5 ms·

Why do we dislike Uber? Lets go through the links. 1) Stuff about the CEO's personal life. 2) CEO wants to automate business processes. Those of us in tech wo

Why do we dislike Uber? Lets go through the links. 1) Stuff about the CEO's personal life. 2) CEO wants to automate business processes. Those of us in tech would never consider replacing humans with machines, right? 3) Trying to compete for workers. (Didn't we hate Apple/Google for agreeing not to do this?) 4) We love Peter Thiel and he hates it. 5-7) A few Uber drivers are crazy (Uber is helping the cops). Note that if most of these incidents happened in a taxi, the cops would have little info unless the passenger remembered a license #. 8) Standard french advertising in France. 9) Standard PR. 10) Exec discusses hiring journalists to do journalism to journalists. You know, digging up stuff about their personal life, kind of like (1) on this list. Are these the real justifications? Or are we simply engaging in internet mobbing because we get to feel self righteous, and the CEO is kind of a jerk? Disclaimer: I've used Uber maybe 3-4x in my life and was happy every time. Lyft rejected my CC. I use autowale.in whenever I can't flag one off the street.

CaptainZapp 12y ago
looking at your comment history you seem emotionally highly invested into a company, which according to your claim, you have used 3x4 times in your life.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  I have no idea why you believe I'm "emotionally highly invested" in Uber - could you explain? I don't like mob behavior and intellectual dishonesty. There has been a lot of it on HN lately which drives me to comment (also, due to an injury, I have way too much time on my hands).
  - CaptainZapp 12y ago
    Thanks for asking. I basically refer to your comments in which you quite vehemently defend the companies extremely shady tactics. As for mob behavior, which apparently disturbs you so much. This may, or may not be true. personally, I don't buy it. Let's look at your original comment to which I replied and let's try to rephrase the points you make. 1) Stuff about the CEO's personal life. Misogynistic comments (Boob-er) to a magazine has nothing whatsoever to do with the CEOs private life. The statements where not made at a private function, but to a mass market publication. 2) CEO wants to automate business processes. Those of us in tech would never consider replacing humans with machines, right? The point here is not that the CEO wants to automate business processes, but the disdain and disregard that he shows for his employees. Your phrasing of this point is, at best, highly disingenuous. 3) Trying to compete for workers. (Didn't we hate Apple/Google for agreeing not to do this?) The point, as you are probably very well aware, is not competing for workers, but the methods used to do that. The tech company violation of anti trust laws, while also unethical, has pretty much nothing to do with Ubers shady tactics in this context. 5-7) A few Uber drivers are crazy (Uber is helping the cops). Note that if most of these incidents happened in a taxi, the cops would have little info unless the passenger remembered a license #. Uber helps the cops? I'm sure they do if the cops have a warrant, since, in this case, there's not much choice anyway. for the rest we only have the word of Ubers PR Departments word on this Interestingly that's always the same standard broken record: "We're looking into it, actively support the investigation and we have deactivated the partner from the Uber platform" The problem is that in my opinion they come over as a bunch of liars in their PR, even in the not very trustworthy field of public relations. Hiring drivers, whom's background check must have failed, if done seriously, or smearing the victims of those incidents (again, in a partially very misogynist fashion) doesn't help much either. 8) Standard french advertising in France. I get it you where never in France. Hiring hookers as driver is not a French standard advertising practice. 9) Standard PR. maybe, but again with extremely shady tactics applied (and not very well executed, either) 10) Exec discusses hiring journalists to do journalism to journalists. You know, digging up stuff about their personal life, kind of like (1) on this list. Sounds more like a Scientology black ops towards critics, than a standard journalistic tactic. What you glossed over is their abuse of private data if it suits their interest. Which, again in my opinion, is actually worse than the idea to smear a journalist and go after her family. Put this reply of yours together with your comment history and applying Occam's razor you come over as an Uber shill and not as a person who hates mob mentality and has too much time on his had. But that's just my opinion.
comrh 12y ago
There is plenty of very real, legitimate criticism. - http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2014/07/28/uber-driver-charged-with-sexually-assaulting-passenger-in-d-c/ http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2014/07/28... - http://www.cnet.com/news/uber-disputes-kidnapping-claims/ http://www.cnet.com/news/uber-disputes-kidnapping-claims/
moab 12y ago
I feel like you're playing the devil's advocate here. Despite the recent witch-hunt surrounded the company lately (which I won't try to defend), you can't deny the fact that they've engaged in some fairly unscrupulous business tactics in order to 1) acquire drivers from competing ride-sharing services, and 2) significantly drop wages (primarily due to competition in cities with multiple ride-sharing services) at the cost of workers pulling fairly inhuman hours. The latter point is not just Uber's problem, but the ride-sharing industry's as a whole. I point it out mainly to argue that as the leader in the industry, Uber has at least some obligation to treat the pawns on the board a little better. To succinctly answer your question: there are real justifications, and it's a combination of Uber's business tactics, and the way they're treating their human capital.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  I'm simply pointing out more or less nonsensical arguments and mob behavior. The Uber CEO may be an objectivist jerk, but that doesn't mean everything he does is evil. 2) significantly drop wages (primarily due to competition in cities with multiple ride-sharing services)... Companies competing for workers drops wages? That's an interesting economic theory. I guess the Uber people who were hiring lyft cars in order to try and recruit the driver were saying "come join Uber, we'll pay you less?" I'm confused here.
  - mrow84 12y ago
    >> significantly drop wages (primarily due to competition in cities with multiple ride-sharing services) > Companies competing for workers drops wages? I think that moab's point was that competition between ride-sharing companies lowers prices, and one of the places those price reductions come from is a reduction in worker's wages.
    - moab 12y ago
      Yup - thanks for phrasing that better :) Price reduction has played out its tune in tech before - at cost pricing was how Amazon won (and continues to have a chokehold over e-commerce). At Amazon, however, employees from the warehouse stockers to their receptionists are under contract and regulation, and get guaranteed wages for reasonable hours. Compare this to Uber where there's basically a massive disparity between the number of effective workers (drivers + employees) and the number of actual 'employees'. As a bystander, I'm worried about the humans involved in this bet between Uber/Lyft and co, and hope they start finding ways to either pull drivers into the company itself, or offer better guarantees or securities for the drivers. The first company to do this will probably get a ton of good press, and will also up the ante on consumer perception of ridesharing in general (it's great, but feels 'evil').
downandout 12y ago
Re: 4, you forgot to mention that Peter Thiel is an investor in their competitor, Lyft. He's not exactly being altruistic.
physcab 12y ago
Why do I dislike Uber? 1) They readily treat their drivers like second-class citizens (I was one of them at one point in time) 2) They use "Special Promotion" as a euphemism for "this wage cut is coming in 2 months, you better start shifting your spending habits" 3) In aggregate, their public persona is one of douche-baggery
- 3beard 12y ago
  > They readily treat their drivers like second-class citizens Sure, but that is pretty much par for the course for any low-education job anywhere in the world. Can't blame Uber for being like the rest.
  - bryanlarsen 12y ago
    Driving for Uber also requires a significant capital investment and risk assumption, so wages could be expected to be significantly higher than the typical low-education job.
    - jack-r-abbit 12y ago
      Are people buying cars just to be an Uber driver? Or are people seeing an opportunity to make a little money using the car they already own? If people are buying cars just to be a driver, then I would say that is their own fault for making a bad investment.
      - bryanlarsen 12y ago
        Whether or not they owned the car previously or not, they are still investing that capital into the business. If they're driving full time with Uber they'll have to replace that car in a couple of years or so, instead of the ~15 years or so of life you can expect out of a modern car.
alexqgb 12y ago
10) Exec discusses hiring journalists to do journalism to journalists. You know, digging up stuff about their personal life, kind of like (1) on this list. I'm sorry, but you're flat out wrong about this, You're also hilariously ignorant about the most basic aspects of journalistic ethics. The million dollar "opposition research" effort that BuzzFeedBen reported on is NOT journalism. Do journalists dig up dirt? Yes. Do they publish it? You bet. But here's the critical difference: The do it under their own names, using bylines at the very top of the page. Contrast that with what the asshat from Uber said when he was asked if his plan to personally violate unfriendly journalists might backfire with, you know, actual journalists. What he said was "Nobody will ever know it was us". Now I realize that sound ethical reasoning is not your strong suit. I mean, your comment history speaks for itself. But surely, even you can tell the difference between publishing information that's in the public interest under a proper byline and conducting personal vendettas on the company dime then doing everything you can to conceal your tracks. I mean, this is not a subtle distinction. In truth, this is the difference between ethical and wildly unethical, between acceptable and borderline criminal, between journalism and manifestly not journalism. Further down this thread you have the temerity to upbraid others for "intellectual dishonesty". I promise you, dude, getting this personal is not a game you are in any shape to play. If you try, you will lose. And as an aside, I'm glad to see that others are also calling you out for the dishonesty in the way you've framed (read: misrepresented) a number of the issues you listed. I won't tell you to quit while you're ahead because you are not ahead. But maybe consider quitting before you fall even further behind.
- Centigonal 12y ago
  Your points are totally valid, and I agree with you insomuch that I think the comment you replied to is a poorly-informed work of reductionism, but you're being very abrasive yourself as well. You practically gave your parent commenter a verbal beat-down over his grasp of journalistic ethics. The guy said a bunch of mostly wrong things, but he made a few good points, too!
  - alexqgb 12y ago
    Sorry. For what it's worth, it wasn't his poor grasp of journalistic ethics that attracted my opprobrium. The sharply negative reaction was prompted by the general dishonesty of his remarks and specifically his tendency to reframe the remarks of others in a way that egregiously misconstrued or misrepresented what they had to say.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
commentzorro 12y ago
> 1) Stuff about the CEO's personal life. You need to get over this. It is absolutely ABSOLUTELY valid to boycott, speak negatively about, and/or hate a company for the personal life and actions of any CEO, board member, or public facing employee of any company!
m_t 12y ago
8) Standard french advertising in France. Guy doesn't live in France or is highly delusional.

CaptainZapp 12y ago

looking at your comment history you seem emotionally highly invested into a company, which according to your claim, you have used 3x4 times in your life.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
I have no idea why you believe I'm "emotionally highly invested" in Uber - could you explain? I don't like mob behavior and intellectual dishonesty. There has been a lot of it on HN lately which drives me to comment (also, due to an injury, I have way too much time on my hands).
- CaptainZapp 12y ago
  Thanks for asking. I basically refer to your comments in which you quite vehemently defend the companies extremely shady tactics. As for mob behavior, which apparently disturbs you so much. This may, or may not be true. personally, I don't buy it. Let's look at your original comment to which I replied and let's try to rephrase the points you make. 1) Stuff about the CEO's personal life. Misogynistic comments (Boob-er) to a magazine has nothing whatsoever to do with the CEOs private life. The statements where not made at a private function, but to a mass market publication. 2) CEO wants to automate business processes. Those of us in tech would never consider replacing humans with machines, right? The point here is not that the CEO wants to automate business processes, but the disdain and disregard that he shows for his employees. Your phrasing of this point is, at best, highly disingenuous. 3) Trying to compete for workers. (Didn't we hate Apple/Google for agreeing not to do this?) The point, as you are probably very well aware, is not competing for workers, but the methods used to do that. The tech company violation of anti trust laws, while also unethical, has pretty much nothing to do with Ubers shady tactics in this context. 5-7) A few Uber drivers are crazy (Uber is helping the cops). Note that if most of these incidents happened in a taxi, the cops would have little info unless the passenger remembered a license #. Uber helps the cops? I'm sure they do if the cops have a warrant, since, in this case, there's not much choice anyway. for the rest we only have the word of Ubers PR Departments word on this Interestingly that's always the same standard broken record: "We're looking into it, actively support the investigation and we have deactivated the partner from the Uber platform" The problem is that in my opinion they come over as a bunch of liars in their PR, even in the not very trustworthy field of public relations. Hiring drivers, whom's background check must have failed, if done seriously, or smearing the victims of those incidents (again, in a partially very misogynist fashion) doesn't help much either. 8) Standard french advertising in France. I get it you where never in France. Hiring hookers as driver is not a French standard advertising practice. 9) Standard PR. maybe, but again with extremely shady tactics applied (and not very well executed, either) 10) Exec discusses hiring journalists to do journalism to journalists. You know, digging up stuff about their personal life, kind of like (1) on this list. Sounds more like a Scientology black ops towards critics, than a standard journalistic tactic. What you glossed over is their abuse of private data if it suits their interest. Which, again in my opinion, is actually worse than the idea to smear a journalist and go after her family. Put this reply of yours together with your comment history and applying Occam's razor you come over as an Uber shill and not as a person who hates mob mentality and has too much time on his had. But that's just my opinion.

comrh 12y ago

There is plenty of very real, legitimate criticism. - http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2014/07/28/uber-driver-charged-with-sexually-assaulting-passenger-in-d-c/ http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/citydesk/2014/07/28... - http://www.cnet.com/news/uber-disputes-kidnapping-claims/ http://www.cnet.com/news/uber-disputes-kidnapping-claims/

moab 12y ago

I feel like you're playing the devil's advocate here. Despite the recent witch-hunt surrounded the company lately (which I won't try to defend), you can't deny the fact that they've engaged in some fairly unscrupulous business tactics in order to 1) acquire drivers from competing ride-sharing services, and 2) significantly drop wages (primarily due to competition in cities with multiple ride-sharing services) at the cost of workers pulling fairly inhuman hours. The latter point is not just Uber's problem, but the ride-sharing industry's as a whole. I point it out mainly to argue that as the leader in the industry, Uber has at least some obligation to treat the pawns on the board a little better. To succinctly answer your question: there are real justifications, and it's a combination of Uber's business tactics, and the way they're treating their human capital.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
I'm simply pointing out more or less nonsensical arguments and mob behavior. The Uber CEO may be an objectivist jerk, but that doesn't mean everything he does is evil. 2) significantly drop wages (primarily due to competition in cities with multiple ride-sharing services)... Companies competing for workers drops wages? That's an interesting economic theory. I guess the Uber people who were hiring lyft cars in order to try and recruit the driver were saying "come join Uber, we'll pay you less?" I'm confused here.
- mrow84 12y ago
  >> significantly drop wages (primarily due to competition in cities with multiple ride-sharing services) > Companies competing for workers drops wages? I think that moab's point was that competition between ride-sharing companies lowers prices, and one of the places those price reductions come from is a reduction in worker's wages.
  - moab 12y ago
    Yup - thanks for phrasing that better :) Price reduction has played out its tune in tech before - at cost pricing was how Amazon won (and continues to have a chokehold over e-commerce). At Amazon, however, employees from the warehouse stockers to their receptionists are under contract and regulation, and get guaranteed wages for reasonable hours. Compare this to Uber where there's basically a massive disparity between the number of effective workers (drivers + employees) and the number of actual 'employees'. As a bystander, I'm worried about the humans involved in this bet between Uber/Lyft and co, and hope they start finding ways to either pull drivers into the company itself, or offer better guarantees or securities for the drivers. The first company to do this will probably get a ton of good press, and will also up the ante on consumer perception of ridesharing in general (it's great, but feels 'evil').

downandout 12y ago

Re: 4, you forgot to mention that Peter Thiel is an investor in their competitor, Lyft. He's not exactly being altruistic.

physcab 12y ago

Why do I dislike Uber? 1) They readily treat their drivers like second-class citizens (I was one of them at one point in time) 2) They use "Special Promotion" as a euphemism for "this wage cut is coming in 2 months, you better start shifting your spending habits" 3) In aggregate, their public persona is one of douche-baggery

3beard 12y ago
> They readily treat their drivers like second-class citizens Sure, but that is pretty much par for the course for any low-education job anywhere in the world. Can't blame Uber for being like the rest.
- bryanlarsen 12y ago
  Driving for Uber also requires a significant capital investment and risk assumption, so wages could be expected to be significantly higher than the typical low-education job.
  - jack-r-abbit 12y ago
    Are people buying cars just to be an Uber driver? Or are people seeing an opportunity to make a little money using the car they already own? If people are buying cars just to be a driver, then I would say that is their own fault for making a bad investment.
    - bryanlarsen 12y ago
      Whether or not they owned the car previously or not, they are still investing that capital into the business. If they're driving full time with Uber they'll have to replace that car in a couple of years or so, instead of the ~15 years or so of life you can expect out of a modern car.

alexqgb 12y ago

10) Exec discusses hiring journalists to do journalism to journalists. You know, digging up stuff about their personal life, kind of like (1) on this list. I'm sorry, but you're flat out wrong about this, You're also hilariously ignorant about the most basic aspects of journalistic ethics. The million dollar "opposition research" effort that BuzzFeedBen reported on is NOT journalism. Do journalists dig up dirt? Yes. Do they publish it? You bet. But here's the critical difference: The do it under their own names, using bylines at the very top of the page. Contrast that with what the asshat from Uber said when he was asked if his plan to personally violate unfriendly journalists might backfire with, you know, actual journalists. What he said was "Nobody will ever know it was us". Now I realize that sound ethical reasoning is not your strong suit. I mean, your comment history speaks for itself. But surely, even you can tell the difference between publishing information that's in the public interest under a proper byline and conducting personal vendettas on the company dime then doing everything you can to conceal your tracks. I mean, this is not a subtle distinction. In truth, this is the difference between ethical and wildly unethical, between acceptable and borderline criminal, between journalism and manifestly not journalism. Further down this thread you have the temerity to upbraid others for "intellectual dishonesty". I promise you, dude, getting this personal is not a game you are in any shape to play. If you try, you will lose. And as an aside, I'm glad to see that others are also calling you out for the dishonesty in the way you've framed (read: misrepresented) a number of the issues you listed. I won't tell you to quit while you're ahead because you are not ahead. But maybe consider quitting before you fall even further behind.

Centigonal 12y ago
Your points are totally valid, and I agree with you insomuch that I think the comment you replied to is a poorly-informed work of reductionism, but you're being very abrasive yourself as well. You practically gave your parent commenter a verbal beat-down over his grasp of journalistic ethics. The guy said a bunch of mostly wrong things, but he made a few good points, too!
- alexqgb 12y ago
  Sorry. For what it's worth, it wasn't his poor grasp of journalistic ethics that attracted my opprobrium. The sharply negative reaction was prompted by the general dishonesty of his remarks and specifically his tendency to reframe the remarks of others in a way that egregiously misconstrued or misrepresented what they had to say.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

commentzorro 12y ago

> 1) Stuff about the CEO's personal life. You need to get over this. It is absolutely ABSOLUTELY valid to boycott, speak negatively about, and/or hate a company for the personal life and actions of any CEO, board member, or public facing employee of any company!

m_t 12y ago

8) Standard french advertising in France. Guy doesn't live in France or is highly delusional.