5 ms·

It's a bit terrifying that people on twitter seem to think this is an intentional product decision rather than a bug plus shitty automated support with no human

by strken 5y ago

It's a bit terrifying that people on twitter seem to think this is an intentional product decision rather than a bug plus shitty automated support with no human in the loop. I guess if you keep setting OKRs like "5% lower support call volume" for years then at some point your reputational risk goes up because you've made it impossible to contact an actual human being.

petee 5y ago
Uber, Doordash, and the like have consistently played games with payments, fees, and tips; an intentional decision would just be par for the course, to see how much you can get away with and toe the line before enough people complain.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Complaining will do nothing. They will continue this behavior until they're forced to change through regulation.
  - Finnucane 5y ago
    Not using them is better than complaining.
    - tharkun__ 5y ago
      Maybe it's better than complaining. Is it better than regulation? I have never used Uber, doordash or anything like these. On purpose. Even when given free Uber eats vouchers at work (covid...). They still seem to be winning.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
acdha 5y ago
Even if you ignore Uber’s history of screwing people and lying about it, if this is a bug the decision not to test core software and have ineffective support is an intentional product decision. Senior management sets the structures which make things like this a predictable outcome.
crooked-v 5y ago
"Shitty automated support with no human in the loop" is an intentional product decision, and so are the consequences of it.
malwarebytess 5y ago
Why is it terrifying? It's accurate. A bug plus shitty automated support with no human in the loop is an intentional product decision. They could have humans in the loop. They could have human support. They could make bugs like this more easily remediable. But they don't. On purpose. To the extent that their "fare review process" and the app failed. Now it's going to be fixed by some PR person. Because it's still cheaper, apparently, than the alternative design decisions. This outcome is a result of their intentional product decisions.
- derefr 5y ago
  Yes, but that's still a different thing than "a human sat down and decided that there would be trips that would cost the driver money to run; and that Uber wouldn't announce this change." One is an emergent consequence — the "banality of evil", a property of the corporation itself. The other is active malfeasance — something that's not so much even about the corporation as about an individual horrible person in a decision-making role, where the correct move for customers/employees is to boycott the decision-maker, rather than the company; and where the correct move for the company is to fire the decision-maker, and distance themselves from them as much as possible. (Unless it keeps happening with different people in the same company, at which point it becomes a thing about the company's culture.)
  - Analemma_ 5y ago
    Businesses deliberately plan for and rely on people like you making that distinction, even though you shouldn’t. Why should it matter? The consumer is fucked either way.
    - derefr 5y ago
      For the same reason that if some kind of Cordyceps-like brain-parasite were to infect a person and make them murder people, that wouldn't be that person's fault. Especially if the brain parasite could be removed, reverting their personality to normal. I wouldn't hold that against the person going forward (unless they for some reason actively pursued further brain-parasite infections as a general preference.) Companies can be evil on a structural level. But also, companies that aren't evil on a structural level, can be parasitized by evil individuals. Unless the company actively pursues hiring evil individuals, why would you hold the latter against them? The point of companies having reputations is to predict what they'll do, and thereby trade with companies for which trade with them will predictably be positive-sum, and avoid trade with companies that would predictably be zero-sum or negative-sum. A company itself being evil on a structural level, predicts that in the future it will do many zero- or negative-sum things, regardless of employee turnover. A company that is not evil on a structural level, hiring one evil individual, who does an evil thing and then gets fired, doesn't predict any future evil behavior from the company.
eklitzke 5y ago
Bugs like this happen sometimes. I used to work at Uber, here is what happens with bugs like this: - Some engineer will get paged, look at the incident, and eventually the root cause of the bug will be found. - The root cause of the bug will be fixed to prevent it from happening on new trips, new fare calc tests will be added, etc. - Engineers will identify which commit introduced the bug and which dates/trips are possible affected. - Someone will run a batch job that recalculates fares for all of the trips that might be affected, and payments will be made to any drivers who were underpaid. The time this takes from when an engineer is first notified to when all trip fares are recalculated and drivers are paid out varies based on the complexity of the bug, but in most cases this would take no more than a few days. The time it takes for an issue like this to be notified to engineering also varies on the complexity of the bug, it's anywhere from within an hour of when bad code is released to many months for the most subtle bugs. A lot of the people in the comments here are reacting negatively to the fact that support tickets are partially automated. However, there are a few things to note. The first is that fare calculation code is very complicated, it involves lots of geofence calculations (e.g. to detect toll roads or bridges) and in some cases there are other location-dependent rules, various promotions may be running, etc. The only people at Uber who are qualified to determine whether or not there is a fare calculation bug are the engineers who actually work on fare calculation code. Sometimes there are obvious errors (like in this example), but in most cases the fare calculation bugs are subtle enough that support agents wouldn't actually be able to verify if the code is wrong. Even if the support person could tell there was an error (as in this example) the best they could do would be to escalate the issue to engineering and wait for a fare calc engineer to investigate. Additionally, besides support tickets there are a lot of other monitoring systems that look for abnormal deviations in number of trips happening, fares, etc. If there is a major bug affecting something like fare calculation it will show up in these metrics and someone will investigate. I don't work at Uber anymore so I don't know the specifics of how this bug was handled. But in general I would say that bugs do happen sometimes, and Uber has policies that seem reasonable (to me) for detecting the problems and correcting any erroneous payments made.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  And, on average, how many drivers/passengers are permabanned before any engineer is paged? It might be a "bug' from uber's perspective. For we mortals they interfere with basic economic functions. When my grocery store overcharges me for something they can can push a fix to me within seconds. The customer service person doesnt need an engineer to see that potatoes shouldnt cost that much. And they are empowered to correct the error immediately, with cash in hand if necessary. Nobody at uber has such power.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by strken 5y ago

petee 5y ago

Uber, Doordash, and the like have consistently played games with payments, fees, and tips; an intentional decision would just be par for the course, to see how much you can get away with and toe the line before enough people complain.

encryptluks2 5y ago
Complaining will do nothing. They will continue this behavior until they're forced to change through regulation.
- Finnucane 5y ago
  Not using them is better than complaining.
  - tharkun__ 5y ago
    Maybe it's better than complaining. Is it better than regulation? I have never used Uber, doordash or anything like these. On purpose. Even when given free Uber eats vouchers at work (covid...). They still seem to be winning.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

acdha 5y ago

Even if you ignore Uber’s history of screwing people and lying about it, if this is a bug the decision not to test core software and have ineffective support is an intentional product decision. Senior management sets the structures which make things like this a predictable outcome.

crooked-v 5y ago

"Shitty automated support with no human in the loop" is an intentional product decision, and so are the consequences of it.

malwarebytess 5y ago

Why is it terrifying? It's accurate. A bug plus shitty automated support with no human in the loop is an intentional product decision. They could have humans in the loop. They could have human support. They could make bugs like this more easily remediable. But they don't. On purpose. To the extent that their "fare review process" and the app failed. Now it's going to be fixed by some PR person. Because it's still cheaper, apparently, than the alternative design decisions. This outcome is a result of their intentional product decisions.

derefr 5y ago
Yes, but that's still a different thing than "a human sat down and decided that there would be trips that would cost the driver money to run; and that Uber wouldn't announce this change." One is an emergent consequence — the "banality of evil", a property of the corporation itself. The other is active malfeasance — something that's not so much even about the corporation as about an individual horrible person in a decision-making role, where the correct move for customers/employees is to boycott the decision-maker, rather than the company; and where the correct move for the company is to fire the decision-maker, and distance themselves from them as much as possible. (Unless it keeps happening with different people in the same company, at which point it becomes a thing about the company's culture.)
- Analemma_ 5y ago
  Businesses deliberately plan for and rely on people like you making that distinction, even though you shouldn’t. Why should it matter? The consumer is fucked either way.
  - derefr 5y ago
    For the same reason that if some kind of Cordyceps-like brain-parasite were to infect a person and make them murder people, that wouldn't be that person's fault. Especially if the brain parasite could be removed, reverting their personality to normal. I wouldn't hold that against the person going forward (unless they for some reason actively pursued further brain-parasite infections as a general preference.) Companies can be evil on a structural level. But also, companies that aren't evil on a structural level, can be parasitized by evil individuals. Unless the company actively pursues hiring evil individuals, why would you hold the latter against them? The point of companies having reputations is to predict what they'll do, and thereby trade with companies for which trade with them will predictably be positive-sum, and avoid trade with companies that would predictably be zero-sum or negative-sum. A company itself being evil on a structural level, predicts that in the future it will do many zero- or negative-sum things, regardless of employee turnover. A company that is not evil on a structural level, hiring one evil individual, who does an evil thing and then gets fired, doesn't predict any future evil behavior from the company.

eklitzke 5y ago

Bugs like this happen sometimes. I used to work at Uber, here is what happens with bugs like this: - Some engineer will get paged, look at the incident, and eventually the root cause of the bug will be found. - The root cause of the bug will be fixed to prevent it from happening on new trips, new fare calc tests will be added, etc. - Engineers will identify which commit introduced the bug and which dates/trips are possible affected. - Someone will run a batch job that recalculates fares for all of the trips that might be affected, and payments will be made to any drivers who were underpaid. The time this takes from when an engineer is first notified to when all trip fares are recalculated and drivers are paid out varies based on the complexity of the bug, but in most cases this would take no more than a few days. The time it takes for an issue like this to be notified to engineering also varies on the complexity of the bug, it's anywhere from within an hour of when bad code is released to many months for the most subtle bugs. A lot of the people in the comments here are reacting negatively to the fact that support tickets are partially automated. However, there are a few things to note. The first is that fare calculation code is very complicated, it involves lots of geofence calculations (e.g. to detect toll roads or bridges) and in some cases there are other location-dependent rules, various promotions may be running, etc. The only people at Uber who are qualified to determine whether or not there is a fare calculation bug are the engineers who actually work on fare calculation code. Sometimes there are obvious errors (like in this example), but in most cases the fare calculation bugs are subtle enough that support agents wouldn't actually be able to verify if the code is wrong. Even if the support person could tell there was an error (as in this example) the best they could do would be to escalate the issue to engineering and wait for a fare calc engineer to investigate. Additionally, besides support tickets there are a lot of other monitoring systems that look for abnormal deviations in number of trips happening, fares, etc. If there is a major bug affecting something like fare calculation it will show up in these metrics and someone will investigate. I don't work at Uber anymore so I don't know the specifics of how this bug was handled. But in general I would say that bugs do happen sometimes, and Uber has policies that seem reasonable (to me) for detecting the problems and correcting any erroneous payments made.

sandworm101 5y ago
And, on average, how many drivers/passengers are permabanned before any engineer is paged? It might be a "bug' from uber's perspective. For we mortals they interfere with basic economic functions. When my grocery store overcharges me for something they can can push a fix to me within seconds. The customer service person doesnt need an engineer to see that potatoes shouldnt cost that much. And they are empowered to correct the error immediately, with cash in hand if necessary. Nobody at uber has such power.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]