Where have all the Uber drivers gone? | Hacker News Reader

Where have all the Uber drivers gone?

washingtonpost.com

37 pointsdanso53 comments

It's a nice narrative, Uber drivers have disappeared because of some kind of enlightenment after close to a decade of operations, but it's likely just untrue.

Uber drivers have declined because Uber riders have declined dramatically due to the global pandemic. All that's happening now is that demand is starting to grow again as parts of the U.S. get vaccinated and the demand is growing faster than the rate at which Uber drivers are returning.

A few anecdotes here and there about a driver who quit Uber over wages or work conditions definitely sounds nice, and absolutely you can find sincere drivers who decided to call it quits over legitimate concerns, but it's a small minority and unlikely to really have much of an impact in the long run.

I had no idea this was an issue until my sister (a rider not a driver) mentioned it a couple days ago. It makes sense:

But he was exhausted from the daily stress of driving, after taking passengers on more than 15,000 trips over three years. And he was frustrated over being nickel-and-dimed, seeing his wages steadily decrease. The added risk of contracting the coronavirus was enough to convince him to log off in a panic in March 2020, quitting cold turkey after he dropped a passenger off near a hospital.

Now vaccinated and in search of good work, Gregg says he is in no hurry to return to Uber or Lyft. He said unemployment tided him over during the pandemic and a recent move to Modesto, Calif., from the San Francisco Bay area had lowered his cost of living.

I started following this subreddit which offers an interesting window into the trials and tribulations faced by Uber drivers:

https://old.reddit.com/r/uberdrivers/

I've been seeing a similar sentiment in the Kitchen Confidential subreddit:

https://old.reddit.com/r/KitchenConfidential/comments/n7v01b...

But the Empire is already striking back:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/05/08/republic...

Related: last week was the first time in years that I actually drove to the airport and parked because it was significantly cheaper than Uber or Lyft. What was a pretty standard $30-35 trip has now grown to close to $60, before tip. I'm really curious to see if ridership demand will actually meet these new prices.

Uber started out as Ubercab, a black limo-only service in SFBA, with the price of a generous tip already included in their all-in price. It was an extremely convenient, high-end service designed for the wealthy, and it wasn't for several years until they went downmarket with uberX and cannibalized their own high-margin thing.

I hope Uber Black (what the original Ubercab limo service got rebranded into) survives all this relatively unscathed. The high end service, nice cars, and surge pricing (meaning that you could always get a ride if you were willing to pay current top-of-market rates) was awesome for those of us not price sensitive.

uberX is cool too, but the high volume race to scale/race to the bottom made a pretty crap service for riders and a not great situation for drivers (although one that was better than not being able to be driving for Uber, otherwise drivers wouldn't have done it). It only continued to exist, in my view, because taxis and every other option sucked way, way, way more, and had for decades.

Of the last dozen times I took Uber Black or so, I had:

Drivers who didn't know where we were going and had to ask me directions (the airport -- seriously?), who got lost, missed turns, had trunks full of stuff so barely fit my not-especially-large luggage, drove very badly, didn't understand basic English...

Sure it's better than nothing, but... Not much better? Quality has gone down hill so much compared to a few years ago.

Used to love the original Uber. It reduced the complexity of having a car service or to call a proper towncar and still kept good quality and good drivers. UberX is almost as bad quality as normal taxis, just slightly better etiquette in most cases because you’ll be rating them after

I have no idea why you are getting down voted; you words couldn’t be more true.

I loved it when Uber was a high-end service. I was more than happy to pay extra for the knowledge that I was guaranteed a ride.

I remember using Uber to take my girlfriend to dinner, then straight to a club and then home again while it was raining on a Saturday night. An impossibility with a cab.

It’s a pity they traded quality for volume.

When you have that much VC money, you have to eventually go the volume route. I think their hope/plan was to not trade (Uber Black still exists, last I checked, 18 months ago when I still used Uber) but to expand and do both.

Time will tell if that actually worked, in practice.

The truth? In Massachusetts at least 70% of the drivers working for Uber and Lyft were doing it illegally thanks to the loose background check and because these people were willing to accept being ripped off by these companies. Once they tighten up the sign-up process and disabled those accounts, the ones left were mostly Americans and other people with work permit. What Uber and Lyft didn't expect was that these drivers are neither working 10-12 hours a day, nor willing to risk contracting the virus. They'd rather stay home and collect their checks from the government.

The perfect storm.

I just took Lyft rides in San Diego and Las Vegas. No problems.

I’ve been complaining about this for a few months now. It’s horrible. Used to be easy to get a ride. Or UberEATS. Now eats is unavailable basically every time I load the app and drivers are nowhere to be found for riding. Someone across the country anecdotally said it’s the same for them too. What is odd is Uber just had a record quarter and claimed more rides than ever.

Lyft has been better but it’s been downhill lately too.

Sounds pretty ideal to me. It wasn't worth it for the drivers, so some of them left, driving up wages and decreasing demand. Supply and demand working exactly as it should. I'm sure if more people start to take Ubers again, wages will go even higher and more drivers will sign on.

As long as drivers are aware of the total costs they are incurring driving for Uber, I think it is pretty awesome how it works.

I've been wondering about this too! With record high earnings for the remaining drivers, it seems like its more than enough to pay for the elevated prices of used cars (or your rental, if you are sneaky)

I wish someone would have the courage to ban Uber in NYC. Taxi and Limousine commission treated drivers far better than Uber.

Please no. Uber and Lyft are tremendously valuable in the outer boroughs and even some corners of Manhattan where you can't easily hail a cab.

Uh, are you sure? Most drivers do not own their own medallion meaning they're getting screwed over by someone who does.

Also, at least riding an Uber is a pleasant experience in NYC.

Labor benefits from operating within long standing regulated industry. Even if overly bureaucratic. More stability, less fluctuation in wages.

Passenger experience is fine, was speaking exclusively about the driver.

If that were true, no one would drive for uber, the free market would handle it.

This is why public infrastructure is super important.

They finally realized the fully loaded per mile cost of owning and operating a recent model car in city traffic? And that after subtracting that, they were making close to minimum wage?

I don't know how all cab services work, but my local cabbies have told me they split the fare 50/50 with the company. The company owns and maintains the car and the driver pays gas. With Uber they seem to take pretty close to half get to push all the vehicle expenses on the driver. It just doesn't make sense to me.

The idea being pushed is that you have more volume with Uber.

> With Uber they seem to take pretty close to half get to push all the vehicle expenses on the driver.

This is only seems to be true, depending on definitions, when the fares are low. On a dollar basis, it seems, from my quick googling, that Uber is taking much less than 50%.

This is why the “self driving is ubers end game zealots” never made any sense to me. They’re currently exploiting people and can’t figure out how to make money doing it. And exploiting people has been a sure fire business model for the entirety of human history.

Really don’t see how robots are the answer here. They have an army of people working for peanuts already!

The absolute enormous surge in carjackings can’t help.

Normally you have to go through the effort of getting somebody stop, unlock the doors and give you the car. Now you can get red carpet service for your carjacking.

Cities are basically helpless to handle it too because they’re always minors and the police aren’t allowed to chase.

You can still go to juvenile prison as a minor, why does it stop them?

They finally worked out that Uber is a scam??

Uber is a scam soaking both drivers and investors, with the corporation's management skimming off the cream of the cash.

If Uber had to make money the same way that real taxi-companies do, the prices would rise to realistic levels and drivers would be paid a proper wage. Unfortunately for Uber in that situation, they wouldn't be able to survive financially because their clients would disappear overnight.

The only people making any money in Uber are the company's management.

>The only people making any money in Uber are the company's management.

And engineering

Presumably the subsidized rides are a boon to the hospitality industry as well.

At whose expense? Investors and drivers? Not a very good deal if you ask me. I am grateful to use Uber occasionally and the price is not too bad but I always tip the drivers because I know they're getting the short end of the stick. Occasionally for me is about twice a month which amounts to maybe 24-30 times a year.

I'm not defending uber at all - just saying that in my experience, people were more willing to go to bars/restaurants after cheap rides became available.

Interesting thought, maybe government funded taxis might be good overall, it could run at a loss, funded by taxes, pay riders real wages like other transportation with overall economic gains.

and as an optimization they might make taxis bigger, able to take more passengers, maybe even set some regular permanent popular routes

You can tell what ripoff margins Uber expects by looking at Uber Eats. What would be a $25 pizza plus $10 delivery charge/tip turns into a $50 affair. That's a 40% surcharge for... running a website? And that's assuming they're not stealing drivers' tips as was documented a while ago (forget if it was Uber or the other one).

I only experienced this due to being the recipient of a gift card. Seriously kids, find local restaurants that have their own websites or just learn to place an order by phone. Actually support local businesses, don't just simulate it.

https://www.courthousenews.com/uber-pays-customers-344000-fo...

Uber is trying to own the customer and control the demand. If the default for the customer is to start looking on Uber Eats (rather than the restaurant's own website, google, yelp., etc.) Uber can then treat the food as a commodity and capture the lion's share of the profits.

I understand Uber's goal, which is the same as every other media^h^h^h^h^htech company. I'm encouraging customers to not get pwnt.

>Uber is a scam soaking both drivers and investors, with the corporation's management skimming off the cream of the cash.

Any time there's a business transaction involving more than two entities, at least one of them is getting fucked.

Only true assuming 0 sum games

I would instead say that if that transaction involves three parties, that's true.

If the transaction is just me and somebody else, we come to an agreement about what we think is the proper value and deliver it or not.

It's when you add a third party that's trying to skim off profit that things go to shit.

And customers. There's really no upside to Uber. The only reason anyone ever used it was because it was a cheap cab. Increasingly that's no longer true -- and you have to wait 15-20 minutes sometimes to get a driver. With that I might as well walk or take a cab.

This is not entirely true. In the early days of Lyft in the lgbt community it was seen as a much safer alternative to taxis. Anyone who was ok with wearing a giant punk mustache on their car was pretty likely to be okay with nontraditional lifestyles, plus the rating system weeded out a lot of bad apples, versus taxi drivers who were largely immigrants from more socially conservative places, likely to harass you or worse.

The reason I used it was because Uber and Lyft offered clean, modern cars that didn’t smell like smoke.

Gig. Work. Is. Exploitation. It was always unsustainable.

The door dash ad I see on YouTube really makes me rage. A girl playing guitar on her bed, narrator saying (paraphrase) "who really wants a boring 9-5, wish you could have more free time?" Criminals!

Why is it criminal? No one has to work there. Amazon is hiring at $15/hr, and there's a shortage of almost every service industry job. Working for uber is voluntary, people can just quit.

Amazon is hiring at that rate because it can afford to. It is actually lobbying to raise a national minimum wage because it means its competitors will close faster. And working for Uber is voluntary like being a migrant worker is voluntary for Mexicans.

I really hope this ends the "Uber exploits their drivers!" false meme once and for all. People drive for Uber so long as it makes them money. If Uber really pays too little, nobody will drive for them, and they'll have to pay more to get the drivers they need.

By this logic, no company exploits its workers, since otherwise they'd just leave.

Did someone just have their moment of libertarian enlightenment?

Libertarian enlightenment is reading the Austrian school and realizing we're so far away from libertarianism that applying it to narrow scopes can often end up justifying oppression.

that is a strange logical leap that makes absolutely no sense.

Companies that are the only labor buyer in town can exploit their staff.

Uber cannot. The only reason people would drive for Uber is if they can make more money than doing whatever they would do if Uber didn't exist.

Therefore, if Uber didn't exist and they couldn't drive for them, they would be worse off.

That's the opposite of exploitation.

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