The challenge from the company's perspective is that historically, people game the system and tragedy of commons scenarios can quickly become prevalent. For example, if you show high profit heat maps, you risk drivers flocking there and the balance of service reliability dropping elsewhere. So changes like showing drop-off locations or allowing more driver choice in the matching algorithm need to designed very carefully and tested extensively in pilot programs to avoid degenerate scenarios. Many changes are difficult to implement quickly when they affect multiple moving parts, e.g. the recent fuel surcharge. Driver payment is mind bogglingly complicated due to regulation differences in different places.
Ironically, another problem that insiders have been vocal about is the perception the Uber is bad at communicating with the public about positive changes in the platform.
I'm sure when Uber rolls out these new programs designed to make driver life better, people will find some way to criticize them, or it'll just not garner enough upvotes, because who cares about stories about companies listening to feedback for once? Not really sure what Uber can do about this, tbh.
It drives me crazy that when we talk about gig workers acting in their best interest, it's "gaming the system" but when companies like Uber operate (read: manipulates) a market in their best interests, it's just SOP.
> I'm sure when Uber rolls out these new programs designed to make driver life better, people will find some way to criticize them
This is essentially a captive market and Uber's best interests are often not aligned with that of the drivers, as you perfectly detail above. As long as that remains true, there is always going to be valid criticism against this kind of model.
Eg, if you aren't careful with heat maps, drivers flock to the busy area and then can't get enough fares and passengers elsewhere can't get drivers.
Maybe you disagree that they are actually trying but, at least according to this comment chain, everyone at uber agrees with you.
If they still insist on saying drivers are independant contractors, none of their whining about "tragedy of the commons" is anybody's business. Just provide information to market participants.
You're confusing things a bit. Uber itself doesn't "whine" about tragedy of the commons, the other stakeholders (drivers and riders) are the ones who do.
Also, for everyone going on about how Uber doesn't provide info upfront, and parroting the old drivers-should-be-employees clueless hot take, perhaps they missed this other recent article[0]:
> The company says the new feature provides drivers with more transparency. They [drivers] see more details of a prospective ride before accepting it, such as the fare and pick-up and drop-off locations, which is something drivers say they’ve been asking for. In the past, most drivers wouldn’t receive this information until after they accepted a ride.
So yes, Uber knows what drivers want and it wants to provide it to them, and it obviously has a vested interest in avoiding scenarios where drivers cannibalize themselves to death. What's not obvious to y'all outsiders is that Uber has to figure out all of the unspoken complexity and cleverness required to enable changes like this to be rolled out in a way that basically looks like what all the armchair analysts were saying it should have been done, without running into the previously known risks of rolling out such a thing. And even then, there's always some cherrypicky over-simplified scenario to bitch about (as the very article I linked to does).
Everyone who keeps making statements that "Uber wants drivers to be employees it can rip off" fundamentally do not understand what they are talking about. As an insider, I don't owe it to anyone to "argue" with them. I can just inform them that I've heard from many other insiders that they think independent contractor status is a good thing (i.e. McDonalds FTE already exists and more options on top of that are always a good thing), that the implementation still has room for improvement, and that they want to make it better.
[0] https://themarkup.org/working-for-an-algorithm/2022/03/01/se...
How's one perceived if high earner hires professional help to take advantage of every loop hole in the system and how's one perceived if they take advantage of a loop hole in the system with say food stamps. Neither is breaking the law.
I might be poorer in the inner city. But my rides are going to be a shorter distance and there are more people.
The solution for the $5, 45min ride that comes out of the driver's pocket is to guarantee the trip price covers a profit for the driver and let the rider choose if it's worth it. But that would mean fewer trips and lower guaranteed profit for Uber.
Anything else is abuse and a lot of rationalizations to put your mind at ease.
And if you think I'm wrong, tell me you'd be OK being treated like this as a customer: never knowing what the price will be and not being able to cancel without being taxed or punished. Wait, that's more or less the taxi industry that Uber is ostensibly fixing by turning the tables and putting the drivers and the wrong end of the shit stick. So what was wrong in the past is ok now because you work for the company who affords your salary because of these practices?
IMHO, a $5, 45 min trip should just never happen. Algos should price that properly and drivers should get more transparency so they can choose to not accept bad terms before it ever becomes about cancelations.
And that should be after Uber's cut, not before.
We don't need to subsidize car travel any more than it already is, especially by tricking vulnerable workers to slowly trade their asset value for cash.
I'm glad you wrote this comment, but I have a slightly different solution: Uber should just subsidize the ride. Uber brings in billions of dollars in revenue – not every trip needs to be profitable for them. (Of course, not without limits; if a driver is regularly unprofitable, Uber should stop offering them trips or fire them.)
I've certainly never got such a fantastic deal as a rider.
The challenge from the company's perspective is that they operate under and sell the delusion that app magic dust makes considerations about which neighborhoods you work in and which neighborhoods you don't disappear into smoke. This isn't a tragedy of the commons, it's a bunch of people who are working hard trying to maximize their efficiency. Uber tries to thwart them through deception and punishment.
Taxis didn't work unprofitable neighborhoods, and avoided dangerous ones. It wasn't personal.
If you really want to solve the problem, you make all the drivers employees, and guarantee their hourly income when they work. Then you send them out as inefficiently as you want, but you pay for that inefficiency.
Are you expecting us to pat Uber on the back for managing to solve the impossibly difficult problem of actually paying their workers, as if that's a unique problem no other company has ever had to solve? Come on...
If you didn't want to handle the regulatory hassle of paying people in 50 countries, you didn't have to expand to 50 countries. You chose to expand to more locations, and that means you get to deal with the consequences of being in those locations.
Yes, it's complicated to build infrastructure to dispatch and pay your workers. But, come on, as middlemen, that is literally your only job. You don't even have to do the driving part!
We couldn't set our own rates. We couldn't make our own decisions about the rides we were willing to take. We didn't have our own brand. And there was no way for customers to request us specifically, even if they preferred to be driven by us. This was all by design. Uber drivers are treated as an interchangeable commodity, not as brands.
I couldn't even wait for pings within the warmth of my own home without getting a letter graded report for not having my phone in my cradle. And it's not just the cradle that was a factor. If you drove too "aggressively", or if you drove too fast, their idiotic AI would scold you (and before someone says it, yes, that functionality is turned off now, but know that it was only turned off around the time that Uber was trying to make the argument in court that Uber drivers were not employees. Also note that even thought that particular functionality is turned off, Uber still tries to micromanage drivers in many other ways, even to this day).
This isn't to say that app creators and youtubers don't have their own set of problems with the app store and youtube, they certainly do. But compared to Uber drivers, they still have a thousand times more freedom than Uber drivers.
This gave the entire industry a bad reputation for not showing up. I know when I drove airport shuttles we often rescued people who had tried to get a taxi.
Precommitting to an SLA can earn more customers’ trust, but it only works when every driver is confident about coming out ahead on average. $5 was too low for that job.
Employees of a company or even contractors, generally don’t get to do this.
I'm merely pointing out the irony of people on a forum full of programmers talking about Uber as if changes to complex systems with live SLOs can magically be done with a snap of fingers.
For instance, collecting a "$1 safe ride fee" per passenger was a very big fuck you to the drivers. We didn't see a penny of that fee. And it wasn't even counted in the calculation of our commission structure, which they bragged about constantly.
The same goes with many of the other payments it collected from passengers. Eventually, after Uber lost a court case, Uber made every driver sign an agreement that the commission structure had nothing to do with the payments given by passengers.
I'll acknowledge that there was a wide perception of leadership not giving two fucks under Travis. I heard many people internally were unhappy about many things, hence him being ousted.
Anyways, just to give some context: When I talk about efforts to improve things for drivers, I'm talking about things I've heard about very recently (like within the last six months). Many aren't live yet.
Prior to it, I'd say other aspects received a lot more attention, for example the safety center on the rider app was a big big focus at one point.
The shift of focus to drivers only really became visible to me within the last year or so. My two cents is this focus is happening as part of the effort to attract drivers back after their exodus due to the pandemic.
Regardless of the motivation, I'm glad the company is at least trying to listen to drivers. Cynicism aside, I personally think drivers should be treated well, period.
Well yes, that's what every business does. Ultimately that's the fundamental problem. Uber wants employees that act in the business' best interest but does not want the regulatory burden that comes with it.
You’ve a ride request from “Person Y”
Pickup is “M km” from your current location.
Estimated ride distance is “N km”
Projected/min/approx cost for ride is “$ D” for total “N+M km”.
Do you accept or reject? You’ll not be penalised for any choice!
How the hell is this difficult and relates to all the jargon gymnastics you’ve done in your comment, other than just to keep the driver in the dark and without any kind of choice or freedom!
What's the point if increasing fares if those aren't being used to incentivize drivers to take those routes?
It's not a real question. It's obviously to gouge the customer.
It's up to Uber to solve its problems and deliver, and be responsible in the community. You have all the power and resources.
I don't see why Uber can't show the pick up location and drop off location before choosing to accept the job.
That is the fundamental of being an independent contractor. You have to know what the job is.
From your comment, now I know why Uber will never solve this problem. Uber employees don't want to solve it, basically.
Awful company and people working for it that could work elsewhere are awful people.
Isn’t that the entire purpose of the market based, algorithmically generated pricing?
If a certain area gets congested, the prices will go down and the rates should equalize based on prices.
This is laughable. The reality is that no one at Uber gives a two cents about "making it better for drivers" because of the sweet sweet paychecks that they are getting by screwing those drivers ( and since most of drivers look like the taxi drivers of NYC no one really gives two cents that they are being screwed).
Fish rots from the head. Uber has a rotten CEO. If he could sell his mother into slavery for a buck he would. Rotten CEOs attract other rotten people. Costco demonstrated that it is possible to even compete with the bottom feeder like Walmart without screwing people who work there.
At least Travis did not pretend like Dara does. Watching SV view Dara as a Jesus walking on water is wild.
Gaming the system, cancellations, poor distribution of drivers, etc seem like attempts to resolve the impacts of the problem, not the problem itself.
Commuters are up in arms over the increasing number of cancellations on app-based services such as Ola and Uber. More often than not drivers, after accepting a ride, call up the passenger to ask about his or her destination before cancelling. They are unwilling to come to certain destinations and are not ready to pick up passengers in residential areas located away from main roads, said one regular user of Ola and Uber.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/bengaluru-com...
Note that drivers wouldn't cancel profitable rides, only rides that don't make them or cause them to lose money. I'm not sure why anyone has a problem with this.
If you wanted a cab to Brooklyn from Manhattan 20+ years ago, you had to get in the back of the car before telling the driver where you wanted to go. Otherwise the driver would just drive off without you. The ride was definitely profitable, but they knew they'd pick up another Manhattan ride on the next block and so on - a more profitable option that to risk not having a fare back from Brooklyn. Many drivers wised up and wouldn't let you into the cab until you told them where you were going. It was a major PitA.
There must be reason that this condition has been put into place.
They’d ask you, “where you going?”, before you got in the cab and drive off if they didn’t like the destination. Experienced riders would ignore the cabbie, enter the cab, and then explain the destination. Then when the cabbie argues with you, you’d cuss them out and tell them to drive before you call the taxi commission to get their medallion revoked.
While many of us do miss the fun of those arguments, not having to deal with that is one big plus that Uber blessed the world.
It's because it's a democracy. That's the reason. And the majority of people don't like the idea of potentially being stranded in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. Now, I can appreciate that reason. And I totally understand it myself. And I also understand that drivers can be shit.
But as a former Uber driver myself (not in India, but in California), please try understand it from my perspective as well. Uber doesn't pay for elevation changes. If your car gets damaged on a windy rocky dirt road, or on a road with no lighting whatsoever (Santa Cruz hills, I'm talking to you). Uber won't pay for damages or loss of income. Or if Uber calls you to a neighborhood where drivers get carjacked and pistol-whipped, as a driver, you're the one who has to bear most of those consequences, not Uber (we're not cops, we don't get paid leave, workers comp, or even medical benefits). The same goes if you get called to an area notorious for handing out traffic tickets or parking tickets. Uber pays for none of that, but it will penalize you for refusing the ride (and in San Francisco, it took them almost 10 years from finally blacklisting Market St for pickups, the part that's downtown).
And people can be shit. They'll call you just for getting down a windy dirt road that they don't want to walk down themselves because it's too steep. Or they'll call you just to dump their semi-conscious intoxicated friend into your car. I could tell you a thousand stories.
But my point is, the situation is more nuanced than you think.
You’re probably right. Not even a decade ago in New York I had to call cabs for my Ivy-league educated, well-dressed black roommate because they would curiously blow past him.
It is about passenger safety. The article itself mentions that people are stranded late night and one driver after another refusing to pickup the rider. Think women, emergency,.. etc.
Then you go back to the taxi problem of there being no rides from or to predominantly black neighbourhoods.
Is it the same in Europe? Feels very American thing to me, I recently learnt that many shops don't show prices of products, like grocery, and gas stations also hide price when inconvenient. It's beyond my imagination to go to Lidl to buy a cake and learn at checkout how much it costs
Personally, under the circumstances when I take Uber, I don’t care about how much they charge and I tip the maximum amount allowed by our guidelines - 20%.
90% of the time when I take Uber, it’s for business travel and I’m getting reimbursed (consulting). The other 10% of the time I’m on vacation where I expect to spend stupidly or going into town from the burbs for “date night” and we don’t want to worry about parking or DUIs.
I live in a very car dependent metro area so I don’t have a clear picture of when most people use Uber for day to day use.
Well, I guess there was the couple of years we were spending $350/month on Uber for our son to get back and forth to work and go friends because it was cheaper than car+insurance.
Two clear details that should affect pricing.
In system I am describing the driver could make offer after the rider has provided pick-up location, the drop location and how much mass or passengers they want to move. They could include in offer terms like cancelation fees, per kilometer cost, per time cost. Or just lump sum offer. And potential penalty fees if the rider doesn't provide all information, or miss represents something. Also could be included any fees such as cleanup.
I see no reason why Uber should have anything to say about how the drivers price their service. And it is up to rider to either accept these terms, wait for better terms or use alternative transport such as walking.
1. What if I want to be picked up from or go to a “bad neighborhood” - ie a “neighborhood with too many Black people that don’t tip well”? Uber drivers would cancel just like taxi drivers use to refuse to service the area.
2. That’s way too complicated compared to “choose my pick up spot and choose my destination “.
Two other comments.
Before the woke police downvote me or flag me for being racist because of the first comment, I am Black.
If drivers are complaining about the distance/time/cost, Uber has enough people on the road to tell drivers how long a trip will probably take based on the time it will take to get to the pick up spot, traffic patterns, and the time it will take to get to the destination. But telling them those two spots will automatically make it more expensive for minorities to get an Uber. The driver shouldn’t care where they are going, just how long will it take them to make the trip. The algorithm will price the rides based on supply and demand.
I do feel bad when a driver has to come way up north to pick me up and take me to the airport on the other side of town. I schedule my rides in advance so they know going in before they accept.
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/23/...
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-metro-cabbies-fines-...
2. Contracts are inherently complicated. In the end you probably only need to check the total price or ask for such offer.
Drivers absolutely care where they are going. And have all the rights to set price accordingly risk on their lives and livelihoods they perceive. After all there should be risk premium for going to areas where they might have to risk their vehicles or lives.
Isn’t that the same thing people said about segregation and Jim Crow laws? Before you think that is ancient history. My still living parents grew up in the Jim Crow south.
I travel for business across the US as a consultant. I work for a company worth $1.6 trillion dollars last time I checked. My expense reimbursements can easily go to over two grand for a week trip. I’m glad I know I can just click a button to be guaranteed a ride in 2021, instead of the dealing with taxis the first time I went to NYC in 2012 for a vacation.
And to your second point. This is why engineers make horrible product designers.
Or they should make delivery of goods to remote place in Alaska for same price as between two highly interconnected hubs? Taking that distance between is the same...
If you want to add another variable - rider ratings - that’s fine. Judge people based on their individual behavior - shocking I know.
And despite all of the fear. The chance of a random Uber driver being harmed in a “bad neighborhood” are infinitesimal. Most of the reports of people being harmed on Uber rides was on the part of the driver directed at the passenger.
Everybody should be asking themselves where the line is when it comes to not being a profitable enough customer because, as wealth disparity increases, the odds of being on the wrong side of that line are going up for everyone in the bottom 50%.
> If you want to add another variable - rider ratings - that’s fine. Judge people based on their individual behavior - shocking I know.
Yes. Uber has all the info needed to obfuscate ride details to the point where they could reduce discriminatory biases and have drivers selecting rides based primarily on economics and rider reputation.
I’ve said it twice now. Give the drivers the information they need to know the cost of the trip - distance to pick up, distance to drop off, and the estimated time to get there. Let the algorithm decide how to appropriately charge based on supply and demand. I have no problem paying more to get from my house in the northern burbs to the airport in the south 60 miles and two hours away in traffic. I’m the epitome of the none price sensitive customer - I’m not paying for it. Either my company is paying for it or my company’s customer is paying for it.
When I am price sensitive on personal trips, I get an Uber to the closest train station that is much closer and less traffic.
> Unfortunately I think I'm in the minority with my belief that companies like Uber have a social obligation to serve economically depressed areas.
I disagree. The only responsibility that Uber has is to make a profit and let drivers use their own free will to decide whether it’s worth it. Uber shouldn’t even be responsible for benefits. If we as a society decide that everyone has the right to healthcare (I do), add a per ride government fee and let the government pay for it.
If you want affordable transportation, the government should either provide it themselves via mass transit or subsidize Uber rides for those who can’t afford it and if it’s more cost effective. That’s already happening in some places - via a “Universal Fund” tax added to each Uber ride.
If it isn’t obvious, I’m a pro capitalist, bleeding heart liberal big government pig. I should (or at least my company should) pay for the societal benefits of the ride share drivers.
- Have a "end my shift soon" button that can be used once every 24 hours that will only connect you with riders that get you closer to your home
- Allow drivers to define ~1-hour radius "work zones" where fares have to pay for the return trip, a la EWR to NYC taxis. This surcharge is fed into driver selection ranking.
- Pay for miles + time. I'm not sure how to structure it because Uber wants to show the fee to riders up-front and commit to it, pay the actual cost to drivers, but keep the contractor relationship. Maybe structure it as "fare insurance?" The idea is for both riders and drivers to get the price they expected, and for Uber, with its massive ride volume, to provide a good p95 experience on both sides.
It would alter the experience, probably for the better for the most part. The taxi drivers wouldn't be acting like a-holes on the roads since they wouldn't need to squeeze as much as miles in the workday. However, I'm sure that it would create a lot of unintended disruption too, that might be good and bad.
It might turn out that you can't find drivers for the job. AFAIK, this job is preferred by many people who need lots money fast or people who are between jobs, already having a job or people who wouldn't be able to get a proper job for one reason or another.
It can be tricky.
Taxi drivers have the exact same rule. Taxi drivers aren’t allowed to reject rides once you’re inside.
> "It can’t be allowed otherwise what’s the point if drivers can pick and choose their rides?"
The point would be that the driver chooses to do work which is profitable to them and ignore work which is not. Isn't that what contractors would do with work contracts?
The fact that normal people drive other normal people around, and Uber the company extracts enough money from being the middleman in this to fund lobbying against the driver's interests, and does so, is so twisted.
The contractor working on my house has a general impression of the work he must do. But the specifics are far from ironed out.
They can elect to turn the app off whenever they want. When they want to drive then don’t have a choice. This is more flexible than taxi drivers who lease their taxi at the beginning of their shift so they start owing money to the taxi company. And they still can’t choose where to go if their customer tells them.
Having a system that is profitable only for the driver and a miserable experience for the customer is a terrible system. It won’t work. It has to be a fair compromise. Pay the driver a fair rate and have the customer choose where to go.
The issues with Uber is that they are trying to have it both ways. They want employees without paying for employees.
> “I find out that it’s going to take me 45 minutes to go five miles, and I’m going to get about $5 for the ride. My only choice then is to either basically do volunteer work by accepting the ride, or canceling it. And we are disciplined, and threatened with being terminated, if we cancel it.
>“So don’t call me an independent contractor, because that’s not what we are.”
As a former Uber/Lyft driver I exaggerate when I say I've read a million words Gig jobs, but the above is a good summary of the problem. You're not shown in advance what the ride is and then you're penalized for cancelling it. One day you can't log in anymore but they won't say why, but you know from talking to other drivers that you get "fired" after cancelling too many rides.
There are other problems, such as not being compensated when gas prices go through the roof, but there is a hidden problem that many drivers don't take into account: Every mile on your car decreases it's value and if you do the calculations you might find out you're taking equity out of your car and putting it in your pocket, so you're not making money and you might be selling your car bit by bit for pennies on the dollar.