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

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

#271

Post by Someone » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:52 PM UTC

Reading https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-det...:

  1,740 Cost of revenue
    864 Operations and support
    638 General and administrative
  _____+
  3,242

That’s higher than revenue (3,166), so even ignoring R&D (3,064), Marketing and Sales (1,222), Interests (151), and a few other expenses, they aren’t making money.

Also: what’s in “Cost of revenue”? It is neither “Operations and Support” nor “General and Administrative”. The subsidies they give drivers? If it is, prices would have to go up by about 50% for that to go to zero.

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

#272

Post by georgeecollins » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:53 PM UTC

iamatworknow wrote: post #64

izzydata wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems more expensive than owning a car. Assuming 5 workdays a week and 2 rides per day then that is 40 rides a month on average which could be anywhere from $360 to $480 a month.

You can get a lease on something like a Toyota Corolla with no money down and ~$250 per month. That plus gas plus maybe having to pay for a parking space would probably break even, if not save a little money. Not to mention any rides that aren't part of the commute.

Inexpensive leases often come with limits on mileage that make the cars more expensive to lease if you drive over the limit.

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

#273

Post by pathseeker » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #95

Glad they're down, and hope the whole "gig economy" burns down too. Where gig economy = padding the loss of decent jobs by replacing the bottom end with desperate deals where "non employed" employees, without regular salary, benefits, company provided work tools, etc., make a pittance, while the organizing company gets a cut from millions of transactions. In some cases, no jobs is better than subsistence/dead-end/exp…

>Where gig economy = padding the loss of decent jobs by replacing the bottom end with desperate deals where "non employed" employees, without regular salary, benefits, company provided work tools, etc., make a pittance, while the organizing company gets a cut from millions of transactions.

If you think that's bad, wait until you find out about the small business economy. Millions and millions of people run small businesses that end up losing money over the whole year and they have to pay for their own healthcare.

I can't wait until we legislate away these stupid people who currently have the autonomy to act as independent businesses.

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

#274

Post by xster » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:54 PM UTC

core-questions wrote: post #255

xster wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is what worries me about the "mainstream" debate that might be incorrectly framing the whole problem altogether. Here, the rise of the gig economy came from automation. Not in the caricature sense that there are robot automatons that serve your plates in a restaurant, but in a sense that scalable automated processes replaced human dispatchers that answers your phone calls at the taxi companies and radios…

> more and more of this planet's 'productivity' is concentrating more and more in the hands of those who produce the AI automations. Sometimes I think folks who think like this really need to get outside more. Yes, a lot of things are being automated, but (a) consider the janky quality of automation, because it's really not mature yet even in purely-software environments where everything can be controlled, and (b) co…

> Sometimes I think folks who think like this really need to get outside more. Yes, a lot of things are being automated, but (a) consider the janky quality of automation, because it's really not mature yet even in purely-software environments where everything can be controlled, and (b) consider the raw cost of doing it vs. the productivity savings and side effects. It's just not worth it for a lot of things and won't be until we have general-purpose AI and general-purpose robotic workers that can take on human-scale jobs. Even then, it might still be cheaper to get actual people in a lot of cases.

I think that's the general mental mismatch that people have when thinking there's a 1:1 match between the present human job and the future 'robot job'.

Cashiers is the most common job in America and the biggest job loss to automation in the coming years. But it's not some Boston Dynamics humanoid fumbling your quarters around. Nor does it have anything to do with general-intelligence AI. It's simply the task specific orange forklift bots in Amazon warehouses that's wiping out American retail because with that bot, stuff on Amazon is a bit cheaper than in malls.

> But even if so: as someone who implements something you might call automation, like most here, I have to ask: why is it exactly that I should owe a massive amount of my economic output to those who aren't outputting anything? At what point do I simply say "fuck it" and stop working too, because some ridiculous percentage of my income has to be applied towards feeding those who won't/can't/don't do anything productive?

I think that's the core question. Why are you giving away your hard earned money to feeding your child? There is no GDP output from the child.

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

#275

Post by pathseeker » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:56 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.

>Law enforcement? Buy your own gun and defend yourself. Firefighters? Buy your own water hose. Exploitive employers? Grow your own backbone.

Those first two aren't similar because I don't volunteer to have crime committed against me or for my house to burn down. People voluntarily drive for Uber.

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

#276

Post by ilaksh » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:56 PM UTC

xster wrote: post #261

ilaksh wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is to replace the monopoly companies with public decentralized protocols that will enable a large shared network of customers to be serviced by a competing field of companies that plug into it.

That's still a classic Sanders vs Yang mentality to the problem. I'm not saying that the public forcing more competition isn't good, but it's orthogonal. If we broke Uber into 1000 Uberlets, it still doesn't change that their only path out is still to be first in replacing all drivers with AI. As pro union, pro minimum wage, pro health benefit, pro 3 day weekend as I am, taxi driver jobs are still not coming back. Th…

There are a few decades between then and now. In 2050 your job will be automated also.

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

#277

Post by georgeecollins » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:57 PM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #237

bsder wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Expense was never really an issue for me. My issue was always summoning the taxi . I was generally operating in secondary markets like Las Vegas off-strip, San Diego, or Pittsburgh. You couldn't schedule your trip to the airport because you never knew when the stupid taxi would show up. While I hate many things about Uber/Lyft/ridesharing, they changed the customer service expectation of the whole field.…

You have to realize how small the group of people is who can regularly afford to hire other people to perform services for them (which is what a taxi is). You're in that group, so the problem for you is convenience of hailing. But most people just can't afford to hire others to perform services for them on a regular basis. And that will never change, since it's inherent to the distribution of incomes in the populatio…

I think what the poster is saying is that there are places and times when you used to hire a limo or rent a car, because Taxi service is unpredictable. A lot of those cases can be replaced with Lyft / Uber. I know there are business trips where I used to rent a car and now use Lyft / Uber. I think Uber is replacing a lot of car rental for business travelers.

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

#278

Post by dougmwne » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #135

dougmwne wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using Edmunds' True Cost to Own calculator, A 2014 Honda Civic would cost about 5k per year or $416/Mo. If you don't get free parking at work or home or if you have to pay tolls, that cost could increase significantly. A parking spot at a condo could rent for $200-$400/Mo. Parking downtown could be $12-$20 per day. That daily Uber ride sounds like a deal.

> That daily Uber ride sounds like a deal. ... for someone living in a bubble completely disconnected from the planet Earth, where they think that a $400/mo parking spot is 'normal'. Sure, there's a few million people like you out there. Not enough to make Uber break even, though.

But we're talking about Chicago and this is the very center of normal. There are in fact millions of people who work in the central business districts of the world's most expensive cities. Uber has 75 million riders. If they could actually convince some fraction of those millions of high income urbanites to only use Uber for their transit needs that would yield a disproportionate share of their revenue.

It's great that you get free parking, but have you considered that you're living in a bubble too? 6 out of 7 people globally don't even own cars!

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

#279

Post by Areading314 » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 9:58 PM UTC

colinmhayes wrote: post #270

xyzzyz wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know that in most places where cab are operating, you could order a cab to pick you up at your house by calling a cab company and talking to the operator? Flagging down a cab as it drives by is a New York City thing.

That system was incredibly awful.I don't believe there is a single person who used that system and was happy with it.

Right. Typical experience would be, call number, if you're lucky, someone picks up. If you're lucky, they can understand enough for you to order a cab. And then, if you're lucky the cab will actually wait for you rather than pick up some other random fare instead

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

#280

Post by vkou » Thu, Aug 08, 2019, 10:00 PM UTC

dougmwne wrote: post #278

vkou wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That daily Uber ride sounds like a deal. ... for someone living in a bubble completely disconnected from the planet Earth, where they think that a $400/mo parking spot is 'normal'. Sure, there's a few million people like you out there. Not enough to make Uber break even, though.

But we're talking about Chicago and this is the very center of normal. There are in fact millions of people who work in the central business districts of the world's most expensive cities. Uber has 75 million riders. If they could actually convince some fraction of those millions of high income urbanites to only use Uber for their transit needs that would yield a disproportionate share of their revenue. It's great th…

I don't have free parking, I pay $150/month for it.

But I'm also a wealthy techie who happens to live within spitting distance of a booming downtown. 90% of the people living in my metro area (Seattle) do not pay $150/month for parking (And I'd wager that 99.9% do not pay $400/month for parking).

... And most of those people have commutes of >4 miles. The problem with taxis is that you pay by the mile. You'd be an idiot to drive yourself to work, if you live 2 miles from work, and have to pay through the nose for parking. You'd be an idiot not to drive yourself to work, if you live 15 miles from work, your bus system sucks, and your parking is cheap or free. [1]

Doing 15 miles/day in a taxi costs nearly 3x that of doing 5 miles/day in a taxi. Doing 15 miles/day in a car is pocket change, compared to doing 5 miles/day in a car (Or 0 miles/day). Most of your costs with a car are fixed. Most of your costs with a taxi are distance-based.

[1] And if we're going to get into a discussion about how the world should value the cost of parking spaces, I will happily point out that what we should have is good bus services, not private chauffeurs.