As someone who did uber and lyft, let me tell you that these algorithm are exceptionally fine tuned to meet $/hr over long term driving. In my area, it is tuned to hit close to 20/hr ± 4 dollars/hr. You bet that on some trips uber is taking larger percentage vs other trips to meet this target. This is clearly how their system works to squeeze every dollar out of both drivers and clients.
Note: this is with OR without doing promotions and specials.
Those algorithms will try their best to get you out of profitable areas and stick you with low pay rides once you pass this 20/hr threshold. Especially if you are doing promotions, as they know that you will more than likely meet this target $/hr mark.
I used to work for an old school traditional taxi service. Back in 2003-2007. Back before these services took over. I had a personal issue with my employer, and so I left that company. I knew everything there was to know about the office side of taxi dispatching. I was going to find something else for the moment (which happened to be a laundromat attendent, as well as a hotel front desk manager), but in a different comany, run by different people, I could have become office manager of a taxi business.
Then uber and lyft came in.
They set their fares at unreasonably cheap rates. They made no profit for the first 8 years. They made the customers get used to the idea of fares being so low, just to drive the other traditional companies out of business. But here's the thing. They were bleeding money, that they made up for with other investments. A taxi company is in no other investing business. So it worked. All the other taxi companies in my area went out of business. Except for the one I used to work at, because they secured private contracts with the airport and schools. Other than that one company, 8 other taxi companies died.
Then, when everybody else was dead, Uber and Lyft raised rates DRASTICALLY in our area. We have a small suburb in Cleveland, named Lakewood. It's basically the shape of a rectangle. About 4 miles east to west, and 2 miles north to south. You could go anywhere in Lakewood, for $4.50 when I worked for the Taxi company. It's generally about 10 minutes one side to the other unless traffic backs up. I've seen those fares are now $12.75 before tip, and the drivers only really make money from the tips. There are 2 main roads in lakewood, both going east to west. Detroit is the more main of the roads, it has the number 26 bus that runs it's entire length. The other main road is Madison. The number 25 bus runs it's full length as well. You can either get an all day pass for 5 dollars, which gives you unlimited rides on any bus throughout the entire Cleveland bus system (RTA), or you can pay $2.50 per ride. No matter which bus you take, anywhere else in Lakewood is a short walk from where you got off at your stop. Less then a 2 minute walk I'd say. Even walking north to south, Detroit to Madison is a 5 minute walk. So you could even take the wrong bus, get off paralell to where you'd get off on the other bus, and still only walk 7-10 minutes.
So you can see how this would scale when you apply it to all of north east ohio. That same $5 bus pass will take you about 40 miles one end of RTA to the other. Our old taxi rates would have been in the neighborhood of $40-60. Depending on point A and point B's distance. Uber I've heard will charge $200 for that same distance. When they first came to town, they were charging $10. Just to drive taxi's out of business.
When I worked at the taxi company, you knew the drivers. It really felt like a TV show some days. You knew what certain people were going to do, what certain people were going to say, before they even walked through the door. During the bar rush (busiest time of the week for taxi's), they'd collectively fight the other taxi's trying to steal our orders, however if the customer called BOTH companies, BOTH companies would collectively leave his ass on the curb for intentionally wasting one of the drivers time. There wasn't full unity between competing companies drivers, but there was an understanding that they work together on some things. A taxi driver knew the city. A taxi driver knew the events. A taxi driver got a sense of who the passengers were by reading body language before they even said a word, and was prepared for trouble before it came.
These Uber/Lyft drivers are none of that.
"Take me to (insert the most well known street in your city)" "Ok, where is that?"
or "I'm going to (insert really well known concert venue)" "Yeah, I'm going to need an address".
I don't know if this is still true, but when I was working as dispatch, I would hear about how in London you couldn't even work at a taxi company, driver or dispatcher unless you passed a test of the local street knowledge, and local landmarks. You needed to know where every street in the city was, within 45 seconds of being asked, or you fail. I always thought that was pretty neat. Knowledgeable professional drivers.
Now you get into these Ubers, and the guy is like "Yo, bro, ya mind if I vape???". Zero knowledge of the city. Most of them only doing it one day a week. Despite having a preset price, they take the most random longest routes, because they rely on GPS.
So Uber and Lyft have tried to basically manipulate the system for an outcome that benefits their own corporate interests only. They don't give a shit about the drivers. The drivers don't even know each other. There's no sense of unity or pride like we had. It's all lowest common denominator bullshit, except for the price gouging, 90% of which goes straight to corporate.
So now the customer pays far more, to get a lesser quality driver, and the ride will take longer because the driver doesn't know what they're doing, and the drivers aren't getting compensated enough to make this an actual job.
What happened to all the taxi medallions? I am wondering if they can make a return since Uber/Lyft are now price gouging beyond what was ever paid for a taxi.
Because part of the time they aren't being paid at all for their work and a good chunk of that money goes into the vehicle and fuel itself. After accounting for all the unpaid labor hours and expenses, it probably still comes out sub-minimum-wage.
We have it but the trains are catching on fire and derailing and they shut the orange line down for a month to try to fix it. Meanwhile one of our main tunnels is also collapsing so that’s shut down too. My home is one mile from downtown and it’s also directly on a bike path that goes into the city, which is also closed because it’s also collapsing into the mystic river. It currently takes me 40 minutes to get downtown no matter what transit I take including walking.
My wife recently reconnected with a friend from college (20+ years ago) who is legally blind & living in MA. And I recently worked with a MA resident that is legally handicapped. Both of them have, through some state service, access to some number of free Uber rides each month. I know in the Boston area there is/was a state run car service for the handicapped, but using Uber apparently provides much more coverage & flexibility.
As long as the Uber drivers are being paid appropriately for this service I see it as a great service for the handicapped. I’d hate to see them lose it…
That's pretty typical, honestly. When working regular jobs, I've been paid one way, and not paid for time not working. The term is "waiting to engage", versus "engaged to wait". That is, if they want me to sit around to be available at a moment's notice, they pay me for that time. If I can go off and do other stuff and be vaguely available with whatever delay, then I don't get paid, because I'm not working and I'm not losing any of my own time.
I don't really think Uber should pay for time back directly, but they should definitely increase the cost of longer runs, especially to lower-volume areas where the driver might not have a fare in the other direction. (The driver is also not required to take any particular fare at all, so if they feel they'd lose money on it, they shouldn't take it.)
Honestly, you could make a strong argument that drivers are indeed independent contractors under US labor law. However, if the court has found that they should qualify for more pay and benefits, I'm certainly not going to argue that it should be taken away. In fact I'm going to celebrate it.
I'm not arguing that this is a good deal or met whatever goal. I'm just saying it's an upgrade.
Also, as a former uber driver, there are strategies to make the best use of your time. If this new wage applied to my location I would buy a car and make a killing. That said, I'm in the minority that prefers to run their own business rather than be an employee so if I have to be a wage slave again then no thanks.
Give me the math of how this new wage would help you “make a killing”.
Keep in mind that this wage merely sets a floor for the specific-minutes when you have a fare.
(And brother - driving for uber is not "running your own business"... it's being maximally-exploited by a business... with no liability-protection, no security, and almost zero rights.)
(And brother - driving for uber is not "running your own business"... it's being maximally-exploited by a business... with no liability-protection, no security, and almost zero rights.)
Both can be true! There's a reason I quit that shit years ago.
I’m waiting for the math... Support your claim that you would “make a killing”.
I don’t see how you would...
The most you could possibly make would be $32.50 in an hour... (and that’s ONLY if you had a fare for ALL 60 minutes of an hour... and somehow still made less than $32.50 from those fares).
...And you'd be driving your own car and burning gas for that whole hour...
So show me (with math) how you’d be “making a killing”.
What you're talking about is "waiting to be engaged" versus "engaged to wait."
The drivers are not on set schedules and have no obligation to the company except for the time between accepting a fare and dropping them off. If the drivers were required to return to a staging area and wait for a call the they'd need compensation. But they're not. They can do whatever they want at that point.
When I worked retail I wasn't paid for the time between my shift's end and the next one beginning, but that's what you're arguing for in this case.
I mean, Uber has constructed a model where "waiting for your next fare" and "going home to your partner" look the same in a spreadsheet, and that then becomes the justification for not paying them. It's sleight of hand.
He didn't sit around waiting for a job. He'd go about his business and when his phone pinged he'd decide in the moment if he wanted to do the job.
Sometimes we'd be watching TV and his phone would ping and he'd get up to leave. Sometimes he wasn't interested and he'd let someone else get it.
The issue with Uber, Lyft, etc isn't that they treat their drivers as contractors. People who have they option of when, where, and whether to work and are paid per task aren't employees. The problem is the pay is terrible for what they're doing.
Does an airline baggage-handler only get paid for the “specific minutes” when he is lifting luggage?
What's actually tragic is similar things like this do happen in the air industry
Flight attendants for example are often paid only for hours on the plane. All the time getting to the planes through security screenings doesn't count. All the work they do at the gate before and after doesn't count. It's only hours in the plane.
If you have a job providing transportation, then you are on-call, whether you're transporting customers or not. And you should be paid for BEING on-call. This is a standard practice in several industries.
Eh, it's not quite the same as other professions. If a sysadmin gets an after hours call, they must work it. If a ride share person is offered a fare, they can accept it or turn it down.
They always go after employees who don't obey. Arbitrary decisions are made to crack the whip and remind employees that they're slaves to management. Just another reason why we need unions.
And probably a lot was invested in catching these scallywags. Just imagine having to setup this kind of monitoring. Or did the employees have mouse mover.exe on their pc.
Probably they recorded the screen and used that as monitoring.
I would say it has more to do with the size of a pool of candidates. If an Amazon warehouse employee is not happy Amazon can fire them and get another one. If an investment banker is not happy the company will accommodate them.
As a software engineer though, while I'm not paid as an investment banker I still feel like I'm paid well, I think my job would be better if it was unionized.
Unions help workers in all positions, but their effect is more noticeable when the worker has comparatively little bargaining power. When workers already have a large amount of bargaining power, such as in most white-collar jobs, unions don't provide as many benefits than if workers have very little bargaining power and are easily replaced, such as in most jobs involving physical labour rather than mental labour.
The real takeaway here is that Wells Fargo pays for work that isn't quantifiable via review of the work product. What are these people doing that produces nothing that can be reviewed to quantify their performance to such a degree that simple mouse movement is the only metric they can be judged by? If I were stupid enough to be invested in that criminal enterprise I'd be pissed.
The article doesn't say the fired employees were doing this all the time. They could have used them for an hour here and there while they were out running an errand. Very difficult to spot that on any work review.
If they had measurable productivity that was acceptable then who cares if they needed to step away for a while? Wells Fargo is sending a message that they care more about warm seats than actual results.
Oh yeah I agree 100%, this whole thing is ridiculous and shows wells Fargo don't trust their employees and have to resort to this kind of bullshit.
I'm just saying it's possible that these employees were fired merely for using this mouse moving software, not because they weren't getting much work done.
This tells me that Wells Fargo has middle management layers so useless, they can’t even understand if their employees are doing their jobs so they resort to monitoring.
They literally just want their employees to look busy because their corporate culture isn’t able to comprehend managers having close relationships with their direct reports and their work.
Companies should be looking at an employee’s output to determine if they’re worth keeping employed. If you can’t measure that, what the fuck are you doing? How do you justify having any employees when you don’t know what they contribute to the bottom line?
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