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"Cheap, convenient and almost gone: Uber, DoorDash and similar apps"
- Thread starter Afrikan
- Start date
I know a lot of people at Uber HQ (well, less now than I did before).
It's like the walking dead over there. Tons of people that expected to be set for life from equity, and took reduced salaries because of that. Now...we'll now they are kinda fucked.
It's like the walking dead over there. Tons of people that expected to be set for life from equity, and took reduced salaries because of that. Now...we'll now they are kinda fucked.
That's the problem: we are further away from the driverless car revolution than they ever expected. It'll happen, but not in time to save them.
I've talked to people who think they can make a career out of driving for Uber. I mean, strike the iron while it is hot, but that job won't be sustainable in the long run.
Pretty much. For all the complaining they did, they will most likely out live Uber an similar companies, easily.
That dude you quoted is talking about FTE at Uber. Drivers don't get equity.
Hopefully not. I keep reading scary stuff about Uber in here, but at least in Mexico, many drivers are doing fine using the service, albeit with a bit of issues but my brother-in-law is definitely making a living out of driving for them and aside from incidents here and there, they're more safe than regular cab drivers in here. So yeah, even if the company is gone, many are trying Cabify, Bolt or DiDi, no way we're back to using those shady ass taxis that are used in crimes, or have reports of being used by the drug cartels and whatnot.
Here's hoping the employees get a better solution and are fully protected, but at least in here, they would be far worse driving the "legit" taxis.
What, I used to recruit data scientists for uber, they have HUGE overheads from staffing costs from the back end/production
Licencing fee's and I'm sure other stuff but the biggest has to be staff costs (which are huge, uber staff are some of the best paid in regards to software engineers, product managers, data scientists, customer support, marketing etc). Quick search on my linkedin corporate account said there are currently 80,000+ employees at uber world wide. The belief (i believe) was that there income would eventually grow faster then their cost base because its such a great idea and hey I'm just going to take over the world.
This idea isnt uncommon at all but alot of people dont take into account regulatory hurdles, competition, eording margins etc.
Alot point to amazon as a company that didnt make a profit for a lllllllllllllooooooonnnnggg time but they eveneutally monopolised the market and forced it into turning a profit (also by being pretty amazing in certain aspects of what they do).
But for all these companies, it's mainly staffing costs man.
These companies are offering services below cost which gains them users but loses them money.
They have now amassed so much debt that servicing their debt costs a substantial portion of income making even a fair pricing level uncompetitive and unprofitable.
All these companies tried to become Too Big To Fail but ddidn't since taxis, food delivery and other service apps are replacable with little lock in there will always be competition.
I honestly can't really envision a world without ridesharing apps now that they've taken off, especially for cities with horrible public transit (LA, Houston). As a college student, they're literally my method of transportation 90% of the time.
So it's gonna be a game of who blinks first between Uber and Lyft? At this point, ride shares are so big and convenient that I'm sure a whole lot of people will pay more to not use a taxi. They may lose some customers but if they're actually making money on a ride vs not I don't see how that isn't preferable.
But yeah if one raised the price the other would benefit tremendously. So I guess they'll wait until the other gives up, or they both go down. And even then, what's to stop some other player from coming in and cutting prices. It just seems like a shitty industry.
If only public transportation wasn't so shit.
None of them are profitable business models. They are selling an idea, and were pumped full of cash by investors trying to get in early with the hope they would be worth more later.
Some of these were legitimate new ideas that disrupted the world (uber) some are existing ideas, polished with SV bullshit (WeWork) and some are just completely stupid and have no chance of existing without investors subsidizing their cash flow (electric scooter companies that all popped up overnight).
I don't see how owning and maintaining a massive fleet of automated vehicles is supposed to drive down costs. That will be incredibly expensive on its own.
In the long run it will be more cost effective than paying employees.
I'm assuming this is the American experience? I use normal taxi cab companies very regularly in the UK and never had any problem. Usually it's a 5-10 minute wait and if the service is running late for some reason they always inform me in case i want to cancel. And i never once had a driver not show. Same thing in other European countries as well.
I obviously have no idea about the American reality regarding taxi companies, but from where i'm standing this whole ride sharing thing always seemed like a solution for an inexistent problem. Which is actually the modus operandi of most VC tech enterprises. Create a problem for your solution.
Google the number for your local taxi company (or download their app)
Uber needs to price its fares cheap enough to entice passengers, but also need to pay drivers enough to get people to drive for them. They didn't, and all these years they've just been coasting along with investor money.
Employing people costs money, and there are many overhead costs associated with a company their size.
I mean even just one developer costs maybe 100k a year.
Wow I had no idea this was what the plan was for Uber and that they're basically losing money in every ride. Really interesting. I can imagine a life without rideshare apps but it definitely would be an adjustment to go back as it basically replaced public transportation for me. I'm sure if Uber and Lyft go down, something will replace them though.
I've used it after a night out drinking to get home, to get to locations that aren't reachable directly and easily by public transportation or even when I need to get somewhere really quickly. It's convenient and easy to use and it's relatively cheap.
You've never been in a situation where you needed a ride somewhere?
I've used it after a night out drinking to get home, to get to locations that aren't reachable directly and easily by public transportation or even when I need to get somewhere really quickly. It's convenient and easy to use and it's relatively cheap.
The problem with these apps is that these VC expect to see infinite growth so they can all be billionaires.
I read a similar article today that I thought was good.
I know my local cabs. It's just way more expensive. One has an app and it's kind of OK. The rest are old school call and wait.
What hangups happened to make driverless cars not come as quickly as Uber hoped?
In my experience, getting an Uber or Lyft is the much cheaper option. Especially if you pool.
I feel like WeWork is on a while other level of crazy compared to these other companies. They all suffer from one root issue where they pretend like they've invented some proprietary tech when in reality the underlying principle the company is based on isn't hard to copy. So they grow and grow as if they're the only game in town, when they absolutely aren't.
Yeah, it's the 'winner takes all' model.
Takeaway.com (which will be merging with JustEat) is now turning a small profit. It's the market leader in Germany and the Netherlands among others. It ended up spending nearly €1 Billion on two acquisitions alone to get to this point.
unfortunately it is something that you will have to face at some point.
the reason uber is less expensive is because they are losing money on every ride. that is not sustainable and sooner or later we will run out of people willing to front the money to make the service seem cheap to the end user
FTFY. My bet would be closer to 150k as the average salary for a software engineer at their HQ.
Infrastructure, ongoing maintenance, plus R&D for those self-driving cars that will "save them" and new features for their core services (to keep up/beat out Lyft and friends who are doing the same).
And yeah, as others have said, the average fare customers pay do not cover the actual cost even before a lot of those non-core costs like R&D. Turns out that ride share fares being 30-70% less than the average taxi fare wasn't all about addressing "market inefficiencies".
Ridesharing does not replace public transport. It fills in the gaps with public transport. As someone without a car sometime you miss the last bus or need to go to the ER late at night. Ridesharing is indispensable for this, I literally could not maintain an eco-friendly lifestyle without it. Taxis were never able to really deal with this, and so even if prices go up it will stick around but it will make life worse for many. Automation is really the only way out.
If cities were smart they would subsidize ridesharing or create their own.
If cities were smart they would subsidize ridesharing or create their own.
Nah, I had the same experience (Latin America). Taxi companies were and still mostly are garbage, they only improved a little because of ride sharing apps.
Drivers to Uber are legally contractors. So they don't have the same rights of benefits as a Taxi driver would.
So Uber is doubly shit as a job.
I believe tho that it really depends on location. on average public transport in Italy is pretty bad but in my city it actually works quite nice. never had problems with taxi in general in the country tho
We've always had local food delivery services and local taxis, way before all these startups came along. Restaurants would deliver with their own drivers even, some still do! Responsiveness of local taxis has been a problem since time immemorial.