8 ms·

Scooter mechanic, once homeless, says cheap rides now help him pay rent

locklock 8y ago
I feel like I've read this article plenty of times, just replace the scooter company with a rideshare company or a delivery company or anything else from the "gig economy." And after a few months or years, how many of these jobs remain stable and well-paying, if they still exist at all? Of course it's good that someone who was homeless is given a chance to reenter the workforce but looking to these incredibly volatile startup/gig economy companies to provide that seems like, after all the recent examples, a bad idea.
- stevehawk 8y ago
  Well, this is the eternal debate between job and career, right? If a government "creates jobs" by investing in infrastructure then it's the same problem. When that road is paved or that park is built then those people face the same dilemma. So we just hope that the economy itself keeps going in a manner that we can have things cycle and people can switch jobs as needed.
  - mixmastamyk 8y ago
    It's a "stepping stone" job, not meant as a destination.
- ovi256 8y ago
  You're welcome to try your way to provide good careers to these people. Just because other entrepreneurs didn't do it doesn't mean you should let it stop you!
  - xemdetia 8y ago
    I find this comment confusing, as there's no expectation of entrepreneurs to create jobs- its just a side effect of trying to make money. I agree with the top comment where this feels like more of the same and when the subsidy/vc money dries up they are going to be fired just as if they were a contractor as the company dissolves. There just wasn't anything in this piece that felt like more than a template fluff about how company X creates a service around consumer product Y and is paying some token people a few dollars over minimum wage. Which in itself is fine, but there was no real information on how they were going to sustain themselves and become a stable business. The thing that irks me about this article is the feeling that it's going to be used as a powerpoint footnote/feel good slide forever well after the primary person in this article has long since departed.
- code_duck 8y ago
  It seems like scooters are here to stay. Gaining skills and experience at repairing small transportation devices is probably not a bad plan.
- zjaffee 8y ago
  This is interesting to me though, because if it's the case that a person without a permanent address can start making money through the gig economy, that's providing more equitable employment opportunities than what was available prior.
elemeno 8y ago
Now that's got to be a Submarine Article, with the repeated mentions of one company and the underlying narrative of Scooter companies being job providers. Simultaneously a job ad and an attempt to sway public and/or local government option in favour of scooter companies (or at the least, this scooter company) remaining in SF. Otherwise, it's hard to believe that 'person gets a blue collar job' is something that an article would be written about...
- CPLX 8y ago
  Stop trying to make the word "submarine" happen. It's not going to happen. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18259355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18259355
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    In your linked post, you seem to be saying "Everyone knows that positive articles are usually PR, you don't need to point it out." Everyone doesn't know that. You know it because you were an ad exec. Educating people who aren't yet sufficiently cynical about stealth advertising is a valuable goal.
    - ubercow13 8y ago
      Yes, if anything they should be the one trying to spread the knowledge. The fact that they are doing the opposite leads me to suspect their comments are Submarine Comments of the PR industry.
    - CPLX 8y ago
      It's not stealth advertising. The SF Chronicle is a legitimate news organization that has journalistic standards. Maybe a PR person suggested the story, maybe nobody did. Maybe the author came up with the idea and just wrote it. Maybe the author emailed around looking for examples and a PR person jumped on the idea. Who fucking knows. But nobody in this thread has any first hand info about it. Either way it's not advertising, it's a story in the newspaper by a journalist that has ethical standards to live up to. We live in an era now where people are trying to blur the difference between ads and journalism, for a reason, so I personally care about the difference. Also the word submarine is fucking stupid.
PedroBatista 8y ago
Didn't we saw the same narrative when Uber was trying to capture the market? The emotional stories about a long lost relative found on Facebook? The single mom who started writing a blog and thanks to the wonders of AdSense she's rich? and the small mom & pop store who found huge success with Groupon? ( How that went out? eh?)
- skybrian 8y ago
  At this point, the prevailing mood is so negative that some positive stories going against the grain seem useful, to help shade black-and-white thinking with a bit of grey. Occasionally the actions of tech companies do have positive effects.
sandworm101 8y ago
"The scooter technician gig didn’t exist a little more than a year ago. It’s an example of how shifts in business models, social norms and consumer habits spurred by startups can spawn new kinds of work, defying predictions that new technologies will destroy more jobs than they create." Ya... people riding scooters once drove expensive cars fixed by mechanics earning far more than 22$/hour. Manpower is the only real cost in any organization. So any new tech or business model that is cheaper than an old system (ie scooters instead of taxis) almost certainly means someone somewhere is earning less money than under the old scheme.
Angostura 8y ago
> It’s an example of how shifts in business models, social norms and consumer habits spurred by startups can spawn new kinds of work, defying predictions that new technologies will destroy more jobs than they create. Hands up everyone who predicted that scooter companies would destroy jobs. No-one? thought not.
ConfusedDog 8y ago
I like the idea, but there are a lot of issues apparently. I went to visit a friend in Baltimore, and he told me rental scooters are being vandalized all the time for no reason. I also read an article that the accident rate and ER visits due to scooters went really high with this business. No idea if it's the quality of the scooters or what. I haven't tried one yet myself. I want to after this insurance season...
- okmokmz 8y ago
  >he told me rental scooters are being vandalized all the time for no reason The bikes in Seattle get vandalized/destroyed all the time. People seem to enjoy throwing them into the sound
- tick_tock_tick 8y ago
  When they first showed up in SF people chucked dozens of em right into the bay.
  - ConfusedDog 8y ago
    Those people are crazy... acting like territorial animals...
- stallmanite 8y ago
  Must be the local culture. In East Lansing a lot of the students tend to be destructive in general but everybody seems to treat the Bird and Line scooters with respect. Not sure why.
jressey 8y ago
Ironically, as a couple assholes buzzed by me today on the sidewalk in Atlanta, I imagined one of the people running me over and the scooter company fighting to eschew liability once I made a legal claim. People are gonna die on these things and kill other people if they haven't already. These scooters have no place in my city.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
  Would it be okay if they were required to drive in bike lanes? I think public safety concerns such as the ones you raised are very important, but I feel slightly baffled at what I perceive as an almost curmudgeonly, visceral dislike for them :(
  - wavefunction 8y ago
    I assume they would be required to use bike lanes in most American cities. I am concerned about the liability involved. A local journalist here in Austin was hit by a drunk guy on a scooter badly enough to dent her driver-side door and render the door inoperative. Then he claimed she hit him. His auto insurance, if he has any doesn't cover his usage of electric scooters. So she was facing a liability for fixing the car, perhaps some sort of insurance fraud on his part, AND her insurance was going to list an incidence of her "striking a pedestrian." Fortunately she found out there was some CCTV footage that exonerated her, but all of that just so some drunk a--hole can zoom around on a scooter and the scooter companies make money?
    - tick_tock_tick 8y ago
      It sounds like it's the exact same situation as if they owned their own scooter or bike and crashed into the car.
    - kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
      How does it typically work if I am riding my own bike or scooter and something like this accident happened? Most people don't carry liability insurance for their bicycles, skateboards etc.
JustSomeNobody 8y ago
A shame $45K/year only "helps" him pay his rent. Edit: Article says he paid in full.
markovbot 8y ago
>Forbidden >You don't have permission to access /business/article/Scooter-mechanic-once-homeless-says-cheap-rides-13448873.php on this server. is anyone else getting this 403 error? EDIT: Comment is at -1 now and i'm still getting the error. Could the downvoters comment on why this comment is worthy of downvotes?

I feel like I've read this article plenty of times, just replace the scooter company with a rideshare company or a delivery company or anything else from the "gig economy." And after a few months or years, how many of these jobs remain stable and well-paying, if they still exist at all? Of course it's good that someone who was homeless is given a chance to reenter the workforce but looking to these incredibly volatile startup/gig economy companies to provide that seems like, after all the recent examples, a bad idea.

stevehawk 8y ago
Well, this is the eternal debate between job and career, right? If a government "creates jobs" by investing in infrastructure then it's the same problem. When that road is paved or that park is built then those people face the same dilemma. So we just hope that the economy itself keeps going in a manner that we can have things cycle and people can switch jobs as needed.
- mixmastamyk 8y ago
  It's a "stepping stone" job, not meant as a destination.
ovi256 8y ago
You're welcome to try your way to provide good careers to these people. Just because other entrepreneurs didn't do it doesn't mean you should let it stop you!
- xemdetia 8y ago
  I find this comment confusing, as there's no expectation of entrepreneurs to create jobs- its just a side effect of trying to make money. I agree with the top comment where this feels like more of the same and when the subsidy/vc money dries up they are going to be fired just as if they were a contractor as the company dissolves. There just wasn't anything in this piece that felt like more than a template fluff about how company X creates a service around consumer product Y and is paying some token people a few dollars over minimum wage. Which in itself is fine, but there was no real information on how they were going to sustain themselves and become a stable business. The thing that irks me about this article is the feeling that it's going to be used as a powerpoint footnote/feel good slide forever well after the primary person in this article has long since departed.
code_duck 8y ago
It seems like scooters are here to stay. Gaining skills and experience at repairing small transportation devices is probably not a bad plan.
zjaffee 8y ago
This is interesting to me though, because if it's the case that a person without a permanent address can start making money through the gig economy, that's providing more equitable employment opportunities than what was available prior.

elemeno 8y ago

Now that's got to be a Submarine Article, with the repeated mentions of one company and the underlying narrative of Scooter companies being job providers. Simultaneously a job ad and an attempt to sway public and/or local government option in favour of scooter companies (or at the least, this scooter company) remaining in SF. Otherwise, it's hard to believe that 'person gets a blue collar job' is something that an article would be written about...

CPLX 8y ago
Stop trying to make the word "submarine" happen. It's not going to happen. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18259355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18259355
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  In your linked post, you seem to be saying "Everyone knows that positive articles are usually PR, you don't need to point it out." Everyone doesn't know that. You know it because you were an ad exec. Educating people who aren't yet sufficiently cynical about stealth advertising is a valuable goal.
  - ubercow13 8y ago
    Yes, if anything they should be the one trying to spread the knowledge. The fact that they are doing the opposite leads me to suspect their comments are Submarine Comments of the PR industry.
  - CPLX 8y ago
    It's not stealth advertising. The SF Chronicle is a legitimate news organization that has journalistic standards. Maybe a PR person suggested the story, maybe nobody did. Maybe the author came up with the idea and just wrote it. Maybe the author emailed around looking for examples and a PR person jumped on the idea. Who fucking knows. But nobody in this thread has any first hand info about it. Either way it's not advertising, it's a story in the newspaper by a journalist that has ethical standards to live up to. We live in an era now where people are trying to blur the difference between ads and journalism, for a reason, so I personally care about the difference. Also the word submarine is fucking stupid.

PedroBatista 8y ago

Didn't we saw the same narrative when Uber was trying to capture the market? The emotional stories about a long lost relative found on Facebook? The single mom who started writing a blog and thanks to the wonders of AdSense she's rich? and the small mom & pop store who found huge success with Groupon? ( How that went out? eh?)

skybrian 8y ago
At this point, the prevailing mood is so negative that some positive stories going against the grain seem useful, to help shade black-and-white thinking with a bit of grey. Occasionally the actions of tech companies do have positive effects.

sandworm101 8y ago

"The scooter technician gig didn’t exist a little more than a year ago. It’s an example of how shifts in business models, social norms and consumer habits spurred by startups can spawn new kinds of work, defying predictions that new technologies will destroy more jobs than they create." Ya... people riding scooters once drove expensive cars fixed by mechanics earning far more than 22$/hour. Manpower is the only real cost in any organization. So any new tech or business model that is cheaper than an old system (ie scooters instead of taxis) almost certainly means someone somewhere is earning less money than under the old scheme.

Angostura 8y ago

> It’s an example of how shifts in business models, social norms and consumer habits spurred by startups can spawn new kinds of work, defying predictions that new technologies will destroy more jobs than they create. Hands up everyone who predicted that scooter companies would destroy jobs. No-one? thought not.

ConfusedDog 8y ago

I like the idea, but there are a lot of issues apparently. I went to visit a friend in Baltimore, and he told me rental scooters are being vandalized all the time for no reason. I also read an article that the accident rate and ER visits due to scooters went really high with this business. No idea if it's the quality of the scooters or what. I haven't tried one yet myself. I want to after this insurance season...

okmokmz 8y ago
>he told me rental scooters are being vandalized all the time for no reason The bikes in Seattle get vandalized/destroyed all the time. People seem to enjoy throwing them into the sound
tick_tock_tick 8y ago
When they first showed up in SF people chucked dozens of em right into the bay.
- ConfusedDog 8y ago
  Those people are crazy... acting like territorial animals...
stallmanite 8y ago
Must be the local culture. In East Lansing a lot of the students tend to be destructive in general but everybody seems to treat the Bird and Line scooters with respect. Not sure why.

jressey 8y ago

Ironically, as a couple assholes buzzed by me today on the sidewalk in Atlanta, I imagined one of the people running me over and the scooter company fighting to eschew liability once I made a legal claim. People are gonna die on these things and kill other people if they haven't already. These scooters have no place in my city.

kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
Would it be okay if they were required to drive in bike lanes? I think public safety concerns such as the ones you raised are very important, but I feel slightly baffled at what I perceive as an almost curmudgeonly, visceral dislike for them :(
- wavefunction 8y ago
  I assume they would be required to use bike lanes in most American cities. I am concerned about the liability involved. A local journalist here in Austin was hit by a drunk guy on a scooter badly enough to dent her driver-side door and render the door inoperative. Then he claimed she hit him. His auto insurance, if he has any doesn't cover his usage of electric scooters. So she was facing a liability for fixing the car, perhaps some sort of insurance fraud on his part, AND her insurance was going to list an incidence of her "striking a pedestrian." Fortunately she found out there was some CCTV footage that exonerated her, but all of that just so some drunk a--hole can zoom around on a scooter and the scooter companies make money?
  - tick_tock_tick 8y ago
    It sounds like it's the exact same situation as if they owned their own scooter or bike and crashed into the car.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 8y ago
    How does it typically work if I am riding my own bike or scooter and something like this accident happened? Most people don't carry liability insurance for their bicycles, skateboards etc.

JustSomeNobody 8y ago

A shame $45K/year only "helps" him pay his rent. Edit: Article says he paid in full.

markovbot 8y ago

>Forbidden >You don't have permission to access /business/article/Scooter-mechanic-once-homeless-says-cheap-rides-13448873.php on this server. is anyone else getting this 403 error? EDIT: Comment is at -1 now and i'm still getting the error. Could the downvoters comment on why this comment is worthy of downvotes?