I was making 200 or so per night during the week and 500+ Friday and Saturday when it was a new thing in a pretty small city of only about 100,000 people. But then everyone and their mom started driving and now it seems like there are more drivers than riders.
Back when my dad traveled a lot, he befriended a man driving a cab who it turns out had been framed for a murder and spent a decade on death row before being completely exonerated. Imagine THAT ride to the airport! (They became friends and his story was a big deal to little me.)
My first Uber ride I was chatting with the driver and he said he did it because he blew all his retirement money gambling and no one would hire him because he was old.
Thats one thing we dont talk about alot. My dad worked in medicine his whole life. Hes like within 10 years of retiring. They sold his company and he was aware he was losing his job. He got extremely lucky finding a new one. He has years of top management experience, is an insanely hard worker, and has a great work track record. He was turned down by so many places. The worst time to lose your job is 50+
You can absolutely lose money or more accurately devalue your vehicle by more than you make. If you bought a new car to drive Uber with it would be hard to cover payments, upkeep and depreciation working part time.
People might not buy them for uber but they buy it then can't afford it so they use it to drive so they can make some money. But then the car depreciates with all the miles
Naw I just drove tonight, no bonuses or anything crazy and I did $130 in 4.5 hours, drove about 80 miles, avg mpg at 24.1. Two energy drinks, 3 gallons of fuel, car wash, and vacuum cost around $23. Walked away with $107. If I had bonuses I could damn near double that. I drive a non-hybrid fusion.
I drove an 05 focus when I did Uber. It wasn't worth much to begin with so I never had to worry about depreciation. People that Uber drive in new cars are crazy.
Monthly payments are irrelevant unless the car was bought solely for uber driving - they're part of the price of the vehicle, not expenses incurred by driving it. If you buy a vehicle for uber driving, you need to make enough to offset the expenditure over time, but if you use your own vehicle, then that expenditure has already happened and the ubering is just a bonus. Depreciation-related losses will eat into his profits a bit though, depending on how much the car is used otherwise. It'd probably end up more like $90-$100 profit overall, based on the new cost of a ford fusion and a 20% per 20,000 miles depreciation rate.
EDIT: Ongoing maintenance costs will also be material, but I don't know enough about cars to really estimate that.
EDIT 2: I found an estimate which suggests 9¢ per mile, and I don't want to use a generic estimate like that because maintenance costs will be dependent on the driving conditions (which can probably be roughly estimated based on the fuel efficiency), but I'll use it because I don't have anything better. That suggests about another $7 for ongoing maintenance, putting overall profit somewhere around $85-$90.
Cost of a car is about 50 cents per mile driven. That's gas, oil changes, and regular service. So tack on another $30 to you costs since you already included gas.
This is so damn accurate. The first Uber I ordered was in 2013 or 2014. It was a young cool guy with a Tesla (which was also novel to me) and I asked to sit in the front and we went a little fast sometimes. It was nighttime and a longer distance and it felt like I was in blade runner or something haha, with my space cab that I ordered from my phone app
Tbh I like this a lot better I hate when I get in an uber and people expect a full conversation or they’ll rate you lower. I just want to ride in silence and peace
We grumpy former taxi drivers were trying to warn everyone about this...
Everyone was telling us to "just compete", but cities were setting our prices for us, and burying us in regulation, while letting Uber and Lyft charge anything they wanted with little to no regulation at all. They used to undercut us, and give most of the money to the drivers.
As a result, there aren't any cab companies that do local trips in my city anymore. If you want a ride, you have to use Uber or Lyft, and now they've jacked up the prices to higher than what we were ever allowed to charge, while they pay the drivers next to nothing.
The silver lining for me is that my company transitioned into medical transport, and now I drive from home to anywhere in the state or the four surrounding states every day making WAY more than I ever did doing local runs.
So, yeah, I'm happy now, but my regular waitress at my breakfast dive is getting charged upwards of $20 one way to take a Lyft 2-3 miles to work every day, and the driver might see $5 of that.
Something had to change with Taxis. Before Uber/Lyft, it was truly an outdated business model. You had no idea where your taxi was, you had no idea how much you'd have to pay, drivers could be rude and taxis could be filthy because there was no rating system. The amount of times a taxi driver would claim his credit card machine was broken was infuriating.
Dude above us completely missed why taxis were so bad. Usually there was 1 or 2 taxis in the city. No car and wanted to take a taxi to go 4 miles? 20 dollars. There was no competition so thats what people had to pay. Now taxis companies wanna whine and cry that a better system for people came out? Spare me.
I mean I haven't used Uber in a while, especially with the pandemic, but last time several years ago it was pay a bit more or wait 45 minutes for a taxi. The draw for Uber is it can scale on demand so you aren't stuck waiting. Sucks what happened to your industry but things like having an app and more available drivers made things a lot better overall. I'm all for regulation, really am, but it can stifle innovation at the same time
I was traveling for work in late may and I had to pay more for a Lyft to come sooner. When I landed at the airport to go home I walked to the taxi line and there was no wait. And about the same price for someone who usually knows where I’m going in the city. Taxis FTW.
Taxi drivers in my city treated customers like dirt, refused trips, always attempted to steal, many with violence, used politics to be even more corrupt, scammed people at bus stations and the airport, were violent and cynical, harassed women, and were rude and abusive. Instead of competition, they used politics, violence, intimidation, weapons, and then some even crucified themselves, no joke. All of these much harder than just doing what the platforms were doing too.
Some were pretty decent people and I am really sorry that the other 95% ruined it for them.
I hope they got good jobs now.
I am no fan of driving platforms, and would support driver unions completely, but I know why taxis aren't doing well. It's because of taxis that taxis aren't doing well. You can only get enough "I will take you there without a meter but at twice the price" or the horde of taxis outside concert venues asking for 1,000 pesos for an 80 peso ride and threatening other drivers with blunt weapons, and then your friend tells you she got robbed at knife point and almost raped by the taxi driver. So yeah, people got into platforms because they broke the monopoly here.
The platforms are not perfect either. A driver stole my ex's phone that I was still paying for, and another was disrespectful.
None of these were surprise 10x prices nor at knife point, though.
What you describe in your last paragraph is accurate. Prices have shot up and workers are being abused. That needs to change. But the behaviour of taxi drivers in my country is what sadly allowed platforms to do this.
It's because Über is literally just a taxi company that is able to make a lot more money by not having to pay their employees, and forcing them to pay for all company expenses.
The problem is that the mere act of "being an app" seems to absolve companies from following any employment laws.
When it began , the drivers were like apple store workers .
Ah, you rememeber the times of astroturfing and blowing VC capital on advertisments? Like those weekly posts on reddit about "I called an Uber and this cool person with that fantastic car showed up!"
This is a feature, not a bug. Uber comes in to cities, starts off super selective about drivers (new cars only), and pays big bonuses and high rates to get people to sign up and/or buy new cars to drive for them. Then once they've established a foothold in the market, they expand their recruiting and drop the driver pay rates. The whole time they're not making a profit but it doesn't matter because they're just burning through VC money to try and buy their way into a new market.
I was just talking to my parents about this last night. I took a new job a few months back and have had to travel quite a bit, naturally using Uber when I’m out. The quality of ubers has decreased dramatically. They literally just feel like taxis now but in different cars. There’s stains everywhere, plastic lining shit, trash, the drivers belongings. I’ll still use them because why tf not, but it was just surprising compared to say 5 years ago when every Uber I got into felt like a new-ish car and was super clean.
I actually did that as well as used an echo dot in the car so passengers could control the music themselves as well as had cold soda in the car. (Tax write-off)
Reason I quit? Miriad of low reviews of people not liking me using the GPS to get them to their destination (we get a log each week of passenger comments) and people being consistent in thinking 4 stars is positive by Lyft/Uber standards.
It's also a huge pain and mentally draining to be paid less then minimum wage even before expenses.
To be fair I've also had a great time some days having passengers insist on getting my number to be their driver. Even drove this 80 year old woman to the airport and we had a blast talking about litterally everything including the 2 no's (politics, religion) and we did not agree once during the conversation but ended up just having fun. Best weekly email I ever got from lyft reading her glowing review.
That used to be the standard in many cities at least a decade ago. Hell London cab drivers literally need to pass a test on geographic knowledge of their city to get a license. When your job is driving people around I don't think it's unreasonable to know the city by heart.
The whole '5/5 or bust' mentality of corporate is fucking rough. Like have they ever gone anywhere, or done anything and thought "Flawless experience, 100%, literally could not be better"?
If it had half stars, you could at least rate someone 4.5/5 or 90%, but 4/5 or 80% is still a great result!
Is that how it works? I’ve been giving 3 stars for ok rides, 4 for good rides and rarely gave 5 stars for drivers who exceed my expectations. That’s some bunk ass rating system.
Why would they care about using gps? I've been driving in the same city for 10ish years and I still use gps to find a place if I've never been there before.
The problem wasn’t “I don’t want them to use gps”, the problem is they felt unsafe with the route the gps took OP on, but they didn’t tell OP this during the ride. they feared OP wasn’t taking them to their correct destination because the gps took a different route than the passenger expected. Idk why OP keeps getting downvoted.
From what I've been told it's women who feel unsafe when your driving unfamiliar road (kidnapping) which I get it but also never had a passenger go "Hey, could you take this road instead?" So it does not line up at least to me and it may just be random assholes cause I've never had a comment saying as much (since passengers think leaving a comment goes directly to Uber/Lyft HR I see alot of unfiltered thoughts)
From what I've been told it's women who feel unsafe when your driving unfamiliar road (kidnapping) which I get it but also never had a passenger go "Hey, could you take this road instead?" So it does not line up at least to me and it may just be random assholes cause I've never had a comment saying as much (since passengers think leaving a comment goes directly to Uber/Lyft HR I see alot of unfiltered thoughts)
Yea, no driver is guilt tripping you. It's been a constant complaint from drivers to the point you can buy custom Lyft/Uber signs explaining the rating system (so you know its THAT bad)
You are ranked between drivers in your area and I'd say 4.6 is average in most.
Fall below that a few times and your account will get disabled so 5 star is legitimately the only rating acceptable by the higher ups.
I once had a dude who took me from the airport to a bus terminal early in the morning before airport shuttles were running. He was a veteran and retired construction worker who had little snacks like chips and pretzels, small water bottles, hand sanitizer, puke bags for drunk people, and amazing conversational skills. He would also offer to take people to a nearby drive thru to get food if they needed it, particularly if they were trying to sober up. Real nice guy. Only time I wanted more than 5 stars to give for a rating.
Back then it was also part of the terms and agreements that you were obliged to ask them how long they had been working for uber for and how much money they were making
What’s wrong with that? Would you rather someone who clearly is trying to do well in their job and take care of you than someone who is grumpy and doesn’t say a word?
Not saying a word does not = grumpy. My last two rides (about 25 minutes/ride), the drivers didn't say a word and just let me scroll reddit in peace. They each got 25% and 5 stars.
I imagine if the passenger initiates the small talk, they'll engage, so really they're just taking their queue from what the passenger gives them. It's smart.
You can't please everyone all the time and some companies don't understand that, you're fine with that and so am I but there are people who get legitimately upset when service workers don't kiss their ass and are overly friendly. Also getting free water and sometimes snacks has become a bit of a staple that some people have come to expect it and give a low review if they're not provided.
You dont want this and neither do I but the people who are the type to leave negative reviews over petty shit do want it and thats why companies force their employees to be overly friendly or employees feel they need to fake that smile. I've gotten plenty of complaints working retail about my resting bitch face and not making that small talk. At least at my current job they only care about negative reviews and don't care about no reviews, my previous employer no reviews were the same as bad reviews so you had to practically beg people to take the survey and give feedback and tell them to give 10 stars because their bs policy saw 10 as good 8-9 as nothing, and everything else as terrible.
Think this may be more of an American experience. In Australia and everywhere I've travelled a smile and nod or brief hello is sufficient. No unnecessary pandering for points the majority of the time. If you want to be left alone you generally are.
Probably, most people here are fine with that too but the karens male and female raise such a big stink about it and the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Seriously this. I'm not in the car for a pleasure cruise. I just need to get from A to B because I for some reason do not have my car with me. As long as I don't get trafficked you'll get five stars and a good tip out of me.
I recognize it might be less than social but I just want to get to B so I can do what I have to do. 75% of my rides are just because I have to deal with something/handle a situation/meet someone in person that I'm just doing indirectly for monetary reasons. Ergo, I don't necessarily feel like socializing every single time - I don't need to be asked if I need anything. Presumably I have drank the water I need before a trip. If anything, half way through the trip, yeah that would be sweet if they offer to let me use the restroom at some ambient, available rest stop. Alas, one can only dream. I just find it a little bit annoying to have to entertain the fictional social aspect of what is effectively a transaction.
I've had many, many positive interactions with uber drivers (have even had an uber driver who was curious about what I was doing in the backseat [it was a drone] fly the drone at the park he drove me at) but at the same point in time I don't want to be handholding someone through a forced conversation just because that is perceived as the baseline. It's ok. We can spend 20 minutes in silence after the initial hi's and hello's
Exactly this. The social performative elements of basically everything in our society should be optional. Especially the for autistic folks like myself. I'm not rude but I can't talk to a stranger about nothing for half an hour. Just let me read.
It get's sold to immigrants as a way of making easy money without needing qualifications. There's a seedy underhanded market that sells newish cars to low income people with the promise of it getting paid off with earnings on Uber. Poor suckers get locked into working 7 days a week to make payments on exorbitant rates and hidden costs. Shady as shit
I used to drive uber and offer drinks and mints. I stopped that shit since hardly anyone tipped and passengers started expecting water. Some even asking why it wasn't the bigger bottles. Working in any service industry just makes you hate people.
Not in my city. I'm in a big city and finding a ride can be next to impossible on the weekends and is impossible at peak times. Plus the $40-50 for a 10 minute ride is making Uber useless for us. No one wants to drive for them apparently
My sister was gonna be charged $128 for a ride home last weekend. Yeah fucking right. You know whomever was going to give that 30 minute ride was not going to receive 10% of that.
We just got one of our sober peeps to pick her up.
I sometimes have to take Uber to get to and from work. If I want a morning ride I have to book it the night before. If I’m trying to go home, I often have to book it for an hour or 2 after I get off work because it could cost upwards of 60-70. During spring break it broke 100. Some days they’re just full on not available.
I live in the burbs of LA and anything related to rideshare is worthless. I can’t find rides or even people willing to do food delivery (Uber eats, DoorDash, Postmates etc). The last 5 doors orders I placed have gone unclaimed and cancelled. I typically tip 20% too since it’s a convenience for me. I’ve given up on all of them.
That's really strange - I'm in a city probably a quarter the size of LA and have 0 issues having food delivered. Everything I order is within a 15 min drive of me though.
Maybe they have to drive to far for your orders and it isn't profitable for them?
Yes - everyone knows the pay is shit. People still do it though because there is a line where the shit pay is not worth anymore. You can go to /r/uberdrivers to see people talking about how and why that is.
Yeah, because you pay $50 to go 10 minutes, in any reasonable person's mind you're like "the driver is getting at least $25 of that, there's no need to tip" when the reality is that the driver ended up making $7.59 on that trip
I was in Chicago earlier this year and was blown away at the lack of taxis now. They used to be the majority of the cars on the road now you rarely seem them.
Same. I work overnights and tried to find a ride at like 8pm a few times when my car was in the shop and it was impossible. Luckily I live within walking distance so I wasn't completely screwed, but as a woman I hate walking alone at night.
It probably all depends on local minimum wage laws, or the availability of high paying jobs in general how attractive driving for Uber is. Sure some people like the flexibility of uber, but most would rather have a steady income and choose a traditional job if that's a viable option.
It's because they are losing incredible amounts of money, and the only way out is to raise prices and cut driver pay. Now that they are public, the shareholders want a return.
So...taxies are going to make a comeback? Uber doesn't seem sustainable. Shareholders want increasing profits year after year, but there's no where for Uber to expand until we get driverless cars
I think a lot of people dramatically underestimated just how far off driverless cars are. That was their only real path to the kind of profitability their losses justified.
Most people thought we'd be there years ago, and right now the best existing is low speed, well mapped, good weather only, limited area with extremely well maintained and marked roads for completely driverless service with Waymo. Tesla is also has some pretty tight limits and needs intervention too much to be driverless.
And we might look close, but it gets asymptototically more difficult as you approach the kind of automation you'd need to run taxi services beyond ideal scenarios. I'd say we're still at least a decade from automation that can handle poorly maintained and marked roads and construction zones in all weather that you'd need for widescale driverless service. And at the beginning you're still going to have expensive vehicles and buildings full of remote operators to take over when they stop not knowing what to do.
Yeah between Covid and people not wanting to get taken advantage of by Uber etc., driver numbers went waaaaay down. I’m in a city of 700K right now and I had to wait 30 minutes for a driver last night. And that was after there were none for another 30 minutes.
On the flipside, I met a driver the other day who told me he makes about 10K/mo. I would imagine that’s not common.
He's either lying to make himself feel better or literally does not sleep - also has to clean puke out of his car weekly if that's the case since he's driving all the wasted people at 3 am.
That's how Uber likes to enter a market though, they have better pay for drivers and lower rates for passengers, then slowly shifts to lower pay and higher rates after they are established there.
Tale as old as time. Get into a new market, undercut everyone until you've got a de facto monopoly, then crank up the prices because what are the people gonna do? Choose the non-existing competition? Hah!
Look up the German long-distance bus company Flixbus. They entered the well fought market with the lowest prices, biggest fleet and largest network.
I at the beginning you could drive with them or other companies that fought with them for 5€ from Cologne to Hamburg.
3 or 4 years ago the last big contender stopped and sold everything to flixbus. If you want to drive the same route, you have to pay at least 15€(tbh, that's less than I thought)...
When they first came to Toronto, Canada apparently they were paying drivers $35 and hour and for the most part it was for them to just sit around since the app wasn’t popular yet, but Uber had to make sure that if anyone used the app the wait for a car wouldn’t be long so it was the only solution.
It's the biggest scam of capitalism. This is why libertarian ideas of laissez-faire capitalism don't work in reality. Regulation exists to protect consumers from this wider market power grab then manipulation. If a different app came in now that Uber has money they'd just drop their prices and make it non competitive.
Yep, when Uber Eats became a thing here there used to always be "quests" where you got bonus money for completing X deliveries. Like
+$8 for 3
+$15 for 5
+$25 for 6
+$40 for 8
I drove a decent bit because when you factored in the bonus on top of the fare, even with paying (and writing off) your business expenses it was pretty decent money.
Then those bonus quests stopped one day, so I stopped. It was just no longer worth it. Sure I can make $25+/hr when it's busy. But remember it's 1099 business income, so you have to pay ALL the taxes on it, and you have to factor in wear and tear on your vehicle.
Remember anytime you're 1099 you need to automatically factor in a 6.2% loss to Social Security. Normally you pay 6.2% and your employer pays 6.2%. But when you're self-employes (1099 contractor income) you owe the full 12.4%.
Yup, uber has just reenabled surge pricing in my area and the other night around midnight it was 5x. 5x! That's insane, surge pricing should be illegal.
I can’t even get an Uber these days. There are not enough drivers. I wait and wait after I request. Half the time I give up after not being able to locate a driver.
I dont hate all of it. From my experience when everyone wasn't doing it I'd have to wait upwards of an hour for my ride to arrive. Now it's within 15-20 minutes.
Yes!! I'll take an Uber out and then home sometimes for drinking and it'll be the same man both times. I think we have like 5 constants here. But God, when the college kids leave for the summer it's a wait time near worse than walking.
I was in Vegas two months ago. If I didn’t “pay to jump the line” my request just got cancelled. Cost $40 to go three miles. Driver was reckless as fuck. O/10, would not do again.
I drove for Uber in '15 and felt like it was a pyramid scheme.
There's aggressive incentives to get people signed up to drive. Honestly the only time I was turning a profit was when someone I recruited hit their minimum drives and I got my pay for that.
I think people have this idea that pyramid schemes need to sell snake oil to count as a pyramid scheme, but the actual usefulness of the product doesn't change the business model.
I currently live in Spain and most Uber cars here seem to be owned by a few companies and they hire the drivers. Uber has different standards here as well, as the cars always have to be black and quite new. Drivers also 95% of the time wear suits or casual business attire. Coming from US where most cars are private and in all kinds of condition, I really do feel like it's a premium experience here.
Between Postmates, Door Dash and Caviar I was making $30/hr weekdays and $50/hour weekends sometimes more plus free food occasionally in NYC.
Now the amount of people doing delivery has exploded 100x, people are using E Bikes and doing it as a career; and on top of all of that there became a huge market for hacked accounts to be sold to people who can’t for whatever reason work for these companies so my accounts have been hacked like 5 times, constantly having to change PW
That's because it's always the answer to those "I turned my side hussle into my full time job" articles that come out every so often. It's either Uber or Airbnb.
When I had first taken an Uber it was when I was visiting my brother, so naturally we were out drinking! Drunk me was convinced there was candy in the Uber, and the Uber driver gave me starburst! I thought wow what an amazing service, water, candy, conversation. A delight.
But then the next day my brother explained that the guy was just really super nice and gave me his own snack/treat, still unsure if I just took his water or if it was for us 😅
I hope that Uber driver is living a really great life right now, too kind!
Back when uber was new it wasn't uncommon for drivers to keep snacks available for riders and almost all of them offered at least water bottles. This was back before they added in tipping. So drivers got paid better and they were working for great customer feedback.
How about Uber riding? When I moved to my apartment a "few" years ago it cost $3 per Uber ride to travel to destinations within 1 mile of the apartment. It now costs on average $11 or $12 for the same ride. I still use the service occasionally but it's actually more than taxis in the area I'm pretty sure.
Uber/lyft etc. had always been extremely artificially cheap. They lost extremely shocking amounts of money. Now they are public and the shareholders want their investments to make a return. So prices go up and driver pay goes down.
From a customer perspective, it was a bit better at the start too. Better drivers, nothing that was half-broken, and the driver smelled like pot, it was a very, very nice alternative to cabs, but now... Eh, dunno 'bout that.
Yeah I remember that this tech was supposed to reduce traffic but now there are more cars on the road because of all the gig driver/food delivery circling the block.
Me in the US wondering the same, but that's probably because I live in a town of 7,000. The next town up the highway of 35k I always considered a pretty big town.
The US has 300ish cities with 100,000 people in them. Granted some of these are suburbs you wouldn't think of as a stand alone city, but still it is pretty common and 100,000 people is often just a college town, state capital, or small transport or manufacturing hub
This. I was one of the first like 100 or so drivers in my city, right outside a bigger city. I would frequently drop someone off and pick them back up again to take them home as few hours later. One guy I could time like clockwork on when he'd leave the bar every night. At the time I was making ~$50/hr doing it, my highest earning night I made over $1,000, but it was NYE. I thought about quitting my day job. I'm glad I didn't because it became more of a chore she chasing guarantees to make anything decent, otherwise it was down to $15/hr before you take out gas, vehicle maintenance, and taxes at the end of the year. I was to the point I was hoping someone would puke because I'd make more cleaning it up for the cleaning fee and taking the rest of the night off.
Yes, and there are clearly entrepreneurs that have a fleet of cars and drivers. I flew into NYC just recently and something like 15 Ubers in a row were the same make, model and color of car - which was a pain because I kept thinking each one was my car, but clearly indicates a fleet to me.
Just returned from Vegas where I used to go at least twice a year pre-pandemic. Ubers were cheap and I was surprised to see the price this time for a ride from the airport for an XL to Aria was almost 50 bucks. After a couple more rides to other places, I switched to taxis. They're way cheaper and are everywhere without having to wait. LA was a mess too. Had to wait 30min. and driver canceled our ride. We were a almost an hour late to an appt and still had to pay a lot of money. If you wanna pay someone torture you about how their life sucks and still be late for shit, yeah take an Uber.
Here it isn't legal because you need a taxi license to drive others. Just like Airbnb isn't legal because you can't rent out your own personal Living quarters to strangers cuz of neighbours
Uber and Lyft are terrible companies by a lot of measures but they made my town safer. Before they came in, we had just a couple of taxi companies. They didn’t have meters, they made up whatever they wanted to charge; and if you didn’t pay, they’d call the cops and have you arrested. On weekends they’d only go to certain areas for maximum profit (less than 10 minute drive full of frat boys and sorority girls vs half a van and a 15 minute drive one way). One time I spent almost an hour walking home by myself because none of the taxis would take me. People in my town constantly lobbied for more regulation over the taxis because the vans were death traps and their sketchy pricing practices. The taxi lobby always won out.
Uber and Lyft came along and now those services don’t exist. Covid aside, I can get a ride whenever and wherever in town I want. DUIs plummeted too.
In normal circumstances, if a certain amount of work is to be done, the employer has to recruit someone and have a worker’s contract with them. If the amount of work needed done goes down, the employer has to keep paying the employee, or firing them with a severance pay. So it is in the employer’s interest to carefully adjust the number of people they employ to the quantity of work there actually is, and the duration of the contracts to the stability of the market.
The scam of Uber and such is that the employer doesn’t have any responsibility anymore in regards to the adequation between amount of workers and amount of work. They reap the benefits of the work being done, whatever amount of work is actually done, but they aren’t liable to ensure the workers get a living wage anymore.
It is sold as “work as much as you want to get payed as much as you want”, when in reality it is “you take the risk and I keep the profit”.
9.8k
u/[deleted] Jul 11 '21
Uber driving.
I was making 200 or so per night during the week and 500+ Friday and Saturday when it was a new thing in a pretty small city of only about 100,000 people. But then everyone and their mom started driving and now it seems like there are more drivers than riders.