Rideshare services - Uber, Lyft, Hailo, etc.

They can still operate while appealing so this will make no difference for now

I was at a licensing event largely focusing on taxi drivers last week and got a sense that a perceived issue with ride-share apps is raising regulatory barriers for traditional drivers as well. The guy from Uber referenced the idea that some of the new rules are, in part, motivated by xenophobia.

I’m fully on board with banning them from the entire country but there has to be a way of mitigating the impact on the (mostly minority) drivers.

I finally gave in and put fucking Lyft on my phone because the cab dispatch service I’ve been using for years has gone to utter shit + the curb app suuuuuuuuucks

I am really grouchy about this

from 8K

LYFT layoffs: 17 percent of workforce, or 982 employees

furloughing 288 employees

salary reductions:
30 percent cut for execs
20 percent for VPs
10 percent for all other employees
board pay cut by 30 percent of *cash* comp for 2nd quarterhttps://t.co/8fSVnbPgOr

— rat king (@MikeIsaac) April 29, 2020

Uber’s CTO steps down as company reportedly mulls 20 percent layoffs https://t.co/MIoNUJFjUw pic.twitter.com/6kXbfn5FUS

— The Verge (@verge) April 28, 2020

Deep cuts at Uber today:
- 3,000 more layoffs (on top of 3,700 earlier this month)
- 45 offices closing globally
- Transit downsizing
- delivery services merging (Eats, Cornershop, direct)

— rocket surgery (@kateconger) May 18, 2020

Uber Eats is bigger than the rides biz now https://t.co/o7VuMVITuF

— kate conger (@kateconger) August 6, 2020

I wanted to know what Uber and Lyft would do if forced to comply with AB 5. Here’s what I learned: https://t.co/dzkxFMrrtS

— kate conger (@kateconger) August 18, 2020

christ, what assholes

In a cruel and petulant move, Uber just announced they are shutting down service in California on Thursday. Faced with a mandate to treat their workers fairly, they opted instead to leave them unemployed — in the middle of a pandemic and a recession. pic.twitter.com/SuTvCOUDWT

— Mike Bonin (@mikebonin) August 19, 2020

Haven't been in a rideshare since the beginning of March and can't imagine when I'll next be in one (that said, we have a car and I also can't imagine when I'll next travel so the situations where I'd actually be inclined to use one of these services are not really coming up. This WSJ article (the few sentences of it before paywall) says Uber ridership is a quarter of what it was this time last year.

oops forgot link https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-ridership-fails-to-recover-as-pandemic-drives-another-big-loss-11596744389

on monday i waited 30 minutes on a busy brooklyn avenue and saw one (occupied) cab. called a car service and was told there was a 45-minute wait. so i finally had to sign up for lyft just to get home ffs

And did that work? Because I would think that as demand for the service drops, so would supply as drivers become less willing to drive around looking for fares and getting even less $$/hr while being exposed to who knows who.

But I am not in a big city where the alternative to rideshare is crowded public transport; maybe ridership isn't down as much in brooklyn? But if so, why no cabs?

it did work; the lyft arrived in like seven minutes.

i assume the lack of cabs was due to the pandemic? this was the first time i'd used any kind of transportation at all since march, so i dunno. there were plenty of people and private cars out and about though

cabdrivers are not wasting gas roaming around looking for fares. This also means fewer available for dispatch.

rideshare drivers can park until a fare pops up.

I guess I would have thought you just can't make enough money unless you're spending most of your time actually driving fares but my grasp of how the economics of this works on the driver's side is not that strong.

From my limited experience, most rideshare drivers have pivoted to restaurant delivery and personal shopping.

another anecdote:
I stopped by a grocery store that prepandemic had serviced a downtown/financial neighborhood, and it had been converted almost entirely into a personal shopper depot. My wife and I were pretty much the only customers who weren't messengers/couriers/delivery drivers. There was a line for their pickup/checkout that was like 25 deep and not a single soul in the regular line. It was pretty bizarre, but I'd probably go back based on how quickly I was able to get in/out of there.

Kara swisher was a good get for the times

“We’ll see how it goes for you in California,” @karaswisher says

“Wish us luck,” Dara says.

“No,” Swisher responds.

— Andrew J. Hawkins 🚇🚌🚲🛴 (@andyjayhawk) August 19, 2020

So can someone in Cali explain how the prop 22 vote went down as it did?

$

^^^^^

That and labor is relatively weak in California. I might live to regret saying this, but I don’t think it’s going to be so easy (just spend $) for them to repeat this in all other Democratic states.

In other words

I've seen a lot of autopsies about Prop 22 that focused on the historic spending and the flood of mailers/ads/messaging that it bought. But at some point, I think it's worth taking a look at what labor did (or didn't do) to fight for the No campaign. https://t.co/J4rLcsZwRk

— o...k (@kateconger) November 5, 2020

If you think labor came out swinging to support No on 22, its worth revisiting @noamscheiber's reporting on the AB 5 negotiations last summer and seeing how fractious it was, even then: https://t.co/FcQSEVXfNZ

— o...k (@kateconger) November 5, 2020

Prop 22 exists because a new stricter labor law went into effect in CA as of Jan 2020 (AB5) which made it so there were very few exceptions for employers to avoid having to pay workers as employees (which include payroll taxes, workers comp, minimum wage requirements, and health benefits, potentially). I would not be surprised if a larger percentage of workers in California were paid as independent contractors compared to workers in other states. The state agencies that enforce worker classification (employee vs contractor) are very underfunded and there are a lot of employers paying workers as contractors that no way would they "pass" even the loosest test of worker classification.

There was a lot of pushback to AB5 and not just from the Uber/Lyft/Doordash companies. A lot of musicians, writers, and other arts and media workers were going to have to be classified as employees, and a lot of them didn't like that, and their employers liked that even less.

But Uber/Lyft/Doordash spent a very large amount of money to put Prop 22 on the ballot as an endrun around AB5 and lot of that was spent on advertising that emphasized that workers preferred to be contractors, and that regulating their employment by classifying them as employees would make them suffer. A lot of the "drivers" in the ads were POC and likely encouraged on-the-fence centrists and liberals to vote for Prop 22.

Whether the folks who had problems with AB5 who are "gig workers" of other types voted for Prop 22, idk, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Very helpful, thank you!

yeah thx sarahell

How much of AB5 did P22 gut? was it just a carve-out or did it defang the new labor law more broadly?

lol it was just for them --

Classifies drivers for app-based transportation (rideshare) and delivery companies as “independent contractors,” not “employees,” unless company: sets drivers’ hours, requires acceptance of specific ride and delivery requests, or restricts working for other companies.

prop 22 was a response to AB5, but they won't wait for other states to pass an ab5 to try to do similar things elsewhere.

oh of course not -- they are "on a roll" ... ugh.

Never bumped for this but seems appropriate to bump
https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/7/22158745/uber-selling-autonomous-vehicle-business-aurora-innovation

I thought I heard a funny quote from the Uber CEO about throwing away a couple of billion on the autonomous cars but all I can find are rah rah quotes about the spinoff deal.

HA ha

smart money on this is to buy the dip because DOL won't be able to make this happen anyways https://t.co/bvD5A549A9

— Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) April 29, 2021

Let's hope DOL actually follows through, I won't hold my breath

at the least they're in trouble in the short term because the job market is tight and no one wants these shitty jobs https://www.businessinsider.com/why-uber-lyft-expensive-taking-long-driver-shortage-2021-4?op=1

The Prop 22 campaign drew attention to the harsh working conditions and meager wages drivers can face on the job. And for some drivers, it exhausted any goodwill they might have toward the apps, which are now in need of workers.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/07/uber-lyft-drivers/

I probably said this upthread somewhere, but I remain baffled by this company whose entire business model is based on underpaying cab drivers and not covering any of their expenses and still can't come remotely close to making a profit when all they actually do is provide an app and skim money off the top. Like if cab companies and car services earn a profit how the fuck do these guys not?

It's like losing money on a protection racket.

part of the answer is that they spend an average of $500,000 per engineer per year (https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Uber,Lyft&track=Software%20Engineer, and you can double those numbers to account for benefits and real estate and organizational overheads), and in uber's case they have an engineering headcount of about 5000. so that's 2.5bn a year on engineering. for an iphone app.

ya i've always been confused about uber's unit economics because of stuff like that

i’ve said it before but my local minicab company has an app and it basically looks like uber’s and it works great. you see the little picture of the car coming towards you and everything. i mean it wouldn’t work in LA but how often am i in LA.

Yes but does your local minicab company have a self driving division

neither does Uber, they sold it

They spend a lot on lobbying too, no?

That's another great thing about my minicab company - lobbying costs are very low.

neither does Uber, they sold it

things seem to be going well here

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/16/tech/uber-software-bug-drivers-charged/index.html

Fares have been bonkers in Chicago. City cabs, which used to seem expensive, have fares at about half the price.