanzenberg wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to personal responsibility? Is that out the window as well? Or do we need intervention, similar to how parents point their kids in the proper direction to go?

Great question. I mean that. But maybe put differently: > What is happen ing to personal responsibility? It sure as heck is changing a lot when powerful players derive algorithmic insight that allows them to know/predict us better than we can ourselves and our communities, plus three things: 1. we can't keep up as individuals, 2. our governments (the last invention that helped us keep up,) can't keep up, and 3. we ha…

Interesting, I feel it's actually getting even easier to make responsible decisions, without the advice I got from the internet I'd probably be picking individual stocks and my mortgage structure would look a lot worse.

Carrying a calculator in your pocket even helps make those little decisions at the store easier.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#216

Post by standardUser » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

switch007 wrote: post #125

beeneuf wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After my experiences having grown up with cabs, I am honestly willing to pay a significant premium to use Uber and Lyft. It is not an understatement to say that I hate traditional taxis. I hate the terrible service. I hate having them refuse fares based on where I'm going. I hate calling to schedule a pickup in advance and the driver just not bothering to show up. I hate being pressured to pay in cash instead of cred…

In the past month, I and friends/family have experienced the following with Uber: - Accusations of racism - Dangerous driving - Detours/no idea where they're going - Being held hostage (took 4 very strong demands to be let out) - Given a lecture because the driver couldn't find the address and told if you don't like the service to get out. The grass isn't always greener

I take rideshare services multiple times per week with zero problems. Maybe it has something to do with the region/city? I've had the occasional issues, and in a few cases I've gotten out and called another car. But around 98% of the time it's completely frictionless.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#217

Post by llamaz » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

eanzenberg wrote: post #168

rjkennedy98 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this misses something crucial to how most of these arrangements work: the worker is unable to put value on the gig. That is the real asymmetry. The gig worker's car wears down, requires gas, oil changes, and gets beat up by the road, but from his perspective he sees $25. Do you think Uber would even try to estimate that number?! (which they almost certainly could). Its essentially capitalization on a huge…

What happened to personal responsibility? Is that out the window as well? Or do we need intervention, similar to how parents point their kids in the proper direction to go?

Material wealth is not enough in itself - capital must have gained it through just means and emerge the victor of a fair competition. That’s the liberal conservative’s personal responsibility. I’m not sure about the Uber case, but try applying your argument to the case of tabacco - it still works.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#218

Post by ghaff » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:28 PM UTC

watermall wrote: post #152

_bxg1 wrote: post #28

Fully self-driving cars hit a wall (no pun intended), and that was their only story for eventual profitability. Not surprising.

IMO, the idea that fully self-driving cars are anywhere close to being created was always just a combination of hype and wildly irrational underestimation of how hard it is to create them. The challenge of building a road-safe fully self-driving car is not far from the challenge of building artificial general intelligence. I think that road-ready fully self-driving cars are many decades away, and they may never actua…

IMO, it was a combination of (to be relatively generous):

1. General AI optimism fueled by the almost incredibly fast rate of advance of progress enabled by supervised learning in certain domains and by reinforcement learning in an even narrower set of domains.

2. Adding to the above, progress enabled by super-precise mapping within constrained areas.

3. Probably some California-centrism. What's this weather thing of which you speak?

4. Silicon Valley techno-optimism that problems just need one more version to solve

but

5. A great big game of topper in which, once various people started proclaiming that self-driving was just around the corner for whatever combination of over-optimism and because it was in their financial interest to do so, YOU had to fall in line or you'd be perceived as being hopelessly behind your competitors when you said self-driving was decades out.

Further fueled by

6. The many young professional urbanites with no current interest in owning a car or even getting a driver's license who so desperately wanted to believe that their personal robotic chauffeur that they believed things that they never would have were they not otherwise so personally invested.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#219

Post by beeneuf » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

switch007 wrote: post #125

beeneuf wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After my experiences having grown up with cabs, I am honestly willing to pay a significant premium to use Uber and Lyft. It is not an understatement to say that I hate traditional taxis. I hate the terrible service. I hate having them refuse fares based on where I'm going. I hate calling to schedule a pickup in advance and the driver just not bothering to show up. I hate being pressured to pay in cash instead of cred…

In the past month, I and friends/family have experienced the following with Uber: - Accusations of racism - Dangerous driving - Detours/no idea where they're going - Being held hostage (took 4 very strong demands to be let out) - Given a lecture because the driver couldn't find the address and told if you don't like the service to get out. The grass isn't always greener

Sure, those problems can still exist with Uber - but drivers who cause problems are systematically weeded out over time. I've had my fair share of issues, but it makes a big difference to me that once I give a driver a bad rating/report them to Uber they will never be matched with me again, and if they consistently deliver bad experiences they will eventually be removed altogether. A taxi driver can exhibit the same bad behaviour for decades and suffer no consequences. The human element always means bad actors will be present, but under rideshares they are removed over time (and customer input is taken seriously) and under taxis they thrive (customer reports of harassment are literally laughed at). The helplessness is infuriating.

I have a bad experience maybe 10% of the time I take a rideshare, with taxis it's more like 75%. That does mean bad experiences will continue to happen either way, but I still favour the former and will pay more for it. Plus ridesharing still has the benefit of pooling, knowing costs up front, paying through cards without harassment, having the company keep a detailed record of your pickup/dropoff and route so reports of issues can be substantiated, quickly rescheduling if a driver fails to show (plus a map to see when a driver is not on route), etc. I think it's a clear win - at worst they share some of the problems taxis have, but taxis share none of the benefits that rideshares have.

Re: Uber Posts $5.2B Loss and Slowest Ever Growth Rate

#220

Post by orangep » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:30 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #56

Remember that article yesterday about the company that resold movie tickets at a loss to gain market share? That's Uber's business model. (Self driving cars were never going to save them. Not only do they not work yet, there's no reason to think they'd be much cheaper for years to come. Uber would have to pay for them, garage them, maintain them, operate control centers, etc. They'd be in the car rental business, whi…

I never understood why people thought self driving cars would lift Uber out of their miseries. Even if they do make it more profitable (although it's not as trivial as you mention), they would also be in a much more competitive landscape compared to the duopoly situation they have now. The costs might go down, but it doesn't mean they would be able to maintain their market share.