News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Uber drivers say rideshare surge pricing backfired on New Year’s Eve. Parent comment

Re:Uber drivers say rideshare surge pricing backfired on New... by untog on Friday January 02, 2015 @04:29PM (#8828659)
It probably speaks (at least partially) to the culture at Uber - that data and algorithms rule all. For the most part that's correct, but things often get unpredictable when you involve humans - no matter how fair surge pricing is when looking at the data, if people feel like it is unfair, they'll object.

Right now I don't think Uber does a good job at, for want of a less fluffy term, "feeling sentiment". They're extremely good at parsing past data and extracting conclusions, but that's about it.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Uber drivers say rideshare surge pricing backfired on New... by krapp on Friday January 02, 2015 @04:40PM (#8828711)
If people felt Uber's price was too high, regardless of the calculus, I'd put the blame for that on Uber. People had other more affordable options available and they used them, rather than deal with Uber's surge rate. That's not unpredictable, that actually quite rational.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Uber drivers say rideshare surge pricing backfired on New... by kenzokai on Friday January 02, 2015 @04:37PM (#8828696)
> that data and algorithms rule all

Well actually they don't because they overrode the algorithm instead of letting it do its job.

The culture at Uber is actually "greed".

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Uber drivers say rideshare surge pricing backfired on New... by untog on Friday January 02, 2015 @04:41PM (#8828712)
Well, that's what we think they did. We don't know that. But even still, if it were true it does just highlight that when they're not relying on existing data they really don't have good instincts.
[ Parent | on HN ]