Why do these articles always reach the front page? Does hackernews hate Uber that badly? Or perhaps its profitable for news articles to always rag on them? Why is it profitable? Does everyone want to see them fail? They're no worse than your run of the mill tech company, so I suspect something odd is going on. I dislike corporations in general and want to see them play fair, but Uber changed the way I live life, and…
Uber has changed your life for the better, by taking advantage of thousands of other people. Worrying about going back to the taxi Stone Age is actually worry about making things fair for those people.
The salon source linked in the article has a bit more (and slightly different?) detailed information, including a link to the tool developed to track mileage https://www.salon.com/2020/08/20/programmers-say-uber-eats-i... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ubercheats/pkdblhe...
also, the extension author is on twitter if you have questions https://nitter.net/ArminSamii/status/1295857106080456706
Why do these articles always reach the front page? Does hackernews hate Uber that badly? Or perhaps its profitable for news articles to always rag on them? Why is it profitable? Does everyone want to see them fail? They're no worse than your run of the mill tech company, so I suspect something odd is going on. I dislike corporations in general and want to see them play fair, but Uber changed the way I live life, and…
If frontpage is the indicator (which isn't nearly close to perfect), what I gathered all these years is that HN hates most of big tech companies, of not all.
I've never felt like the community hates the big tech companies... most of us are trying to grow something up to be big one day... BUT it is controversial when we see bad behavior, or potentially bad behavior. The discussions here really become useful in forming my own opinions.
Middlemen are always going to try to increase their take on both sides. It is the only way they can grow the profitability of their business because they can't add more value, they can only subtract.
Uber is making it harder and harder to get on board with the idea that it's not an employer. Leveling out people's pay over multiple trips or retroactively adjusting the reward per job sure sounds like an employer having very strong control over the work conditions and compensation. And this almost brings back echoes of Doordash (?) when it was caught taking drivers' tips so that their pay was reduced to the minimum…
> It is a rare company that spends money and resources on verifying from their users' point of view that they're being delivered what was promised -- unless that company actively cares about the user.
I have gotten a check from the CA Treasurer on a few occasions because I didn’t check some box and take a tax deduction that I was entitled to. Not a company, and certainly if I underpaid the state would come after me to be made whole. But some organizations do work both ways.
Hard to know what to make of this without seeing the full data. On 21% of trips, Uber undercounts the miles. What about the other 79%? Spot on, or is there over counting?
Most spot on (within 0.5 mi), some overpayments. Overpayments are much less frequent than underpayments, and regardless: when someone accepts a trip, who knows if they did it because they thought "that amount sounds fair" or thought "that amount given the distance shown sounds fair." The only fair thing for Uber to do here is to rectify all underpayments, and let the overpayments stand. Further: just because Uber cou…
Can you share one route uber underpaid by big margin?
For the second part I agree, but without seeing outlier, maybe in some cases google couldn’t find the best route, compared to the app.
PS: all this stats used Google
Maps shortest path or best path?
Uber is making it harder and harder to get on board with the idea that it's not an employer. Leveling out people's pay over multiple trips or retroactively adjusting the reward per job sure sounds like an employer having very strong control over the work conditions and compensation. And this almost brings back echoes of Doordash (?) when it was caught taking drivers' tips so that their pay was reduced to the minimum…
> It's like Uber are trying to shoot themselves in the foot with all the cost squeezing and profit seeking at the same time they're in a fundamental fight defining what they are. I don't think they have a choice. UberEats is fundamentally unprofitable. If it was run profitably, the high(er) prices would drive a large portion of their customers away and into the arms of other "startups" willing to run at a loss or tow…
I can imagine a UberChef where an Uber driver gets an order, and drives a freelance Chef to a freelance kitchen where the chef cooks the food (groceries provided by an uber shopper who can also get one-off ingredients from specialty stores), the chef cooks the food to order (steak, medium rare, or seafood boil for a party of 2, etc) - and then uber driver delivers the food.
> It's like Uber are trying to shoot themselves in the foot with all the cost squeezing and profit seeking at the same time they're in a fundamental fight defining what they are. I don't think they have a choice. UberEats is fundamentally unprofitable. If it was run profitably, the high(er) prices would drive a large portion of their customers away and into the arms of other "startups" willing to run at a loss or tow…
I don't understand why an investor would fund unprofitable Uber 2.0. Without a massive differentiator there is no reason to believe their trajectory would be any different from Uber's - except with increased capital requirements from being the third(fourth?) mover. Uber's burned 10s of billions in the hopes of becoming a few hundred billion dollar company. Would Uber 2.0 need to burn hundreds of billions in the hope…
Uber 2.0 would probably make the same pitch Uber did— that all of this is temporary moat-building as we prepare for a glorious self driving future.
So I think the difficulty is less around investors being more savvy to the economics of ride sharing and delivery services, but that they're more savvy to the realities of how far off those technologies are. And that the entrenched firms like Waymo will be far, far better positioned to offer an autonomous taxi service on day 1 than some plucky startup will be.
Middlemen are always going to try to increase their take on both sides. It is the only way they can grow the profitability of their business because they can't add more value, they can only subtract.
Agree with the part about profitability, but middlemen can definitely add value.
I’d say that Uber’s wide reach is valuable, the fact that they likely exist in the city you’re visiting, the fact that they likely have enough cars to pick you up in under 5 minutes. These are valuable things that don’t come from individual drivers or small taxi companies, but rather from big aggregators.
Uber is making it harder and harder to get on board with the idea that it's not an employer. Leveling out people's pay over multiple trips or retroactively adjusting the reward per job sure sounds like an employer having very strong control over the work conditions and compensation. And this almost brings back echoes of Doordash (?) when it was caught taking drivers' tips so that their pay was reduced to the minimum…
The biggest reason I would say that the drivers are not independent contractors is that they are not allowed to set their own rates.
Uber's argument that they are not employees is based on the concept that they only a platform facilitating a connection between drivers people who need rides or in this case deliveries. But if the contractors are truly separate entities, then Uber by controlling the cost of the ride/delivery, is fixing prices.