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As an Uber employee, I'm morbidly curious as to how HN will spin this into something negative. :) For the record, I'm super proud of working at Uber because th
by employee8000 10y ago
As an Uber employee, I'm morbidly curious as to how HN will spin this into something negative. :)
For the record, I'm super proud of working at Uber because those on the outside never see the things we do for our drivers. This is a big one and I'm really proud. You just don't see this on the news that often because who knows.
I've said this before but the Uber of the last 2 years is not the same Uber from 2013/2014. As a company it has grown up and matured and realizes the responsibilities it has to its drivers, riders and cities.
- general_ai 10y agoPut your hands in the air and step away from the kool-aid dispenser.
- wott 10y agoHe has already proven in others threads that he dried up the dispenser.
- kevindong 10y agoCould you expand on how Uber has changed?
- tyingq 10y agoThis from Kalanick was unexpected to me: "We are working out a process to identify these drivers and compensate them pro bono during the next three months" You could argue it's just a PR thing, I suppose, but it certainly wasn't something I expected to see.
- maxerickson 10y agoWhat's the average hourly earnings of a busy driver after they pay their expenses (vehicle amortization, insurance, fuel, maintenance, etc.)?
- inverse_pi 10y agoWhat do you expect Uber/Lyft to do differently? Minimum wage for drivers? We have capitalism. If you think the drivers don't get a lot of money, why don't all of them quit after the first paycheck? It's capitalism, no one forces anyone to do anything. People are free to do what's best for them. Many of these drivers would be unemployed if not for Uber/Lyft. I'm not saying they're well compensated, I'm saying there must be a reason why they're still doing what they're doing.
- tabeth 10y agoCapitalism doesn't work when you ignore the law. Or do you really believe Uber would be where they are at now if they followed the law to the letter?
- inverse_pi 10y agoCapitalism works best without the laws (not all but most of them). Capitalism relies on the fact that producers and consumers are free to choose whatever the best options presented to them. The market should make the decisions, not the government.
- cmurf 10y agoYou think competition law is needless nonsense? That a pure free market does not end up with a handful of people owning all of the marbles?
- pavel_lishin 10y agoOr without factories full of workers burning down, or without pollutants getting dumped into streams, or without company towns locking workers down into slavery-in-all-but-name, etc., etc.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoCan you enumerate which current laws capitalism would be better off without?
- refulgentis 10y agoIs it sensical to accuse the entirety of HN of spinning all Uber stories negatively, and then in the next sentence note Uber doesn't talk about what it does for drivers, implying you understand that HN's perspective is primarily influenced by reams of rigorous work showing Uber drivers have a very precarious position? The insanely high star requirements (What is it, 4.4? 4.8?) are more than enough to doubt Uber's charity, especially when your PR department focuses on spinning intentionally breaking laws as a crusade for everyone's rights, instead of communicating all the wonderful things done for drivers. Imagine if Apple removed apps with lower than a 4.5 star rating, and then an Apple employee commented on Apple's unambiguously helpful response to a national crisis by immediately trashing HN and crowing about all the secret wonderful things Apple does for developers.
- carlosdp 10y agoThe star requirements make total sense if you've ever worked on a review/recommendation system before. The reality is most people don't give accurate ratings. Any sub-5 star score from a rider usually means something went wrong, because otherwise why would you bother putting anything less than 5? The way it ends up working out, barely any but the most egregious drivers will have a sub-4.5 rating or so because the majority of passengers just mindlessly rate 5 stars. Therefore, the difference between someone rated 4.2 and 4.7 is enormous in practice.
- autarch 10y agoWhich is why I don't understand why Uber & Lyft bother with stars. Why not just thumbs up/down instead?
- Groxx 10y agoPeople seem to understand stars roughly as well as thumbs up / down (except for some people who review "best ever. 1 star." which does happen). But if you drop it to up/down you lose any signal in the 3-5 stars range, which make up a ton of review rankings.
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- dmix 10y agoI'm not a particular fan of Uber but I've felt the need to defend it on a number of occasions from random people who misrepresent the organization or their business model. I find most people treat it as some sort of evil capitalist strawman punching bag. This type of thing happens when the media/politics pits everything as good guys vs villains. Either way I'm happy to hear it has improved over the last two years, there will always be these growing pains in any high growth organization from freewheeling startup to an organized responsible mega corp.
- toephu2 10y agoAll those drivers will be out of business in a few years when Uber roles out its autonomous cars. (which is not a bad thing per say; these people will be forced to find other work)
- msabalau 10y agoWell, I guess you've gotten to see how HN can spin this into something negative. I will note that Uber could make these people look very foolish by joining the NY taxi workers strike against this policy. Eventually, after a long stream of failure, people will eventually come around to the view that there are few things less productive than beating up people who are trying to agree with them.
- nrjdhsbsid 10y agoGod this is a sappy piece that sounds like it came straight from the marketing Dept. Does one of the things you do for your drivers include not giving a shit about them? Because last year Uber left Austin Texas rather than comply with the cities background check requirement. Overnight an estimated 10,000 Uber drivers lost their jobs and Uber didn't really give a crap. I find the notion that they give a shit about a few hundred of their drivers stuck overseas laughable
- bjourne 10y agoIn his Facebook post, he does not once criticize Trump's Muslim immigration ban. The post has the title "Standing up for what's right" -- but there is not a word in it about what is wrong. It is as if he is afraid of calling Racism for what it is because then he might lose his seat on "President Trump's economic advisory group."
- StavrosK 10y agoSeriously, what the fuck is going on? I had to read to the middle of the comments page to see this? There is nothing in the post about standing up to anything! The post can be summarized as: "Trump's decision hurts many people. We're going to compensate some drivers who were impacted. I had also decided to become Trump's advisor. If you disagree, oh well, tough. Also, I'm fighting for what's right." Please tell me where I'm wrong, because all I see are vacuous statements with a title that makes it sound like this guy is doing something about something. It doesn't even say what he thinks is "right"! For all we know, he means banning all Muslims from entering the US.
- sverige 10y agoIslam is a religion, not a race. And the ban is for citizens of seven countries which are not ethnically homogeneous, and not because of their ethnicity, but because there are a lot of terrorists who come from those countries. Feel free to disagree, but please don't call it "racism." It's ridiculous.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- developer2 10y agoHow fucking easy for someone who sits comfortably at a desk in an office to say. "... those on the outside never see the things we do for our drivers". How about you accept the same pay as your drivers, working your non-driver job. Until then, you can shut your mouth, pretending like drivers are treated well.