18 ms·

Uber Plans Millions in Back Pay After Shortchanging NYC Drivers

342 points by rayuela 9y ago

salesguy222 9y ago
Haha wow, meanwhile at Oracle, having our commissions miscalculated by a team of experts is a feature, not a bug. And somehow those miscalculations are NEVER in our favor, and always result in delayed payment. It's like working for Crytek, but even worse.
- Bakary 9y ago
  What's specifically bad about Crytek?
  - Sacho 9y ago
    They didn't pay their employees for long stretches of time, the last such ending in their almost-bankruptcy.
  - salesguy222 9y ago
    In addition to what the poster below me said, they treated certain employees as second class citizens and played a lot of shell games involving overtime and even salary. Basically they weren't very forthcoming to their Bulgarians when money dried up, opting to create a hunger games situation instead of asking for help and patience
BoiledCabbage 9y ago
This company is absolutely astounding. The objects you hold up as ideals says a lot about the culture of your environment and its values. It is extremely disappointing that Uber is considered a crown jewel of Silicon Valley.
- r00fus 9y ago
  Uber is the physical incarnation of the saying "don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness".
  - prions 9y ago
    "Move fast and break things (and shortchange everyone in the process)" We're so sorry (again)
    - ythn 9y ago
      Vs. "We have an idea for a disruptive app. Let's do this 'the right way' and make sure we have the approval of the industry we are disrupting and local government before we get started" -- apps that never come into existance
      - burkaman 9y ago
        Amazon? Spotify? Square? Grubhub? Robinhood? And probably lots more. You can have respect for people and laws and still succeed.
        Jabanga 9y ago
        One could argue not all laws are moral and that following immoral laws is emphasising your own interests over those of humanity. If abiding by the law was people's only priority, there would be no widespread usage of public key cryptography (it was extremely illegal in the early 1990s, and only gained legal acceptance after cypherpunks pushed back against the laws and proliferated its use), which would have prevented trillions of dollars worth of ecommerce from being realized. There would also be no ride sharing apps, no home sharing, and no Bitcoin or Ethereum. Also worth noting that Amazon didn't charge a sales tax for a long time.
        accountyaccount 9y ago
        Don't give me this happy horseshit masquerading as philosophy, this isn't about what "laws" or "ethics" are — Uber is constantly treating their drivers, who are people, like garbage.
- zitterbewegung 9y ago
  To be honest I'm not so sure its still considered a crown jewel. The negative PR has been snowballing for awhile now.
  - fstuff 9y ago
    Uber's work place shenanigans have been a open secret for a while now. People either didn't believe the rumors or thought it wouldn't effect them in their role. Most people didn't care about the rumors because of the Stock packages they gave out. Now that IPO's has been delayed again, all the bad press, massive losses, IP theft, Uber F'ynees, etc people don't think it's guaranteed pay day that it used to be perceived as. A lot of my peers have been contacted by Uber recruiters lately, half of them straight up said no, the other half ignored their linked messages.
- iamdave 9y ago
  It is extremely disappointing that Uber is considered a crown jewel of Silicon Valley The common refrain I hear is "they're better than taxis" and more and more evidence is mounting against them (at the corporate level) that suggests: no, they really aren't.
  - DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
    I think you're both right and wrong. Uber is better than taxis for riders, and worse than taxis (in some ways) for drivers. Also consider that some Uber drivers couldn't realistically become taxi drivers in their spare time, and perhaps some of them would prefer to be underpaid by Uber rather than not working at all.
    - metamet 9y ago
      Has it always been that way though? I remember when they first launched in SF, and I remember drivers being pretty excited about how much they were making driving. I remember talking to some folks who also drove taxi, mentioning that Uber paid them substantially more.
      - kirykl 9y ago
        Driver quality correlates with price/earnings per mile on an S-Curve. Per mile earnings and per mile prices have both dropped.
      - cavanasm 9y ago
        Part of this is that Uber was / is building a rider / driver base, and to do so, they accept losses on every ride. They were paying drivers more money than they were collecting in fares. It was an attempt to claim market share and drive competitors out of business (which hasn't quite worked thus far) so they could increase the prices later when they had price control power. Uber's existence is all based around investors dumping money faster than they burn it in operating costs (without ever turning a profit).
    - bdcravens 9y ago
- qyv 9y ago
  I swear it feels like the next story we are going to hear out of Uber is how Travis had to discreetly dispose of a rhino carcass by dumping it in the bay...
- the_cat_kittles 9y ago
  no man! its the juicero! that thing is so cool and practical!
  - semi-extrinsic 9y ago
    AvE teardown of the Juicero, in all it's glory: https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ
    - the_cat_kittles 9y ago
      AvE is a legend, and that vid is great. all HN readers would appreciate his mix of intimate knowledge, wordplay and hilarious cynicism. its great
- robbyking 9y ago
  I have absolutely no respect for Travis Kalanick; he's the personification of a "the rules don't apply to me" attitude, and he's been rewarded for it time and time again.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    My opinion of him plunged and never recovered after seeing him present at a YC demo day some years ago. He threw up this slide of a heroically ascending curve and proclaimed 'This is what exponential growth looks like!' to huge applause from the packed house, while I wondered why there were no numbers on the Y axis. OK, that wasn't the only thing that bothered me, but if someone insults my intelligence then I see no reason to put any trust in them.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  After being an early supporter I did a complete 180 on them. If all the various allegations against them (basically: lying to everyone about everything) are true then I think the firm should be shut down and its assets sold off. A person who did what Uber is accused of doing would go to prison for a Long Time. Uber has become the Bernie Madoff of SV imho.
- austenallred 9y ago
  > It is extremely disappointing that Uber is considered a crown jewel of Silicon Valley. To be honest, I'm not sure many hold them up as the crown jewel of Silicon Valley. All I hear with regard to Uber is derision.
  - GlobalServices 9y ago
    I live in Silicon Valley, and I never heard anyone say that.
chipgap98 9y ago
That's a huge "bug" not to notice for presumably a long time. I recently had a Lyft driver in NYC talk to me about how he quit uber after doing the math on what his fare should have been when a passenger told him how much they were being charged. He brought it up to uber and then quit when they didn't fix it. Anecdotal story but seems extremely relevant now
- rhcom2 9y ago
  Hopefully he'll see some restitution too and it won't be only current drivers.
- potatolicious 9y ago
  What your driver was talking about may not be a bug/math error like stated here. After rolling out guaranteed whole-ride pricing (as opposed to metering) Uber is allegedly testing algorithms to bid different prices for rides to both driver and passenger. i.e., passenger sees a fare of $X, while driver sees a fare of $Y, where presumably $Y < $X. Passengers' fares can be "optimized" by estimating a specific passenger-trip's price ceiling, and driver payments can be "optimized" by estimating the driver-trip's price floor. To be clear, I find this entire concept incredibly abhorrent, but apparently this is being trialed. [1] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/04/10/uber-showing-drivers-and-riders-different-fare-estimates-says-lawsuit/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/04/10/uber-showing-dri...
  - bonzini 9y ago
    It would not be abhorrent if it were the only source of income for Uber, which would basically be earning the bid-ask spread. Adding fees on top of that, though...
    - memmcgee 9y ago
      Except they also penalize drivers for not accepting many rides. So if you want to continue driving for Uber, you have to "sell" your driving services at some point, even if the price isn't good for you.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
easilyBored 9y ago
Move fast and break things. Break laws, steal, cheat and stuff. It's OK if you're big enough and are a "startup."
- minikites 9y ago
  Disruption! Creative destruction!
- dang 9y ago
  We've asked you before to stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN. If you continue to do it, we will ban you.
danso 9y ago
This is not a hard error to identify (seems like one that's harder to make, if Uber employs qualified accountants), and given the number of Uber drivers who carefully and calculatingly join Uber as a way to become financially independent, it's hard to believe that no one discovered the problem and then complained. But maybe someone inside Uber felt more confident in prioritizing this issue after the public shitshow that Uber has been eating this past few months.
wehadfun 9y ago
Uber drivers could go on strike from Uber and still earn by driving for LYFT. They could demand what ever they want.
- smt88 9y ago
  You can't strike without a union, and Uber is fighting hard against drivers unionizing.
  - nradov 9y ago
    The drivers are vendors, not employees, so there's no way for them to form a union or go on strike. But there's also nothing stopping a group of drivers from getting together and collectively agreeing to stop driving for Uber.
    - Frondo 9y ago
      Whether they are vendors or employees is still an open question: https://www.google.com/#q=are+uber+drivers+employees https://www.google.com/#q=are+uber+drivers+employees
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      So form an 'association' or something. If you're dealing with a company that reflexively breaks rules you're under no obligation to worry about niceties like union certification requirements and procedures. there is no moral obligation to play fair with a known cheater.
      - nradov 9y ago
        There are no legal niceties even needed. Uber drivers in the USA wouldn't be breaking any labor laws by forming a voluntary association.
  - chimeracoder 9y ago
    > You can't strike without a union This is absolutely, completely false. Both legally and practically.
51Cards 9y ago
What I find interesting is how is this localized to one area? Is it an error in NYC tax law calculations or something? Seems that they are talking about the base fare calculations and you would think those would be somewhat general across several areas. Even if they run multiple algorithms some other city must be running something similar with the same error?
funkyy 9y ago
Uber, with its history of fraud, will get huge bills in near future. While the company was acting as not caring about anyone, will get bitten by governments and unions soon for it. You cannot disturb the whole world like that. You need to obey laws and try to change/lobby them, rather than break them.
- joering2 9y ago
  It continues to boggle my mind, day by day, who really Travis know or is related to?? Is he family of Clinton, Bush, Trump himself?? I mean any one of us deciding to provide a framework for any workers, take it taxi riders, that are very tightly regulated by something called US Government (that has a law on books to not only jail you but take your life away from you [capital punishment] and do it legally) and many US gov branches, and said: "screw rules, regulations, tax law, insurance law, safety laws, screw them all - download app, provide service, make money" would long time ago be jailed without parole, all accounts frozen, passport withhold, house raided by FBI/SWAT and all relatives cross-questioned. Who the heck is this guy.. or who/what does he know????
  - self-diversity 9y ago
    I wonder how hard it would be to determine the reliability of using extraneous punctuation as a signal of unhinged prose.
    - jjawssd 9y ago
      Can you address his point?
robbyking 9y ago
This is the same company whose founder "took the tax dollars from employee paychecks — which are supposed to be withheld and sent to the Internal Revenue Service — and reinvested the money into the start-up, even as friends and advisers warned him the action was potentially illegal." [1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanick-pushes-uber-and-himself-to-the-precipice.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanic...
- greenyoda 9y ago
  It's not potentially illegal, it's unquestionably illegal. Money withheld for taxes doesn't belong to the employer; it has already been paid to its employees, who are trusting the employer to pay it to the government on their behalf, as required by federal and state law. So it's (1) stealing from employees and (2) tax fraud. If the authorities had found out about it, he'd have gone to prison.
  - misiti3780 9y ago
    in a previous life, i worked for someone (small start up) that did exactly this to me. I reported him to the authorities, and he is not in prison. I depends on the size of the amount stolen and how busy your local DA's office is. I was in NYC.
rbobby 9y ago
Uber's management team seems to stumble from one mistake/mess/self-inflicted-injury to another. I can't help but wonder why Uber VCs have kept them in place.
- nradov 9y ago
  It's pretty simple. The VCs don't have enough voting shares to control the board. They could make some noise but their actual legal power is very limited.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    Greed leads to stupidity.
- Applejinx 9y ago
  It's not unlike the Enron model. Uber is supported entirely by the collective opinion that they're a SV unicorn and the most ruthlessly profitable thing around. If a vote of no confidence is issued by the Uber management team being fired, the valuation would collapse because it would be an admission that ultimate ruthlessness/evil/whatever you want to call it, does not automatically become ultimate profitability and capital return. Of course the VCs have to double down. They have no choice but to conclude that Uber's behavior is a model for future business everywhere. It doesn't matter if it's an absurd conclusion: capital is literally at stake. Uber's valuation can only go up or burst. Everybody invested in it strongly prefer the 'go up' option.
  - rbobby 9y ago
    > valuation can only go up or burst I think you're right. The VCs are now hostage to their own greed.
robbiemitchell 9y ago
This reminds me of how Seamless (now merged with GrubHub) took its percentage cut (~10-15%) of every meal delivery order after including taxes AND tip! That was as of a few years ago dating all the way back -- not sure whether it's still going on.
rajathagasthya 9y ago
> While drivers’ pay is determined according to the time and distance they travel, Uber has begun to experiment with how it calculates the price for riders. I don't get this. How can you "experiment" with price calculations?
- SonicSoul 9y ago
  aren't all prices determined via some sort of market testing?
  - rajathagasthya 9y ago
    That may be true, but I assume Uber commits to paying drivers $X per mile or hour or something similar (as stated in that article). Surely, you won't drive for Uber if you don't know exactly how much money you make and if it's always subject to changes and experimentation?
    - callalex 9y ago
      People only drive for Uber if they have to in the first place, so now they are testing exactly how much of a beating drivers are willing to take before they leave. They already know the answer is "a lot" so they'll keep on pushing.
      - jessriedel 9y ago
        > People only drive for Uber if they have to in the first place This is completely opposite my anecdotal experience. When I ask uber drivers why they drive for uber, the majority say they left a previous job for uber because of the money/flexibility/less-stress.
    - tkxxx7 9y ago
      The rider price is undergoing "experimentation".
surds 9y ago
The valuation argument always leads to 'driverless' cars. Makes me wonder - if all cars can be 'driverless', why would you prefer to call for an Uber and not use your own?
- weisser 9y ago
  I believe Tesla is planning to have its own network.
- oppositelock 9y ago
  Because the car can be heavily utilized by many users, each paying only for the share they use. It's cheaper.
- bduerst 9y ago
  Your question assumes that Uber's market share as a ride-hailing app will somehow benefit them as a self-driving car company.
- savanaly 9y ago
  Not having to drive is a very small part of the reason I use Uber in lieu of owning a car. Main reason is expense of owning a car and the time I avoid having to research which car is best for me to buy, how to keep up in its maintenance, where to park, what to do if it's super icy out, etc. etc. etc.
jsemrau 9y ago
It was painfully obvious already a long time ago that Uber uses the investor money to purchase the market[1]. For any Asian and European city I have ever lived in the calculation never worked. And I still believe it would have been better to just give the Billions to the several taxi companies and have them build a better app. Maybe even work with the car companies and have them build this functionality in their cars from scratch. [1] https://medium.com/@thisTenqyuLife/nobody-will-talk-about-uber-in-5-years-cd372981c85a https://medium.com/@thisTenqyuLife/nobody-will-talk-about-ub...
anigbrowl 9y ago
Relevant self-link on corporate wage theft: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14380908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14380908 This is another example of why I think developers need to professionalize the industry and set ethical standards. Why do people willingly write code to automate the process off ripping off their own co-workers to enrich shareholders? Because if they don't, someone else will. Maybe it's time to stop being developers and start being engineers. Ask yourself who benefits from software development being an ethics-free zone? Most likely, it's not you.
NelsonMinar 9y ago
It never stops with this charming company, does it? This cavalcade of illegal and unethical behavior at Uber is what happens when the founder and untouchable CEO of a company is a bad person.
- Applejinx 9y ago
  Define 'bad'. Or indeed 'ethical'. There's an awful lot of abstracted money around that sees (to the extent abstractions can see anything) Uber and its boss as the best thing ever, specifically because all the behavior is designed to increase money. If all that energy was put towards a goal of tormenting red-headed pipe-fitters and their families, there's no way things would have gone on this long. But it's to increase money, so by definition UNTIL it fails and all the money is lost, it's not simply okay but admirable and to be emulated. If the money buys immunity from any such accountability…
  - NelsonMinar 9y ago
    I used to work at Google in the "Don't be evil" era. We had many internal discussions about how it was hard to define "evil". That's part of the purpose of the deliberately ambiguous statement, to state a general principle without getting bogged down in minutiae. The purpose of the guidance is to force people to have ethical discussions, not to answer the question. Uber is going to collapse under the weight of all its illegal and unethical behavior. All that money is going to evaporate.
tomkit 9y ago
I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.
- chasing 9y ago
  Maybe this is also an opportunity to correct some of the untruths you've observed instead of simply complaining about their purported existence? Be the improved comment quality you wish to see in the world.
- goldenkey 9y ago
  Why do you call it a product?
- avaer 9y ago
  Welcome back! One of the worst parts of open source is when someone who has been happily getting value out of your free product for 4 years opens an issue to complain about how quality has gone downhill, and you need to fix a few things.
  - abrookewood 9y ago
    I don't think this is fair. The mods want the site to be successful and the parent is pointing out something that should be a cause for concern for them. No one wants HN to turn into the next Slashdot.
    - Bakary 9y ago
      Surely the mods are able to figure out what the site needs better than any regular user, by virtue of their continued monitoring?
      - 9y ago
Bakary 9y ago
I wonder if it's confirmation bias but I'm starting to think that the model of an army of disenfranchised workers jumping through hoops to serve a small professional elite will soon become the norm.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
true_tuna 9y ago
Interesting to note that this came about due to a lawsuit. Meaning, somebody noticed, brought it to Uber's attention, got brushed and was forced to resort to hiring lawyers.

342 points by rayuela 9y ago

Haha wow, meanwhile at Oracle, having our commissions miscalculated by a team of experts is a feature, not a bug. And somehow those miscalculations are NEVER in our favor, and always result in delayed payment. It's like working for Crytek, but even worse.

Bakary 9y ago
What's specifically bad about Crytek?
- Sacho 9y ago
  They didn't pay their employees for long stretches of time, the last such ending in their almost-bankruptcy.
- salesguy222 9y ago
  In addition to what the poster below me said, they treated certain employees as second class citizens and played a lot of shell games involving overtime and even salary. Basically they weren't very forthcoming to their Bulgarians when money dried up, opting to create a hunger games situation instead of asking for help and patience

BoiledCabbage 9y ago

This company is absolutely astounding. The objects you hold up as ideals says a lot about the culture of your environment and its values. It is extremely disappointing that Uber is considered a crown jewel of Silicon Valley.

r00fus 9y ago
Uber is the physical incarnation of the saying "don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness".
- prions 9y ago
  "Move fast and break things (and shortchange everyone in the process)" We're so sorry (again)
  - ythn 9y ago
    Vs. "We have an idea for a disruptive app. Let's do this 'the right way' and make sure we have the approval of the industry we are disrupting and local government before we get started" -- apps that never come into existance
    - burkaman 9y ago
      Amazon? Spotify? Square? Grubhub? Robinhood? And probably lots more. You can have respect for people and laws and still succeed.
      - Jabanga 9y ago
        One could argue not all laws are moral and that following immoral laws is emphasising your own interests over those of humanity. If abiding by the law was people's only priority, there would be no widespread usage of public key cryptography (it was extremely illegal in the early 1990s, and only gained legal acceptance after cypherpunks pushed back against the laws and proliferated its use), which would have prevented trillions of dollars worth of ecommerce from being realized. There would also be no ride sharing apps, no home sharing, and no Bitcoin or Ethereum. Also worth noting that Amazon didn't charge a sales tax for a long time.
        accountyaccount 9y ago
        Don't give me this happy horseshit masquerading as philosophy, this isn't about what "laws" or "ethics" are — Uber is constantly treating their drivers, who are people, like garbage.
zitterbewegung 9y ago
To be honest I'm not so sure its still considered a crown jewel. The negative PR has been snowballing for awhile now.
- fstuff 9y ago
  Uber's work place shenanigans have been a open secret for a while now. People either didn't believe the rumors or thought it wouldn't effect them in their role. Most people didn't care about the rumors because of the Stock packages they gave out. Now that IPO's has been delayed again, all the bad press, massive losses, IP theft, Uber F'ynees, etc people don't think it's guaranteed pay day that it used to be perceived as. A lot of my peers have been contacted by Uber recruiters lately, half of them straight up said no, the other half ignored their linked messages.
iamdave 9y ago
It is extremely disappointing that Uber is considered a crown jewel of Silicon Valley The common refrain I hear is "they're better than taxis" and more and more evidence is mounting against them (at the corporate level) that suggests: no, they really aren't.
- DoofusOfDeath 9y ago
  I think you're both right and wrong. Uber is better than taxis for riders, and worse than taxis (in some ways) for drivers. Also consider that some Uber drivers couldn't realistically become taxi drivers in their spare time, and perhaps some of them would prefer to be underpaid by Uber rather than not working at all.
  - metamet 9y ago
    Has it always been that way though? I remember when they first launched in SF, and I remember drivers being pretty excited about how much they were making driving. I remember talking to some folks who also drove taxi, mentioning that Uber paid them substantially more.
    - kirykl 9y ago
      Driver quality correlates with price/earnings per mile on an S-Curve. Per mile earnings and per mile prices have both dropped.
    - cavanasm 9y ago
      Part of this is that Uber was / is building a rider / driver base, and to do so, they accept losses on every ride. They were paying drivers more money than they were collecting in fares. It was an attempt to claim market share and drive competitors out of business (which hasn't quite worked thus far) so they could increase the prices later when they had price control power. Uber's existence is all based around investors dumping money faster than they burn it in operating costs (without ever turning a profit).
  - bdcravens 9y ago
qyv 9y ago
I swear it feels like the next story we are going to hear out of Uber is how Travis had to discreetly dispose of a rhino carcass by dumping it in the bay...
the_cat_kittles 9y ago
no man! its the juicero! that thing is so cool and practical!
- semi-extrinsic 9y ago
  AvE teardown of the Juicero, in all it's glory: https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ
  - the_cat_kittles 9y ago
    AvE is a legend, and that vid is great. all HN readers would appreciate his mix of intimate knowledge, wordplay and hilarious cynicism. its great
robbyking 9y ago
I have absolutely no respect for Travis Kalanick; he's the personification of a "the rules don't apply to me" attitude, and he's been rewarded for it time and time again.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  My opinion of him plunged and never recovered after seeing him present at a YC demo day some years ago. He threw up this slide of a heroically ascending curve and proclaimed 'This is what exponential growth looks like!' to huge applause from the packed house, while I wondered why there were no numbers on the Y axis. OK, that wasn't the only thing that bothered me, but if someone insults my intelligence then I see no reason to put any trust in them.
anigbrowl 9y ago
After being an early supporter I did a complete 180 on them. If all the various allegations against them (basically: lying to everyone about everything) are true then I think the firm should be shut down and its assets sold off. A person who did what Uber is accused of doing would go to prison for a Long Time. Uber has become the Bernie Madoff of SV imho.
austenallred 9y ago
> It is extremely disappointing that Uber is considered a crown jewel of Silicon Valley. To be honest, I'm not sure many hold them up as the crown jewel of Silicon Valley. All I hear with regard to Uber is derision.
- GlobalServices 9y ago
  I live in Silicon Valley, and I never heard anyone say that.

chipgap98 9y ago

That's a huge "bug" not to notice for presumably a long time. I recently had a Lyft driver in NYC talk to me about how he quit uber after doing the math on what his fare should have been when a passenger told him how much they were being charged. He brought it up to uber and then quit when they didn't fix it. Anecdotal story but seems extremely relevant now

rhcom2 9y ago
Hopefully he'll see some restitution too and it won't be only current drivers.
potatolicious 9y ago
What your driver was talking about may not be a bug/math error like stated here. After rolling out guaranteed whole-ride pricing (as opposed to metering) Uber is allegedly testing algorithms to bid different prices for rides to both driver and passenger. i.e., passenger sees a fare of $X, while driver sees a fare of $Y, where presumably $Y < $X. Passengers' fares can be "optimized" by estimating a specific passenger-trip's price ceiling, and driver payments can be "optimized" by estimating the driver-trip's price floor. To be clear, I find this entire concept incredibly abhorrent, but apparently this is being trialed. [1] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/04/10/uber-showing-drivers-and-riders-different-fare-estimates-says-lawsuit/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/04/10/uber-showing-dri...
- bonzini 9y ago
  It would not be abhorrent if it were the only source of income for Uber, which would basically be earning the bid-ask spread. Adding fees on top of that, though...
  - memmcgee 9y ago
    Except they also penalize drivers for not accepting many rides. So if you want to continue driving for Uber, you have to "sell" your driving services at some point, even if the price isn't good for you.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

easilyBored 9y ago

Move fast and break things. Break laws, steal, cheat and stuff. It's OK if you're big enough and are a "startup."

minikites 9y ago
Disruption! Creative destruction!
dang 9y ago
We've asked you before to stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN. If you continue to do it, we will ban you.

danso 9y ago

This is not a hard error to identify (seems like one that's harder to make, if Uber employs qualified accountants), and given the number of Uber drivers who carefully and calculatingly join Uber as a way to become financially independent, it's hard to believe that no one discovered the problem and then complained. But maybe someone inside Uber felt more confident in prioritizing this issue after the public shitshow that Uber has been eating this past few months.

wehadfun 9y ago

Uber drivers could go on strike from Uber and still earn by driving for LYFT. They could demand what ever they want.

smt88 9y ago
You can't strike without a union, and Uber is fighting hard against drivers unionizing.
- nradov 9y ago
  The drivers are vendors, not employees, so there's no way for them to form a union or go on strike. But there's also nothing stopping a group of drivers from getting together and collectively agreeing to stop driving for Uber.
  - Frondo 9y ago
    Whether they are vendors or employees is still an open question: https://www.google.com/#q=are+uber+drivers+employees https://www.google.com/#q=are+uber+drivers+employees
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    So form an 'association' or something. If you're dealing with a company that reflexively breaks rules you're under no obligation to worry about niceties like union certification requirements and procedures. there is no moral obligation to play fair with a known cheater.
    - nradov 9y ago
      There are no legal niceties even needed. Uber drivers in the USA wouldn't be breaking any labor laws by forming a voluntary association.
- chimeracoder 9y ago
  > You can't strike without a union This is absolutely, completely false. Both legally and practically.

51Cards 9y ago

What I find interesting is how is this localized to one area? Is it an error in NYC tax law calculations or something? Seems that they are talking about the base fare calculations and you would think those would be somewhat general across several areas. Even if they run multiple algorithms some other city must be running something similar with the same error?

funkyy 9y ago

Uber, with its history of fraud, will get huge bills in near future. While the company was acting as not caring about anyone, will get bitten by governments and unions soon for it. You cannot disturb the whole world like that. You need to obey laws and try to change/lobby them, rather than break them.

joering2 9y ago
It continues to boggle my mind, day by day, who really Travis know or is related to?? Is he family of Clinton, Bush, Trump himself?? I mean any one of us deciding to provide a framework for any workers, take it taxi riders, that are very tightly regulated by something called US Government (that has a law on books to not only jail you but take your life away from you [capital punishment] and do it legally) and many US gov branches, and said: "screw rules, regulations, tax law, insurance law, safety laws, screw them all - download app, provide service, make money" would long time ago be jailed without parole, all accounts frozen, passport withhold, house raided by FBI/SWAT and all relatives cross-questioned. Who the heck is this guy.. or who/what does he know????
- self-diversity 9y ago
  I wonder how hard it would be to determine the reliability of using extraneous punctuation as a signal of unhinged prose.
  - jjawssd 9y ago
    Can you address his point?

robbyking 9y ago

This is the same company whose founder "took the tax dollars from employee paychecks — which are supposed to be withheld and sent to the Internal Revenue Service — and reinvested the money into the start-up, even as friends and advisers warned him the action was potentially illegal." [1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanick-pushes-uber-and-himself-to-the-precipice.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanic...

greenyoda 9y ago
It's not potentially illegal, it's unquestionably illegal. Money withheld for taxes doesn't belong to the employer; it has already been paid to its employees, who are trusting the employer to pay it to the government on their behalf, as required by federal and state law. So it's (1) stealing from employees and (2) tax fraud. If the authorities had found out about it, he'd have gone to prison.
- misiti3780 9y ago
  in a previous life, i worked for someone (small start up) that did exactly this to me. I reported him to the authorities, and he is not in prison. I depends on the size of the amount stolen and how busy your local DA's office is. I was in NYC.

rbobby 9y ago

Uber's management team seems to stumble from one mistake/mess/self-inflicted-injury to another. I can't help but wonder why Uber VCs have kept them in place.

nradov 9y ago
It's pretty simple. The VCs don't have enough voting shares to control the board. They could make some noise but their actual legal power is very limited.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  Greed leads to stupidity.
Applejinx 9y ago
It's not unlike the Enron model. Uber is supported entirely by the collective opinion that they're a SV unicorn and the most ruthlessly profitable thing around. If a vote of no confidence is issued by the Uber management team being fired, the valuation would collapse because it would be an admission that ultimate ruthlessness/evil/whatever you want to call it, does not automatically become ultimate profitability and capital return. Of course the VCs have to double down. They have no choice but to conclude that Uber's behavior is a model for future business everywhere. It doesn't matter if it's an absurd conclusion: capital is literally at stake. Uber's valuation can only go up or burst. Everybody invested in it strongly prefer the 'go up' option.
- rbobby 9y ago
  > valuation can only go up or burst I think you're right. The VCs are now hostage to their own greed.

robbiemitchell 9y ago

This reminds me of how Seamless (now merged with GrubHub) took its percentage cut (~10-15%) of every meal delivery order after including taxes AND tip! That was as of a few years ago dating all the way back -- not sure whether it's still going on.

rajathagasthya 9y ago

> While drivers’ pay is determined according to the time and distance they travel, Uber has begun to experiment with how it calculates the price for riders. I don't get this. How can you "experiment" with price calculations?

SonicSoul 9y ago
aren't all prices determined via some sort of market testing?
- rajathagasthya 9y ago
  That may be true, but I assume Uber commits to paying drivers $X per mile or hour or something similar (as stated in that article). Surely, you won't drive for Uber if you don't know exactly how much money you make and if it's always subject to changes and experimentation?
  - callalex 9y ago
    People only drive for Uber if they have to in the first place, so now they are testing exactly how much of a beating drivers are willing to take before they leave. They already know the answer is "a lot" so they'll keep on pushing.
    - jessriedel 9y ago
      > People only drive for Uber if they have to in the first place This is completely opposite my anecdotal experience. When I ask uber drivers why they drive for uber, the majority say they left a previous job for uber because of the money/flexibility/less-stress.
  - tkxxx7 9y ago
    The rider price is undergoing "experimentation".

surds 9y ago

The valuation argument always leads to 'driverless' cars. Makes me wonder - if all cars can be 'driverless', why would you prefer to call for an Uber and not use your own?

weisser 9y ago
I believe Tesla is planning to have its own network.
oppositelock 9y ago
Because the car can be heavily utilized by many users, each paying only for the share they use. It's cheaper.
bduerst 9y ago
Your question assumes that Uber's market share as a ride-hailing app will somehow benefit them as a self-driving car company.
savanaly 9y ago
Not having to drive is a very small part of the reason I use Uber in lieu of owning a car. Main reason is expense of owning a car and the time I avoid having to research which car is best for me to buy, how to keep up in its maintenance, where to park, what to do if it's super icy out, etc. etc. etc.

jsemrau 9y ago

It was painfully obvious already a long time ago that Uber uses the investor money to purchase the market[1]. For any Asian and European city I have ever lived in the calculation never worked. And I still believe it would have been better to just give the Billions to the several taxi companies and have them build a better app. Maybe even work with the car companies and have them build this functionality in their cars from scratch. [1] https://medium.com/@thisTenqyuLife/nobody-will-talk-about-uber-in-5-years-cd372981c85a https://medium.com/@thisTenqyuLife/nobody-will-talk-about-ub...

anigbrowl 9y ago

Relevant self-link on corporate wage theft: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14380908 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14380908 This is another example of why I think developers need to professionalize the industry and set ethical standards. Why do people willingly write code to automate the process off ripping off their own co-workers to enrich shareholders? Because if they don't, someone else will. Maybe it's time to stop being developers and start being engineers. Ask yourself who benefits from software development being an ethics-free zone? Most likely, it's not you.

NelsonMinar 9y ago

It never stops with this charming company, does it? This cavalcade of illegal and unethical behavior at Uber is what happens when the founder and untouchable CEO of a company is a bad person.

Applejinx 9y ago
Define 'bad'. Or indeed 'ethical'. There's an awful lot of abstracted money around that sees (to the extent abstractions can see anything) Uber and its boss as the best thing ever, specifically because all the behavior is designed to increase money. If all that energy was put towards a goal of tormenting red-headed pipe-fitters and their families, there's no way things would have gone on this long. But it's to increase money, so by definition UNTIL it fails and all the money is lost, it's not simply okay but admirable and to be emulated. If the money buys immunity from any such accountability…
- NelsonMinar 9y ago
  I used to work at Google in the "Don't be evil" era. We had many internal discussions about how it was hard to define "evil". That's part of the purpose of the deliberately ambiguous statement, to state a general principle without getting bogged down in minutiae. The purpose of the guidance is to force people to have ethical discussions, not to answer the question. Uber is going to collapse under the weight of all its illegal and unethical behavior. All that money is going to evaporate.

tomkit 9y ago

I'm breaking a 4 yr HN commenting-hiatus to post this: it's a bit disappointing to see how the quality of HN comments has deteriorated over the years. Virtually all the comments I'm seeing here are sensationalist sentiments/anecdotes, backed with no facts, reverberated in an echo chamber. This is a plead to the HN moderators to continue to iterate on your product to improve the quality of the comments.

chasing 9y ago
Maybe this is also an opportunity to correct some of the untruths you've observed instead of simply complaining about their purported existence? Be the improved comment quality you wish to see in the world.
goldenkey 9y ago
Why do you call it a product?
avaer 9y ago
Welcome back! One of the worst parts of open source is when someone who has been happily getting value out of your free product for 4 years opens an issue to complain about how quality has gone downhill, and you need to fix a few things.
- abrookewood 9y ago
  I don't think this is fair. The mods want the site to be successful and the parent is pointing out something that should be a cause for concern for them. No one wants HN to turn into the next Slashdot.
  - Bakary 9y ago
    Surely the mods are able to figure out what the site needs better than any regular user, by virtue of their continued monitoring?
    - 9y ago

Bakary 9y ago

I wonder if it's confirmation bias but I'm starting to think that the model of an army of disenfranchised workers jumping through hoops to serve a small professional elite will soon become the norm.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

true_tuna 9y ago

Interesting to note that this came about due to a lawsuit. Meaning, somebody noticed, brought it to Uber's attention, got brushed and was forced to resort to hiring lawyers.