> I’ve spoken to various taxi drivers, including current and former Uber drivers, and none of them liked working for Uber. They merely felt trapped.
I live in the U.S. I speak to almost all of my rideshare drivers about how they feel about their work. Literally none of them have expressed the feeling that they're trapped. (And not one has said that he would prefer driving a taxi.) They do make criticisms, more of Uber than of Lyft. But the main sentiments that they express are appreciation of scheduling flexibility and of not having a boss.
The people who are currently working for Uber think working for Uber is a good deal. You might get similarly positive reviews from the buyers of scratcher lottery tickets.
There are a lot of articles from random websites saying that it is a good deal, and given the ease of placing such content I think we should be skeptical. Every time I see an article from a driver, who is not a pro blogger in the space, and who’s done the math, it is usually pretty negative to neutral.
It’s actually really hard to know if you’re making money when you take things like capital depreciation and opportunity cost into account, and sophisticated businesspeople make this mistake all the time. The average driver could easily be fooled until it’s too late.
It would be nice if capitalism did correct price discovery here but we’re dealing with a market which has been highly distorted, both from questionable government regulation and taxi monopolies AND from insane startup valuations and investment. The only accountability moment has been the public markets and even then it’s pretty mixed.
Uber has overwhelming power over their drivers and if it was actually a good deal for them it would be the first time in the history of labor relations that a company left
money on the table out of the goodness of their heart. Does Uber strike you as that company?
Yes I use ridesharing when I’m in the SFBA because there’s few other plausible ways to get around. I’m crossing my fingers the whole time that I’m not helping someone dig themselves deeper into a financial hole.
I love it. So you’re comparing the experiences of real drivers who don’t hate it to bloggers who are making mathematical calculations and you take the word of the bloggers. That’s just about par for the course.
“The poor dumb blue collar workers don’t know any better and need to be protected by the smarter elites who did the calculations!”
They didn't state the bloggers were making the calculations. The bloggers noted are pro Uber.
If you're going to just dismiss someone's point through an appeal to sentiment, you might as well get it right. Or maybe getting what was said right doesn't matter, and just recasting it as elitist as a tactic is the point.
As far as I know, such evidence has never been released by Uber. I’m sure that Uber knows, or could, but I don’t think they’ve shared that info. They have an API called Movement which publishes anonymized data about trips, but I think cost isn’t available.
I don’t know if the 2018 data is still relevant, as there are complex incentives that vary in each market.
But, Uber (and similar companies) could probably end the questions tomorrow by releasing data or allowing researchers to have access to their drivers. The fact that they don’t, and that they instead spend $200M lobbying the governments to make an exception for worker protections for rideshare drivers (and tried to make that irrevocable without a 7/8ths majority!!) seems telling to me.
I bet you know a lot of compulsive drinkers that view alcohol as a positive in their life.
I’m addicted to marijuana, but I still think it’s a good thing because it helps my PTSD. I don’t like being addicted to it, but I’m better off consuming it than not, although my addiction makes it difficult to regulate.
> I live in the U.S. I speak to almost all of my rideshare drivers about how they feel about their work. Literally none of them have expressed the feeling that they're trapped
Just think about the subjective bias here. They're working, you're the customer - do you talk shit about your employer on company time? Everyone knows that has serious risks.
I was thinking the same thing. You need to actually be close friends to actual drivers, when not interacting with them as passengers, to hear how they actually feel about uber
This is the second time I see you mentioning drugs in this thread [1], I genuinely don't understand the correlation or the argument you're trying to make?
> I live in the U.S. I speak to almost all of my rideshare drivers about how they feel about their work. Literally none of them have expressed the feeling that they're trapped.
if you ask a smoking addinct if they could quit, 80% say yes and 80% will fail if they try.
Now if you show they've done the math on depreciation of their car, worked for 10 years, etc. then maybe yoi have an argument
I always put more weight on negative comments about owns work condition because cognitive dissonance is a known human bias.
If you are working at a dead end job, where your pays and benefits are sub-optimal, and you are even putting more work hours then in other possible jobs, then why are you working there? Because of cognitive dissonance it is much easier to tell your self that you actually like the job over accepting the reality that you probably shouldn’t work there.
If you were to ask me that question, I'd say: I'd be as happy that my child drives for Uber, as much as I'd be happy they're driving for a taxi, limousine, or a bus.
It's a question I ask myself often when I see the disrespect Americans have for people in jobs they also consider essential. I have other questions for myself like, "how would I truthfully explain this to my mother?". If the answers make you feel shame, then that probably tells you something.
I wasn't aware I was making an argument. I asked a question (which was apparently loaded) and gave my thoughts. It's my experience that American society in general disrespects working class people - it's pretty clear from the stagnant wages and multi-generational political movement to suppress unions, so I understand why parents would not want their children to join that class.
To say "no-one is complaining" is factually wrong, since there have been multiple Uber strikes throughout the world over the last couple of years on these very issues. And I have spoken to Uber drivers that are complaining.
Whether they represent a majority of Uber drivers or just a noisy minority is more difficult.
I live in the U.S. I speak to almost all of my rideshare drivers about how they feel about their work. Literally none of them have expressed the feeling that they're trapped. (And not one has said that he would prefer driving a taxi.) They do make criticisms, more of Uber than of Lyft. But the main sentiments that they express are appreciation of scheduling flexibility and of not having a boss.