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Doesn't seem like a very fair or intelligent article. It basically says Uber is doing nothing good and just exploiting workers, but if I wrote an Uber clone app

by lnanek2 12y ago

Doesn't seem like a very fair or intelligent article. It basically says Uber is doing nothing good and just exploiting workers, but if I wrote an Uber clone app, no one would download it, or even hear about it. Then if someone did download it there would be only one or two drivers. Then if they traveled to another city and opened the app there would be no drivers at all. We developers can often write an app that is technically competent, but then it never pulls in the users. In the case of Uber, they not just have a successful app and brand that people know and download, but the app also needs to have a large network of drivers in it to provide good service. The vast majority of drivers I've ever had gave me their personal business card, but I never use them since I'd have to call and negotiate a time and a price - and the price they start at is often more than just booking them through Uber or SuperShuttle or whatever. So these guys aren't getting the fares on their own, Uber is clearly providing some benefit.

plorg 12y ago
It's not clear, though, that this benefit is positive. The article seems pretty clear on the fact that Uber has pulled a bait-and-switch, offering drivers a living wage only to drop their rates (and thus their wage payout) substantially once they had garnered the network effects you describe. It is precisely these network effects which are both benefiting Uber and working against the drivers. By training users to go to Uber for their ride-sharing needs, the drivers now have to also use Uber if they want to get passengers. Sure, you have a bunch of individual drivers' business cards, but you're probably _less_ likely to get a ride from any of those drivers than if Uber had never wrangled them in the first place. Meanwhile, the drivers have invested a good deal of money and effort into an industry in which they may not have chosen to participate if Uber hadn't recruited them.

by lnanek2 12y ago

plorg 12y ago

It's not clear, though, that this benefit is positive. The article seems pretty clear on the fact that Uber has pulled a bait-and-switch, offering drivers a living wage only to drop their rates (and thus their wage payout) substantially once they had garnered the network effects you describe. It is precisely these network effects which are both benefiting Uber and working against the drivers. By training users to go to Uber for their ride-sharing needs, the drivers now have to also use Uber if they want to get passengers. Sure, you have a bunch of individual drivers' business cards, but you're probably _less_ likely to get a ride from any of those drivers than if Uber had never wrangled them in the first place. Meanwhile, the drivers have invested a good deal of money and effort into an industry in which they may not have chosen to participate if Uber hadn't recruited them.