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Comment by noname123 | Hacker News Reader

Damn, $300/night. So that's like 9 grand/month if you work every night. And probably can under-report tips and meet interesting people too instead of wasting hard earned cash buying rounds at overpriced bars and lounges on weekends.

Beats working for a Boston IT company where you make about 100-120K a year but get taxed like crazy.

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>And probably can under-report tips

I drive for both Lyft and Uber: Most passengers don't tip, and even when they do they usually use the app, so there's very little under-reporting. In my experience: The most cash tip I've ever recieved was $20 for returning an iPhone to a user, and the most cash tip I've ever gotten in a night from just rides is on the order of $10, and I'd say about 80% of my nights net $0 cash tip.

You do, however, get a really nice tax advantage if you drive a fuel efficient car, the federal deduction is $.55/mile, and I estimate my operating costs (fuel, maintenance, but not depreciation since my car already has 115k), to be about $.20/mile.

It might be neat for priceomics to do a report on this. Hey, priceomics, want to interview me?

I remember my first few rides with Uber when I tried to tip, and they told me that they don't accept tips

presumably the driver meant 'cash tips' because the app very much allows tipping, although it's also possible the driver was not entirely knowledgeable of the process.

It's more important among lyft drivers to not accept cash tips because it's a safety issue; as a community, accepting cash tips can lead to danger if pink mustaches become a target for crime. Usually I refuse cash tips and relent only if they insist (this mostly happens with service industry clients).

In San Diego, there is a driver that donates 50% of tips to charities; she has a blog where she posts her tallied earnings for transparency on the process.

I've used Uber quite a bit and never seen how I could tip. Apparently that option is only available on uberTAXI:

http://support.uber.com/hc/en-us/articles/202290128-Do-I-hav...

UberX (the subject of the article) deliberately does not support tipping, and drivers are instructed not to accept tips. There's an automatic tip on rides booked through "Taxi" requests on Uber, but that's not the same thing.

Deleted comment

OK, according to a reddit AMA[1] from a few months ago, UberX drivers can accept cash tips as long as they explain at length that it's not required.

But there's no way to do it from the app, and I'm thrilled that Uber is making a go at trying to maintain good service from their drivers without an expectation of tipping. For one thing, it makes their prices even more competitive vs. local taxi rates.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ypjd5/hi_reddit_iama_...

oops, I deleted an above comment 'unless I'm confused, i have tipped an uberX driver'.

I appear to have been confused.

And probably can under-report tips [...] Beats working for a Boston IT company where you make about 100-120K a year but get taxed like crazy

By that logic you could just become an IT contractor and under-report your income. I would not necessarily put "allows me to easily commit tax fraud" as a benefit of job, but YMMV.

Well, according to the article:

  Uber's Kaitlin Durkosh confirmed UberX drivers receive up
  to 80 percent of each fare. "On average, uberX drivers in
  Boston make about $25.93 an hour, which equates to nearly
  $54,000 a year (gross income), if drivers work 40
  hours/week for 52 weeks/year... gross income can be even
  higher if partner drivers decide to work more than 40
  hours/week, Durkosh continued.

At $26/hour, it's only $300/night if you work 12 hour "nights." I'll guarantee that when she says $26 per hour, she's assuming a solid hour worked without breaks. And, actually, it's deeply unlikely that any driver makes an average of $26 per hour over a 12 hour shift, 5 days a week -- the average is going to be inflated by the fact that most drivers work during the high demand hours around rush hour and Friday and Saturday night, when not only are rides more frequent, but surge pricing goes into effect.

I make an average of > $25/hour over 30-40 hours (on lyft, for which I have 12 weeks of data). During surge pricing the hourly on uber goes to nearly $40 - $50/hour, but i only have one weekend of data for this, and the hours are cherry-picked (there's a lot of strategic "do i use lyft, do i use uber, or do I use both" going on.

Okay, but presumably Durkosh, an Uber representative, is reporting data, not anecdotes, when she says that the average is $26/hour, right? Are you suggesting that she's underreporting the true average, or that she doesn't know what the average amount they pay their drivers is?

No, I'm suggesting that it is very reasonable that this is the true average. May not be the true median, though, given the 80-20 principle and uneven distribution of skill.

Cool. Sorry if I was confrontational -- the article irritated me on the grounds of sloppy journalism and wide-eyed ingenuousness, and I took it out on you.

no worries, I didn't take your comments to be confrontational at all; and the article irritated me too, which is why I'm here offering better information!

Is that 30-40 hours per week or over 12 weeks?

30-40 hours per week over 12 weeks (I lyft full time while I'm waiting for the IRS to issue 501(c)(3) status for my nonprofit). There are weeks I've put in 45 hours. I'd say the first four weeks or so I didn't know what I was doing, so I averaged around $20/hour. More recently I've been doing $30/hour: I put in about 40 hours and make $1000 after gas and an average mechanical burden on my car.

One caveat: The lyft system has been thrashing a lot over this time period; since they have been expanding clientele, expanding drivers (not necessarily evenly), then they changed their compensation policy to have "happy hours" with discounted rates, at which time the algorithm to calculate "prime time" rates started to go really crazy, flipping between +200% to -20% over the course of 45 minutes, then they got rid of the happy hours and went straight 20% off (and tempered the prime time algorithm), then they removed their commission, then they added a $1/ride bonus...

It's been really crazy keeping up with all the changes, but what's interesting is that I've found by ignoring the part of my brain that wants to be consternated about this and pressing forward and honing my driving strategy has basically led to a reasonable income trend that is basically independent of the craziness.

It's interesting that Durkosh didn't say, "the average driver who works 40 hours/week makes $54,000." I wonder what the average income of those who actually try to work 40+ hours/week are.

>Damn, $300/night. So that's like 9 grand/month if you work every night. And probably can under-report tips and meet interesting people too instead of wasting hard earned cash buying rounds at overpriced bars and lounges on weekends.

>Beats working for a Boston IT company where you make about 100-120K a year but get taxed like crazy.

Looking forward to your follow-up post, noname123, "Why I became a coke dealer." :)

Thanks for the suggestion, logicallee, unfortunately I'm just a sensitive artist who wants to meet new peeps in the city. Coke dealing sounds too stressful, a bit too much for me to handle, I'll leave that to the professionals.

>And probably can under-report tips and meet interesting people too instead of wasting hard earned cash buying rounds at overpriced bars and lounges on weekends.

That's one way to put "if you work every night, you won't have a social life."

Shift workers don't have no social lives. They just have social lives that are dissimilar from your own.

Yes, it turns out you can make a lot of money if you pay no taxes and no money towards insurance. Your money is earned as a negative externality imposed on everyone else.

I'm not sure why you assume that the drivers pay no taxes given that they're provided tax paperwork by Uber. No doubt some don't but, then, no doubt some regular full-time employees don't either. As for driver liability insurance, it's provided by Uber: http://blog.uber.com/uberXridesharinginsurance

Uber drivers do not accept tips, in my experience.

The few I have asked have expressed to me that tipping isn't really a thing with uber, and while they would accept a tip it was not necessary or expected.

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