I’m a software engineer at Uber and I’m voting against Prop 22 | Hacker News Reader

I’m a software engineer at Uber and I’m voting against Prop 22

techcrunch.com

33 pointsdguo14 comments

I’ll wager that his manager and a security guard carrying a cardboard box are heading towards his cubicle right now...

I'm one that believes that we need to unlink health care, child care and sick leave from the jobs we have. It's unfair that just because you have the right job you can get those benefits. I also think that Uber and the like, by passing prop 22, are trying to short circuit the system so they can profit from not having to give benefits to workers by having society pick up the costs of not providing benefits. They need to disrupt the benefits system too and figure out a way for workers to work and get what they need.

Prop 22 is the wrong way to do it. It should not pass.

I really respect and support this guy, but I also totally support Uber for inevitably firing him.

I'd love to see Uber or a competitor embrace the "independent contractors" idea and let drivers and riders bid for service.

I think it's possible to implement this in a user friendly fashion. Enter your destination and your max spend, maybe minimum driver rating, drivers bid for the fare. Let "surge pricing" and basic fares actually be determined by market forces rather than Ubers algorithm.

I believe "Sidecar" did this. They ultimately failed and I would imagine the user experience of having to choose and filter prices from a list for a something relatively time sensitive (a ride) to have contributed.

Ultimately it'd just boil down to a button that finds the lowest price at the highest rating (of the driver) and the closest distance to me, which is what you get with the current services.

How does bidding matter at all as far as the employee/employer relationship in this context? It'd make more sense to argue that reinvesting in things like self-driving cars is what breaks the dynamic because the "platform" is withholding revenue from drivers to expand in a way completely unrelated to their work.

When their work and pay are dictated by the platform, they are not independent of it, and are de facto employees.

Making the work they do and their pay something they decide and just obtain via the platform (just facilitated by it) then they’re actually independent of it.

Except that their work isn't dependent on the platform, they can swap nearly instantly between Uber and any other available gig platform since the requirement for all of them is simply to have a car. Pay is the same basic story, when one delivery platform isn't paying enough the attentive drivers simply hop to another platform.

I don't think this works for two reasons. First you're incentivizing the wrong behavior, which would be to complete the ride as fast as possible rather than completing it safely. The second is that it breaks down in small economies where people can easily price fix.

Aren't Uber/Lyft/food delivery gig-economy folks already encouraged to complete the ride (or delivery) as fast as possible?

I agree smaller economies could be a problem, but I'm not sure there's a better solution. A small economy is unlikely to have taxi services at all. Small economies are usually geographically smaller meaning taxis will have to compete against just walking or biking.

Adding driver reviews to your bid helps discourage unsafe driving. All transportations services (except public transit) are encouraged to complete rides as fast as possible to then get the next ride.

what are the chances that this person isn't fired?

Perhaps he'll be too in the spotlight for actually speaking out against his employer's poor labor practices that that is protecting him? Or he just knew he was quitting anyways or already had something lined up.

presumably he'll be put on a PIP and fired for "unrelated reasons" several months after the hubbub dies down.

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