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.
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.