4 ms·

> look at the brain drain claim instead. I could maybe buy that argument if they were facing technical/scaling challenges, but that’s not the case Eh, yes and

by lhorie 5y ago

> look at the brain drain claim instead. I could maybe buy that argument if they were facing technical/scaling challenges, but that’s not the case Eh, yes and no. There's that famous thread about how they rewrote the iOS app and managed to pull it off by what can only be described as a sheer miracle. That was a legit technical/scaling issue. But also, the first round of layoffs under Dara came largely because there were too many teams spending time on projects of dubious ROI (there was even an internal joke about how people would build things first and only then write the RFC for it...) and eng spending was kinda out of control. Layoffs were extremely demoralizing to be sure, but honestly, employees are over it now and the internal atmosphere is back to business as usual. Recall that pre-pandemic Uber had projections to reach profitability by EOY 2020. Personally I think it's a bit weird to single out Uber as having difficulty retaining drivers when I see reports of labor shortages across just about every service industry. On the rider side, people complain about prices going up, but again, this is happening across the board due to the inflation spike (and doubly so for Uber due to its supply/demand bound elastic pricing structure). Sooner or later, I think the economy is bound to return to business-as-usual with their bosses shortchanging minimum wage employees and people scrambling to pay for bills flocking to Uber for extra cash. </two-cents>

wayoutthere 5y ago
What happened is that during the pandemic when fares were at the bottom, drivers went out and got other skills. That’s the biggest reason for inflation too IMO: the US economy was being held back by a shortage of skilled workers. Now that workers have acquired more skills, low wage jobs have fewer people to hire and the economy is more productive. If you want to put the brakes on inflation, under the current fed system that means raising interest rates to slow investment so those there are fewer higher-skill jobs being created and more low-skill ones. Under MMT it means raising taxes on the top earners. Someone has to be the loser though.
- filoleg 5y ago
  >What happened is that during the pandemic when fares were at the bottom I don't know where you tried using Uber during the pandemic, but from many of my attempts to use it in Seattle, Cincinatti, and ATL during the pandemic, I had the opposite experience. Prices were simply off the charts. Prices seem to have been returning more to normal recently (while still being at least 50% higher than pre-pandemic). But during the last year, it was total hell. A ride that would typically take $12 was closer to $30+ (both Lyft and Uber btw). A ride from Seattle to Redmond, which normally would cost around $27-31, was in the range of $55+. Maybe I am misunderstanding your comment about fares being at the bottom, but from what I saw myself, the fares during the pandemic in 2020 were at their sky high.
  - lhorie 5y ago
    My understanding of the argument is that the way Uber's elastic pricing works means that once supply reaches some critical upper limit, there's so much competition among drivers that the payoff for any individual driver gets too low and they are forced to go elsewhere. Personally, I don't think the pandemic timelines align well enough to support the idea that this is specific to the pandemic (though I do agree with it being a thing outside of the scope of the pandemic). IMHO, there was a period of time when prices tanked because rider demand cratered but drivers were still relying on Uber as their safety net, but as the pandemic went on, drivers - especially the full-time ones - were forced to find work elsewhere because there was simply no income to be made from Uber rides. This conversely meant that when riders started coming back, the driver supply was simply not there to match the resurgence in demand. The thing about Uber is that it's roughly equivalent to fast food worker type of work: for most people, it's not meant to be a long term career, but rather just a crutch to try to get onto the next rung in the ladder. If you are indeed going to do this sort of work full time forever even despite a market saturated with drivers, employers like McDonalds have much better propositions, e.g. in terms of job stability.
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    Ah yeah I meant “fares” as in number of riders. Rates were sky high but total trips were down so much the drivers weren’t making reliable money even at those rates. A lot of people sold their cars because they couldn’t afford the payment without Uber or did some training to get a better career. Nobody wants to drive a car for a living the rest of their life.
    - filoleg 5y ago
      Ah, makes much more sense, fully agreed then. The number of drivers was definitely on the low end, which resulted in waiting forever for a ride + increased fare prices.
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  This sounds like a cool story and a nice idealistic narrative, but do you have any evidence for it? It’s honestly the first I’ve heard of this even being a claim/trend.
  - wayoutthere 5y ago
    Just anecdotal; but the people I know who used to drive for Uber have desk jobs they do from home now. It’s a better quality of life; why would they go back to driving a car?
tayo42 5y ago
> there were too many teams spending time on projects of dubious ROI (there was even an internal joke about how people would build things first and only then write the RFC for it...) and eng spending was kinda out of control. Why do people feel the need to use work as their place for hobby projects and time wasting bs. I don't even care about wasting company money and time. Feel like it's disrespectful of co workers time when people are just off doing what ever dumb thing they feel is absolutely important
- lhorie 5y ago
  I'm not sure about other places, but at Uber specifically, it was a combination of explosive early growth (and subsequently teams finding themselves having to justify their continued employment) combined with the notion that "Uber scale" was really really big and required custom solutions (never mind that AWS scale actually is orders of magnitude bigger)
- omgwtfbbq 5y ago
  Because that's literally how you get promoted. Reimplement something in a new sexier language and add that to your promo packet
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  You seem to be under the impression that companies hire engineers to improve the product. My pet theory is that FANGUL/et al. really just poach as many engineers from the talent pool as possible - it’s cheaper to keep the smartest guys on payroll then inevitably buying a competitor for billions of dollars.

by lhorie 5y ago

wayoutthere 5y ago

What happened is that during the pandemic when fares were at the bottom, drivers went out and got other skills. That’s the biggest reason for inflation too IMO: the US economy was being held back by a shortage of skilled workers. Now that workers have acquired more skills, low wage jobs have fewer people to hire and the economy is more productive. If you want to put the brakes on inflation, under the current fed system that means raising interest rates to slow investment so those there are fewer higher-skill jobs being created and more low-skill ones. Under MMT it means raising taxes on the top earners. Someone has to be the loser though.

filoleg 5y ago
>What happened is that during the pandemic when fares were at the bottom I don't know where you tried using Uber during the pandemic, but from many of my attempts to use it in Seattle, Cincinatti, and ATL during the pandemic, I had the opposite experience. Prices were simply off the charts. Prices seem to have been returning more to normal recently (while still being at least 50% higher than pre-pandemic). But during the last year, it was total hell. A ride that would typically take $12 was closer to $30+ (both Lyft and Uber btw). A ride from Seattle to Redmond, which normally would cost around $27-31, was in the range of $55+. Maybe I am misunderstanding your comment about fares being at the bottom, but from what I saw myself, the fares during the pandemic in 2020 were at their sky high.
- lhorie 5y ago
  My understanding of the argument is that the way Uber's elastic pricing works means that once supply reaches some critical upper limit, there's so much competition among drivers that the payoff for any individual driver gets too low and they are forced to go elsewhere. Personally, I don't think the pandemic timelines align well enough to support the idea that this is specific to the pandemic (though I do agree with it being a thing outside of the scope of the pandemic). IMHO, there was a period of time when prices tanked because rider demand cratered but drivers were still relying on Uber as their safety net, but as the pandemic went on, drivers - especially the full-time ones - were forced to find work elsewhere because there was simply no income to be made from Uber rides. This conversely meant that when riders started coming back, the driver supply was simply not there to match the resurgence in demand. The thing about Uber is that it's roughly equivalent to fast food worker type of work: for most people, it's not meant to be a long term career, but rather just a crutch to try to get onto the next rung in the ladder. If you are indeed going to do this sort of work full time forever even despite a market saturated with drivers, employers like McDonalds have much better propositions, e.g. in terms of job stability.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  Ah yeah I meant “fares” as in number of riders. Rates were sky high but total trips were down so much the drivers weren’t making reliable money even at those rates. A lot of people sold their cars because they couldn’t afford the payment without Uber or did some training to get a better career. Nobody wants to drive a car for a living the rest of their life.
  - filoleg 5y ago
    Ah, makes much more sense, fully agreed then. The number of drivers was definitely on the low end, which resulted in waiting forever for a ride + increased fare prices.
TechBro8615 5y ago
This sounds like a cool story and a nice idealistic narrative, but do you have any evidence for it? It’s honestly the first I’ve heard of this even being a claim/trend.
- wayoutthere 5y ago
  Just anecdotal; but the people I know who used to drive for Uber have desk jobs they do from home now. It’s a better quality of life; why would they go back to driving a car?

tayo42 5y ago

> there were too many teams spending time on projects of dubious ROI (there was even an internal joke about how people would build things first and only then write the RFC for it...) and eng spending was kinda out of control. Why do people feel the need to use work as their place for hobby projects and time wasting bs. I don't even care about wasting company money and time. Feel like it's disrespectful of co workers time when people are just off doing what ever dumb thing they feel is absolutely important

lhorie 5y ago
I'm not sure about other places, but at Uber specifically, it was a combination of explosive early growth (and subsequently teams finding themselves having to justify their continued employment) combined with the notion that "Uber scale" was really really big and required custom solutions (never mind that AWS scale actually is orders of magnitude bigger)
omgwtfbbq 5y ago
Because that's literally how you get promoted. Reimplement something in a new sexier language and add that to your promo packet
jazzyjackson 5y ago
You seem to be under the impression that companies hire engineers to improve the product. My pet theory is that FANGUL/et al. really just poach as many engineers from the talent pool as possible - it’s cheaper to keep the smartest guys on payroll then inevitably buying a competitor for billions of dollars.