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I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

salon.com

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Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#41

Post by jarek »

no_future wrote: post #39
pyrophane wrote: post #19

Does Uber use Apple Maps for its drivers? I would assume so, if they are on iOS. That could certainly explain why several comments in this thread mention Uber's direction finding services getting worse. My rather subjective experience with Apple Maps is that they haven't caught up with Google yet.

I remember reading somewhere that they use the Foursquare API for something.

They might use Foursquare API for geolocating points of interest? Citymapper uses that and I assume it's for a reason (cheaper than Google?)

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#42

Post by colinbartlett »

ghshephard wrote: post #31

Regarding ETA times - They were really, really good on the Peninsula in the bay area - over 50 or so rides, and ETA of 5-15 minutes would usually be within 2 minutes of the correct time. Here in Dubai - they are ludicrously incorrect. I'll see a "8 minute ETA" that turns out to be 35 minutes, more often than not. This seems to be a very solvable problem. During certain hours, traffic is very slow. I've only been here…

I gave up on Uber in Dubai. It seems like the maps aren't accurate enough there - or the roads are under too much constant construction. Because it would take drivers 20 minutes to find me.

After presenting my complaints, Uber gave me a nice credit for my troubles and confirmed it was a difficult operating environment due to local conditions.

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#43

Post by ytNumbers »

roarktoohey wrote: post #38

"Also, considering the company’s huge profits, Uber owes it to the little guys doing their driving to provide much better software..." Is it typical for reporters to confuse profits with revenue? None of the decks I've seen show profits, I've always assumed that my rides are subsidized by VC money.

With their current gross revenue growth rates, some are speculating that in a couple of years their annual net profits will be more than $1 billion dollars.

http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-revenue-2014-11

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#44

Post by kalleboo »

aetherson wrote: post #25
jess23 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also seen the GPS estimates degrade over time -- which begs the question: shouldn't those estimate be improving over time, unless something shady is going on?

I would guess that GPS experiences like the article mentions are either driver app errors or scaling problems. That is, it sounds like the server is calculating the ETA of the driver based on a stale location. The location would be stale either because the driver app is not updating it correctly or because even when it is updating location correctly, the server is (sometimes) using an older location, probably due to…

I've seen my iPhone GPS get "stuck" in one place (sometimes in the wrong country!) a couple times since iOS 8. Once it lasted for hours. It seems it's not smart enough to say "well this location is a day old and I've changed tower locations 10 times, maybe it's not valid anymore".

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#45

Post by lockes5hadow »

aetherson wrote: post #25
jess23 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have also seen the GPS estimates degrade over time -- which begs the question: shouldn't those estimate be improving over time, unless something shady is going on?

I would guess that GPS experiences like the article mentions are either driver app errors or scaling problems. That is, it sounds like the server is calculating the ETA of the driver based on a stale location. The location would be stale either because the driver app is not updating it correctly or because even when it is updating location correctly, the server is (sometimes) using an older location, probably due to…

Why can't they just serve the client's location to the driver's device and then have the drivers device handle the estimate?

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#46

Post by frostmatthew »

roarktoohey wrote: post #38

"Also, considering the company’s huge profits, Uber owes it to the little guys doing their driving to provide much better software..." Is it typical for reporters to confuse profits with revenue? None of the decks I've seen show profits, I've always assumed that my rides are subsidized by VC money.

> Is it typical for reporters to confuse profits with revenue?

The author isn't a reporter (or, at the very least, she's new to it). Claire Callahan Goodman is a Bay Area native from a large family, whose careers have included Classical Musician, Software Engineer and Mom.[1]

[1] http://www.salon.com/writer/claire_callahan_goodman/

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#47

Post by jarek »

lockes5hadow wrote: post #45
aetherson wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess that GPS experiences like the article mentions are either driver app errors or scaling problems. That is, it sounds like the server is calculating the ETA of the driver based on a stale location. The location would be stale either because the driver app is not updating it correctly or because even when it is updating location correctly, the server is (sometimes) using an older location, probably due to…

Why can't they just serve the client's location to the driver's device and then have the drivers device handle the estimate?

That would lose scale-dependent ways to improve estimates like current traffic data from other cars, historical traffic and trip-time records, etc

Also won't help with stale GPS location on the phone (which anecdotally has been happening on my N5 more since upgrade to L as well)

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#48

Post by frostmatthew »

ytNumbers wrote: post #43
roarktoohey wrote: post #38

"Also, considering the company’s huge profits, Uber owes it to the little guys doing their driving to provide much better software..." Is it typical for reporters to confuse profits with revenue? None of the decks I've seen show profits, I've always assumed that my rides are subsidized by VC money.

With their current gross revenue growth rates, some are speculating that in a couple of years their annual net profits will be more than $1 billion dollars. http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-revenue-2014-11

> their annual net profits will be more than $1 billion dollars.

Where do you see that from the article you linked? It says So $10 billion of gross revenue would equate to $2 billion of net revenue. To have profits of over $1B on $2B of revenue would mean a profit margin of over 50%!

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#49

Post by aetherson »

dnautics wrote: post #27

I'm not sure how her back to back drives add up to only $10/hr. I drive Uber/Lyft in San Diego, routinely don't get back-to-back rides and have some long stretches of downtime, and usually make $1000 on a 50 hour on-call week (~30h of actual drive time). So that's about $20/hour. If you minus gas (~150/wk) that's a little bit less; I drive a honda insight, which gets slightly worse gas mileage than the prius, and the…

Yeah, $10/hour sounds strangely low. Perhaps she's getting a more-frequent dose of the GPS issues than most, or something else, but I think we can take it as given that the median UberX driver -- while not making the $30+/hour that Uber would like you to imagine -- is making comfortably north of $10/hour. If they weren't, they simply wouldn't still be driving for Uber.

Re: I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver

#50

Post by bane »

dnautics wrote: post #27

I'm not sure how her back to back drives add up to only $10/hr. I drive Uber/Lyft in San Diego, routinely don't get back-to-back rides and have some long stretches of downtime, and usually make $1000 on a 50 hour on-call week (~30h of actual drive time). So that's about $20/hour. If you minus gas (~150/wk) that's a little bit less; I drive a honda insight, which gets slightly worse gas mileage than the prius, and the…

> and usually make $1000 on a 50 hour on-call week (~30h of actual drive time). So that's about $20/hour.

Now subtract car payments, insurance, wear and tear, etc.

Here's an example of how this breaks down:

You work 215 hours per month on average (50 * 4.3 weeks) and make $4,300 revenue during that time (or $51,600/year).

- Subtract self-employment tax 15.3% - ~$7900

- Taxable income 37,650 - ~$5,300 in taxes so subtract that

- You put about 70k miles per year on your car assuming an average speed of about 45mph (30 hours * 45mph * 4.3 weeks * 12) - IRS says that's $.56 per mile - ~$39k or basically your entire car + a bit more in one year. This includes the cost of gas.

- The Prius is about a $23k car, financed completely at 3% for 5 years brings you payments to about $400/mo or about $4,800/year

So 51,600 - 7,900 - 5,300 - 39,000 - 4,800 = -5,400 ouch

Most of your cost is in car wear and tear, so let's waive a magic wand and make that go away, it's a Toyota after all. But we can't get rid of gas costs, so let's substitute that in.

A prius gets about 51mpg in the city. It looks like I can get gas for about $2.80/gal in San Diego right now. You'll need about 1.4k gallons per year. Assuming gas prices stay the same, about $3.8k per year in gas. edit I see I'm estimating about half the gas pricing you are, so just double my figure here.

So 51,600 - 7,900 - 5,300 - 4,800 - 3,800 = $29,800 in take home pay

edit or $26k take home when using your gas figures which makes it an even $10/hr

At your self described work hours of 50hr/wk or 2600hr/year, that's $11.50/hr

I assume you wash your car and keep it clean because of passengers, so subtract that out also. I'm going to guess that your take-home pay ends up at around $10/hr if we assume your car takes no wear and tear of any sort driving 70,000 miles a year.

edit I'm not even counting commercial car insurance, which I'm sure you have, or state taxes, inspections, licensing costs, etc. or any other expenses.

edit Taxi insurance appears to run around $7-10k per year.

edit so let's use the new gas figures, you end up with about $21k take home when you subtract $7k of taxi insurance. Or about $8/hr.

Once you deduct state taxes, property taxes etc. I'm sure there's other expenses I'm missing, I have a feeling your take home pay is about on par with California minimum wage.

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