Two More Executives Are Leaving Uber, Drivers May Unionize (nytimes.com) 200
First the resignations. "The beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber," the company's former president told Recode on Sunday, announcing his resignation. "The departures add to the executive exodus from Uber this year," writes The New York Times. An anonymous reader quotes their report.
Brian McClendon, vice president of maps and business platform at Uber, also plans to leave at the end of the month... Raffi Krikorian, a well-regarded director in Uber's self-driving division, left the company last week, while Gary Marcus, who joined Uber in December after Uber acquired his company, left this month. Uber also asked for the resignation of Amit Singhal, a top engineer who failed to disclose a sexual harassment claim against him at his previous employer, Google, before joining Uber. And Ed Baker, another senior executive, left this month as well.
Jones left Uber after less than six months, though McClendon's departure is said to be more amicable. "Mr. McClendon, in a statement, said he was returning to his hometown, Lawrence, Kansas, after 30 years away. 'This fall's election and the current fiscal crisis in Kansas is driving me to more fully participate in our democracy -- and I want to do that in the place I call home."
In other news, the Teamsters labor union plans to start organizing Uber's drivers into a union, after a Washington judge rejected Uber's attempt to overturn a right-to-unionize ordinance passed by the city of Seattle.
Jones left Uber after less than six months, though McClendon's departure is said to be more amicable. "Mr. McClendon, in a statement, said he was returning to his hometown, Lawrence, Kansas, after 30 years away. 'This fall's election and the current fiscal crisis in Kansas is driving me to more fully participate in our democracy -- and I want to do that in the place I call home."
In other news, the Teamsters labor union plans to start organizing Uber's drivers into a union, after a Washington judge rejected Uber's attempt to overturn a right-to-unionize ordinance passed by the city of Seattle.
Failure is always an option (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Failure is always an option (Score:4, Informative)
I for one am glad to see the wheels starting fall off this libertarian corporate experiment. It's heartening to see signs of failure in an institution whose core principals are deeply entrenched in base human behaviours such as bullying, hypocrisy and total indifference to adverse impacts to others (including it's own people).
And/or you just hoped for someone to pull a Tyler Durden and "destroy something beautiful".
Some people just cannot recognize or accept progress...
I worked as I traveling consultant for 10 years, 80 to 100 flight segments per year, in major cities across the US, with the accompanying cab/uber rides to go with them, and I can unequivocally say that taxi/limo service before Uber was terrible. It was caused by cities artificially limiting supply/bullshit regulation/catering to special interests, all of which Uber/Lyft/etc need to continue to kill, for the good of all.
Re:Failure is always an option (Score:4, Informative)
Would you still make that argument if you had to pay the real cost of the Ubers you took? Probably around 3x what they charged you for every ride.
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Probably around 3x what they charged you for every ride.
Last year Uber had revenue of $5.5B and spent $8.5B, for a $3B loss. So there is no way they are subsidizing rides by 200% as you claim. Much of the losses were a result of their rivalry with Didi Chuxing, which is now resolved, and their harebrained project to develop their own SDCs, rather than just licensing the tech from Google or Tesla. They are likely subsidizing rides (to gain market share) by no more than 20-30% over market rates.
Re:Failure is always an option (Score:5, Informative)
You're ignoring the massive subsidation being done by the hoodwinked drivers. In South Africa the average Uber driver makes about R1400 per week. It is physically impossible in South Africa for the amount of driving you have to do to make that - to fuel and maintain a vehicle for less than R2000 per week. That's assuming the car was bought for cash.
Their workers are actually operating at a loss. And the company is getting away with it because badly educated (often barely literate) drivers don't realize the maintenance costs - especially since those tend to come in the form of lump sum expenses months down the line.
I don't have numbers for other countries but the odds of it being different elsewhere are somewhere between zero and fuckall.
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That's the theory. It doesn't work so well in practice.
Yes, "Ride-Sharing" is something like, "I'm going past the airport on my way to work every day, so I'll take on a passenger if they're convenient to where I live and drop them at the airport. It's not horribly out of my way and I make a few extra bucks. Where's the harm in that?"
However, Uber has become a taxi service. The vast majority of drivers drive/wait around until someone needs a ride from where they are to where they want to go and then they
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"Uber is an attempt to kill off taxi business all around the world, making drivers the new deplorables or rather slaves."
Taxis will be gone in twenty years, regardless. I'm no fan of Uber, but this is like worrying that buggy-whip manufacturers are going out of business.
Re:Failure is always an option (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxi services are terrible because it is hopelessly expensive to drive a vehicle point-to-point and the amount of money that the government allows them to charge is not enough to actually pay for repairs and improvements to the vehicles. Uber only "works" because:
The unionization threats are happening because a large enough percentage of the drivers are recognizing Uber for the complete scam that it is. By many estimates, the minimum price at which Uber will be profitable while providing the current level of service is about 4x their current prices. That makes taxis look downright cheap. Increased competition can't ever reduce the cost below a floor set by certain unavoidable costs for things like gasoline, brakes, etc. Well, I guess technically you could have a taxi service with no brakes, but I wouldn't recommend it.
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>There are plenty of people who haven't figured out how much money they're going to end up spending on vehicle maintenance as a result of all that extra driving.
The IRS mileage rate is supposed to be an average cost for operating a vehicle. It is 53.5 cents per mile. Uber pays about twice that per mile in San Francisco. So if you can go at 60 MPH you'll be making about 30 bucks an hour, which is not bad for unskilled labor.
Re:Failure is always an option (Score:5, Informative)
>There are plenty of people who haven't figured out how much money they're going to end up spending on vehicle maintenance as a result of all that extra driving.
The IRS mileage rate is supposed to be an average cost for operating a vehicle. It is 53.5 cents per mile. Uber pays about twice that per mile in San Francisco. So if you can go at 60 MPH you'll be making about 30 bucks an hour, which is not bad for unskilled labor.
(1) You're assuming all miles and hours are 'billable', while in reality you would be driving empty towards a pickup and waiting for the next pickup. :). But even if you drive only on highways that allow those speeds, your average speed is going to be much lower, probably closer to 30MPH for realistic cases.
(2) 60MPH in San Francisco is going to get you some pretty bad fines most of the time
So, let's assume you spend every hour waiting for 10 minutes, driving 30MPH to the pickup for 10 minutes, and driving a customer at 30MPH for 40 minutes, your average hourly gross income is 20$ (40/60*30*1$) and your expenses are $13.375 (50/60*30*.535), giving you a real income of under 7$ per hour. Good luck finding a house and food for that in SF area...
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Even then you're being very generous with your average speed. Internet says 18mph is the average driving speed in San Francisco, so you can half that again...
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Although true, I would argue that what's really needed are standard, third-party cab hailing apps that know about all the cab companies in an area and find you a cab, rather than having to have an app for each cab company in each locality where you might need a cab. It isn't really reasonable to expect each cab company to solve the problem themselves, and it can be tricky for competitors to work together.
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There are better ways to fix the problems with taxis than by rolling labor rights back to the 19th century and attempting to run roughshod over the laws of every major city on the planet all in the name of "disruption".
(Or you could, y'know, actually *buy* a car. But I guess that's luddite thinking nowadays.)
Yes by using automation. It couldn't come soon enough with the greedy drivers.
Re:Failure is always an option (Score:5, Insightful)
Having witnessed the rise and now beginning of the fall of the company it's really amazing how at so many points they've done the bad or nefarious thing.
They basically lied about what the purpose of the app was, calling it a ride-sharing service when it's a taxi service.
They lied about the profitability of working for them, and doubled-down by getting people into paying for cars that they had no business buying and arguably couldn't afford because their incomes did not match the advertisements.
They lied and operated their unlicensed taxi service in places where this is illegal.
They've made efforts to avoid investigators into their illegal passenger livery practices.
They've attempted to call their drivers contractors while forcing them into working models that demonstrate that they're employees.
They've essentially stolen technology developed by others in an attempt to jumpstart their self-driving car business.
I get that in many cases existing taxi services aren't so great. On the other hand many of the laws governing taxis and sedan services are reactionary to some bad thing that happened and demonstrated a need to regulate for passenger safety. Perhaps some of what Uber and its ilk have come up with may end up as part of future regulations; the idea of determining the fare based on computer mapping is not a bad one and could be added to existing services if there was a strong enough interest.
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They basically lied about what the purpose of the app was, calling it a ride-sharing service when it's a taxi service.
Everyone else also lied about the purpose of the app, which allows independent drivers and passengers to find each other, in a bid to declare Uber drivers are employees--yet nobody has declared Amazon Mechanical Turk users "employees".
We're not really equipped to understand the gig economy.
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I for one am glad to see the wheels starting fall off this libertarian corporate experiment. It's heartening to see signs of failure in an institution whose core principals are deeply entrenched in base human behaviours such as bullying, hypocrisy and total indifference to adverse impacts to others (including it's own people).
Own a company or be in a position of power and your opinion WILL radically change. Guarantee it
Re:Failure is always an option (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Failure is always an option (Score:5, Insightful)
It's very simple - if you are asking people to work unpaid overtime - you're an asshole. If there is too much work for the current people to do in 8 hours a day - then you're obligated to your share-holders to hire more workers, NOT to overwork the current staff.
Your supposed to meet demand WITHOUT being a dickwad.
Unions are one of the key ways we try to ensure a company that needs 16 hours of work done a day hires TWO people instead of just one (which actually CREATES jobs by preventing over-work of the existing staff). Frankly if your company needs to operate 24/7 and you have less than 3 people per role then you're an asshole who deserves to be out of business (in order to open up the market for a non-asshole company).
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It's very simple - if you are asking people to work unpaid overtime - you're an asshole. If there is too much work for the current people to do in 8 hours a day - then you're obligated to your share-holders to hire more workers, NOT to overwork the current staff.
Your supposed to meet demand WITHOUT being a dickwad.
Unions are one of the key ways we try to ensure a company that needs 16 hours of work done a day hires TWO people instead of just one (which actually CREATES jobs by preventing over-work of the existing staff). Frankly if your company needs to operate 24/7 and you have less than 3 people per role then you're an asshole who deserves to be out of business (in order to open up the market for a non-asshole company).
Tough. When work doubles for a 3 month period I regularly work 60 to 75 hours a week every year. That is normal and not fair to the shareholders or to the new hires to hire them train them and fire them again? I worked at an amusement park when I was younger. Guess what? Summer nights 16 hour days. I worked at Staples later. Back to school I slept at the store and worked double shifts for a month. Recent job I did the same as YOU NEVER SAY NO to a client. Management wanted to secure the deal and we already
Re:Failure is always an option (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a huge difference between "sometimes when it's an emergency" and "all the time" - trouble is that "all the time" is the norm when unions are not there to prevent it.
More importantly - on those occasions when the company requires me to fix their bad management by working overtime, I demand the right to get paid double-time for doing so. All people deserve that. You take away my time with my daughter -you had better compensate me for that - double.
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> If a company sucks AND PEOPLE HAVE OTHER OPTIONS people quit
FTFY.
Exploiting their lack of other options is the ultimate definition of asshole. Or you could use the older name if you prefer: bondage (which is really just a nicer name for 'slavery').
Re:Failure is always an option (Score:5, Informative)
Drivers are NOT staff. They are independent contractors. It says so right in their contract. I don't understand why this is so hard to grasp for some people.
The law is a bit more complicated than that. Writing "you are not an employee" on an employment contract does not mean that you are magically not an employee.
re: Independent contractors (Score:2)
Sure, the law is "more complicated" than just stating a person is "not an employee". But I don't see how Uber drivers can be construed as employees/staff?
I know plenty of people who decided they'd do some driving for Uber, and among other things, there's no requirement you actually perform a specific job for Uber. You're free to accept or reject all opportunities that pop up on your phone. You can work as much or as little as you like.
Re: Failure is always an option (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work for a smallish German company where the CEO always said that if anyone is to join a union he would close the shop and reopen in Switzerland. He also ignored many laws and regulations and the wages sucked. 5 years after I was fired half of the employees was new. Now I am working at a company of the same size, automatically belong to a professional association, earn almost twice as much even though there are no bonuses, the CEO follows all laws and regulations and even does charity work. Many of my colleagues have been at the company for 20 years. Guess where I like it better?
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Well, my point was that it is quite possible to be a CEO without being a dick.
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I for one am glad to see the wheels starting fall off this libertarian corporate experiment. It's heartening to see signs of failure in an institution whose core principals are deeply entrenched in base human behaviours such as bullying, hypocrisy and total indifference to adverse impacts to others (including it's own people).
Own a company or be in a position of power and your opinion WILL radically change. Guarantee it
So? So what? Most people don't own companies, neither can they. If you're saying that exploiting workers is OK because... others do it in the same position... well that the exact reason that unions were invented. If you're in a position of power, you don't *have* to be a dick.
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Once Uber is gone, we can go back to having no centralized system to distribute ride hails and ride offers. Independent ride-sharers can struggle to find passengers; passengers can pay inflated prices and have longer wait times trying to find a driver, while drivers can spend more time driving around without passengers and make less money per hour despite charging passengers more for the time spent actually transporting them.
Sorry buddy.... that's not what happened here.... (Score:2)
Libertarian corporate experiments are amazingly GOOD for society, and unfortunately, government regulation and taxation usually keeps them from popping up nearly as often as they should.
Uber actually raised the bar for traditional taxi cabs and their cartel they had going.... Whether Uber dies now for other reasons is irrelevant. Thanks to Uber, most city cabs I've run across will now accept major credit cards, and a growing number have apps to hail rides (no more 19th. century flailing of arms and whistli
And all of that because... (Score:2)
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I'm sure he's the ONLY asshole in that crapfest of a company.
Jumping ship before the bottom falls out. (Score:3)
They're getting out now, before the unionization kills Uber dead.
A union can demand all the money it wants for its workers.
But if the company goes broke or simply can't generate the business required to support those figure.
Poof. Dead business.
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Well let's see the look on these drivers faces in 2 years when they are fired from computers automated their job with self driving cars.
This will be a big push. Hey it is the market value of what your labor is worth whether they want more money or used to make more is irrelevent. Taxis and limo drivers tried this and left the free market to create Lyft and Uber. Robots don't complain and their cost will go down as more companies implement to replace people.
Re:Jumping ship before the bottom falls out. (Score:4, Insightful)
And that's why libertarianism is a crime against humanity and the market CANNOT be allowed to set wages unregulated - because wages are NOT just another consumable in a market. They are parts of people's LIVES. Human BEINGS.
You know what the key thing about human beings is ? THeir the PURPOSE. Their why we have economies. The economy exists to serve the people NOT the other way around. And never EVER denigrate workers for being greedy - because you know what ELSE workers are ? Consumers.
Good fucking luck selling ANYTHING in a market full of underpaid workers - because underpaid workers = consumers without money = no demand = no customers = bankrupt business.
Labour, like everything else in the economy - must be sold at a profit to be sustainable - and if the market won't pay a profitable price for it - then it cannot be sustained. But UNLIKE everything else in the economy - if the labour market collapses because the demand is too low -then EVERY OTHER BUSINESS COLLAPSES WITH IT.
Because labour is not JUST a commoddity - it's also the business that provides all the buying power to consumers, the business that pays nearly all the taxes and funds all the government services and infrastructure - including roads and the military and the police and the judges. It's the fundamental business upon which all other economic activity relies.
Make it unprofitable - and there is no economy, because you cannot have an economy without customers.
Re:Jumping ship before the bottom falls out. (Score:5, Informative)
Mathematically you are incorrect.
Milton Friedman published a proof on this with price settings [youtube.com] theory. Capitalism benefits everyone. It is a 2 way street a buyer and seller.
Economies serve those who want to make money and those who want to buy products and services. Labor it is those who want to earn money and those who need a service provided.
If you do not like this then go to North Korea or Cuba and see how they live compared to your country. As the money moves through the market faster the higher the wages of those who want to work and those who sell things both benefit. Everybody is greedy man. Of course businesses want to maximize their value. Of course YOU want to maximize your value and work less. Consumers want cheaper products and more of them. The balance is achieved based on scarcity.
Re:Jumping ship before the bottom falls out. (Score:5, Insightful)
Mathematically you are incorrect.
LOL nope.
You can prove whatever you want if you choose the axioms. If your assumptions about human behaviour are not modelled correctly then your proofs may be mathematically consistent but they won't have any bearing on the real world.
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His noble peace prize was based off his 1976 dissertation on price settings and behavior. That video is for the average Joes what his work revolves on. Price is a direct indicator of supply and demand. Human behavior most certainly is related for demand
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No, that's the claim. It only works for fungible commodities and with "rational" consumers, defined as ones who always operate in their best financial interest (which is ironically a rather irrational thing to do). All sorts of strange human behaviors actually influence prices.
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Capitalism is a system which can generate flaws due to outside meddling. Businesses are part of the capitalist system, but can do things to manipulate it--hence why we have things like anti-trust laws to keep illegal cartels from price-fixing everything and breaking capitalism.
There's a point to minimum wage, and a lot of artifacts caused by it--the drift of minimum wage by inflation creates an excess of wage-depressed jobs (inflation lowers the wage), and then adjusting the wage reduces the number of av
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Friedman was not an Austrian, he was from the Chicago school. You don't know shit, quit trying to pretend that you do.
-jcr
That's rather like differentiating between Mussolini and Franco's versions of fascism.
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Actually - yes, quite often.
Without minimum wage, in fact, what you tend to end up with is islands - areas with well to do people who are consumers and workers who live in poverty and gain no benefit whatsoever because the 'reduced prices' never quite reduce enough to allow them to become customers.
In the last few decades we've basically seen that switch from a national phenomenon to a global one. With 'worker countries' that consume very little, and 'consumption' countries that do. But that's not sustainab
Just a quick reminder (Score:2)
re: Libertarianism is a crime against humanity (Score:2)
What a twisted, absolutely incorrect way to summarize libertarian ideals!
I can't fathom why so many people think the superior way to handle things is living in a society where you've arbitrarily handed pretty much unlimited power to a group of "elites" in a central government -- who you agree to hand over a large percentage of your earnings to via taxation, and then get to "beg, plead and petition" them to spend the money in ways you agree with (which they may or may not do).
Wages as numbers are arbitrary.
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You know the kind of comment for which we have an 'insightful' mod ? Yeah, yours was the exact opposite of that.
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Uber Isn't Even Profitable (Score:5, Informative)
"It's hard to find much of a precedent for Uber's losses. Webvan and Kozmo.com—two now-defunct phantoms of the original dot-com boom—lost just over $1 billion combined in their short lifetimes. Amazon.com Inc. is famous for losing money while increasing its market value, but its biggest loss ever totaled $1.4 billion in 2000. Uber exceeded that number in 2015 and is on pace to do it again this year [2016]."
Bloomberg [bloomberg.com]
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Unionize (Score:2)
Does that mean they'll be covalent?
Uber Is Dead says Netcraft (Score:2)
Obligatory...
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Uber service when Netcraft confirmed that Uber is dying, now that Uber market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all ride hailing services. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Uber has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Uber is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the
They should unionize or form a not-for-profit Uber (Score:3)
I'm a big proponent of unions simply because I can see what happens when business owners are allowed to do whatever they want to their employees. The number of ethical employers that treat their employees well is a tiny fraction of the workforce, and I wouldn't count Uber in this class.
People forget that taxi driver is one of those job of last resort for people who don't have the skills to be in the higher levels of the workforce. I live near NYC and some of the recent immigrant cab drivers I've met have crazy stories of coming here, some as refugees, working 14 hour days, 6 days a week while they're learning English and going to school. No one in IT believes me, but this is just a preview of what's coming for a huge swath of white collar workers who will be wiped out in the next automation wave. Those nice safe jobs new grads get shuffling paperwork at some big company are getting squeezed now, but could just disappear entirely very soon since companies seem to be in a massive optimization drive. The white collar workers of today are going to end up as the Uber drivers of tomorrow as no one wants to hire them for their skills anymore. I say we should try to make our Mad Max style future of fighting for scraps as comfortable as possible now while we still can.
The other thing I could see happening is a drivers' association forming a not for profit that makes their own Uber-style app and charges drivers a reasonable percentage of the fares. It's amazing how much better off everyone is when you take the profit motive out of the equation. Note that I'm not saying "non-profit," because people do need to be paid and it's not a charity -- but a not-for-profit removes the pressure to turn the screws on the employees to the maximum revenue-generating setting. It would be a kind of non-scummy, non-evil Uber and they could even use a similar business model.
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I.T. people probably don't believe you because your scenario isn't that plausible.
There's going to be a big shake-up in the labor market thanks to advances in automation -- but that automation is going to be marketed, serviced and programmed/developed by people with I.T. skills.
A whole lot of automation is going to heavily rely on network connectivity, too. That means your Internet providers and people maintaining the wired or wireless networks are still going to be in high demand.
People need to be flexible
ok confused can someone explain. (Score:2)
I was under the impression that Uber drivers drove 'when they wanted too' and they were independent contractors?
Has that changed since the beginning of the company?
So what is the point of a union?
What good does striking do to the business model of a company that assumes that on any given day everybody or nobody may decide to work?
Take the Money (Score:2)
Failed Business Model (Score:2)
Uber no longer has a business model at all.
Re:Union City Blue (Score:5, Interesting)
Karma is a bitch, eh?
How shitty must this corporate culture be for all these people with great positions at an innovative, cutting edge, and super fast growing company to leave?
These departures apparently validate all the coverage about what a soul-less, morally bankrupt company it is.
Re:Union City Blue (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternatively, once a company is circling the drain, the most skilled employees who can get jobs easily elsewhere are the first to jump. The plodders go down with the ship.
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Often with otherwise underserved promotions due to the vacuum above caused by the departures.
Re:The end? (Score:4, Insightful)
It appears that the media has decided to dig up every little thing to kill them. So it only matters if consumers stop using it.
I think the people who are going to drop Uber already have. But I also don't think most people really care that much right now.
Re:The end? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly it matters quite a lot if Uber was really actually profitable, or if it was only profitable because a certain class of employee (ie, the driver) was willing to be hoodwinked into basically not even making cab-driver wages while suffering wear and tear on their own personal vehicle, versus actually being profitable with its own model.
It seems that Uber's long-term goal was to do away with having drivers operating their own cars, but unfortunately for them, they've tried to define the self-driving car market as-implemented too long before it's really ready to be implemented. They've gotten caught with their hand in the cookie jar too, as it appears they stole self-driving technology developed at great expensive by someone else, and if they can't use any of those self-driving developments then they're probably doomed.
I can see the appeal, summon a self-driving car and it takes you where you want to go, then summon another one when you want to return. I can see trying to be the one to get out in front of it too, to ride the wave of success that might well come from it. You've got to get the timing right though, and the timing isn't right yet.
Re:The end? (Score:5, Interesting)
Uber got through because the Taxi and Limo companies got greedy and so did their employees. Unions and bribery and tax revenue created an artificial market. Now capitalism created a solution that should have been fixed.
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First, if programmers had had enough guts to unionize, they wouldn't have been in the position of having to train their H1B or offshore replacements. But no, unions are for blue-collar workers (blue collar jobs) and pink collar jobs only - white collar workers are too good for that.
Second, how long will it take to pass a law banning drivers from forming a union? Probably about as quickly as Indiana passed a law banning cities from regulating airbnb rentals. Welcome to Trumpville, where money counts for mor
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Unionize they go AI. If programmers unionize it encourages more outsourcing overseas and using software to write code with less people.
You can't beat the free market. If Uber is ruined over this Lyft will start to become the more preferred brand as it will cost less. If the prices are too low then drivers will drop out and do other part time jobs then the wages will go back up again perfect equilibrium. If they are low now it is because someoe is willing to do the job for cheaper as word got out on the amou
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You can't beat the free market
But there is no free market. So you can absolutely beat the market if you're running the government. Microsoft demands cheap foreign labor because "free market!" but if I want to use the free market to bootleg copies of Microsoft Office they run to the government to "protect intellectual property."
It's all government control, so pick your poison. A reasonable* approach would balance the interests of capital (yes, we'll protect your intellectual property) with those of labor (but you can't fuck American work
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First, if programmers had had enough guts to unionize, they wouldn't have been in the position of having to train their H1B or offshore replacements. But no, unions are for blue-collar workers (blue collar jobs) and pink collar jobs only - white collar workers are too good for that.
What do you think you are getting out of unionizing software developing jobs? Do you think unionized plants are never closed and moved overseas?
Re:The end? (Score:4, Interesting)
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"Some of us are competent and just want a job and not worry about the other external bullshit."
You've presumably never worked in a unionized workplace. You'd just swap one kind of BS for another.
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Wait until you're working with a disruptive dimwit and the union tells you they can't be fired because... union.
The employees didn't get greedy (Score:2)
Bubble Company (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're seriously overestimating the strategic thinking capabilities of the people behind Uber. They haven't, up until recently, had even an R&D interest in developing driverless cars, and there is little chance they can realistically compete with Tesla, Ford, Google, VW, etc, even if they could raise another couple of billion in cash to burn. The likelihood of them coming from behind and beating the others to a viable driverless car solution is zero.
Further, what exactly do they have that will maintain their market position? An app? How easy is it for Google to turn the 'book Uber' button in google maps into a 'book google car'? If anything, they have worse than nothing - they are beholden to the company that is well ahead of them in the technology they desperately need to have a viable business model.
What I think Uber has been for quite a while now (granted, I don't think this was the original plan) is a financial bubble milking machine. Unless the board is actually delusional, the only viable strategy behind them entering the driverless car development race was to keep the IPO price at stupid levels. And if it wasn't for the PR disasters coming out of Uber on an almost weekly basis now, they would have been obscenely successful in achieving this.
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And if it wasn't for the PR disasters coming out of Uber on an almost weekly basis now, they would have been obscenely successful in achieving this.
I'm still curious how these PR disasters came to receive such widespread media attention. I've always thought Uber was shit (the "sharing economy" is really the "vulture economy" picking at the bones of a decaying system), but it's not an accident there's a new "Uber is evil and/or collapsing" story every few days on Slashdot. If somebody's digging through your trash, interviewing your 3rd grade teacher, all your ex-girlfriends and your mailman and then spilling every last bit of dirt about you, sure, it's
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I'm surprised they have not tried to offshore the driving to India. Just stick some sensors on the car similar to what a self-driving one has, but instead of AI you have a guy in India controlling it over cellular link. Throw in a bit of basic autopilot type stuff to handle when the link drops and prevent collisions...
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It is Silicon Valley after all.. Shouldn't be too much longer.
Re: The end? (Score:2)
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Uber has never been profitable regardless, and it lost $3billion last year. It operates on venture capital. Profit is so 20th century.
The best description of Uber I've ever read (Score:2)
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Re:The end? (Score:4, Interesting)
Likely reason for the departures at high level, they believe the company will implode prior to the IPO cash in, so no reward for staying. They would be spitting chips, greed at the top, delayed the IPO too long and now it is too late. No matter how bad, the banksters still would have been able to scam a high price at IPO but executive departure would be indicative that they do not expect the company to get there and then can make more money by taking their skills and built up knowledge elsewhere.
Re: The end? (Score:3)
I doubt it. Billion dollar companies just don't fold , they burn down slowly, and there's a lot of things that need to go wrong before investors simply abandon the fortunes ploughed into the company.
Some companies constantly churn executives (think: yahoo) constantly and still survive. We are a long way off knowing if uber is that sort of company and if it is , are the fundamentals right to ride it out
Re: The end? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like Enron?
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Oh, they burned. Just not so slowly.
Re: The end? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: cart before the horse? (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a very low bar to entry when becoming an Uber driver, and so I would hazard to say that the vast majority of people who want to drive for Uber are already driving for Uber. So, if Uber were to suddenly drop all the current drivers, there would be no great rush of new drivers trying to fill the void. Just the opposite would happen, actually. The Uber drivers who had just been let go would switch to another service, and the folks who try to hail an Uber will be told there's a 2 hour wait for a car and so will simply take 10 seconds to close their Uber app and open their Lyft app instead. There's no possible way Uber could survive cleaning the slate like that.
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CEO of a midsized company here.
Seems legit.
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I have taken around 180 Uber rides, in London, San Francisco, New York, Paris, Moscow, Munich and Boston. In London, every Uber driver appears to treat it as a full time job. I ask them and they tell me the long hours they work, often complaining if I let the conversation go that way, how Uber has reduced their remuneration to where they claim it is almost not worth it anymore. (note, they always say "almost":)
Addisson Lee had to re-scramble their business model, to account for all of their drivers leaving
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maybe the reason they complain about it is because they are trying to make fulltime pay doing a job that was never intended to be a fulltime thing???
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That's your idea, that the job was never intended to be full-time.
What we are discussing is our observations of the Uber drivers and how they see it. You are not making sense, and writing like a shill.
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Said this before, they should form a cooperative. Every driver and maybe rider pays small yearly fee like 20 dollars, and the cooperative builds app and maintains infustructure, drivers keep 100% of their income. This could probably be done on global scale with 10-20 people who were lazy, and 1 highly skilled person with no life.
Uber is just middle men.
I imagine dropping the term "cooperative" into a meeting of Uber and their investors would produce the same effect as running into the Vatican shouting "the Pope's the fucking Antichrist".