
I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver - tawman
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/30/i_quit_miseries_of_an_uber_driver/
======
zb
The one time I ordered an Uber, we spent 25 minutes waiting while the driver
drove around a similarly (but still quite distinctly) named street on the
other side of town. After several phone calls, she ended up using her own GPS
navigator to find us.

So I can corroborate what this article is saying: Uber has absolutely no clue
where you are even given both an address and map co-ordinates. Presumably they
rely on a terrible reverse geocoding implementation and discard the other
information. That's surprising, because years ago I used to work on firmware
for navigation devices and I don't recall reverse geocoding ever causing major
issues (there were always minor inaccuracies when you round-tripped the data,
but you never ended up on the wrong side of town) - I thought it was a solved
problem.

For the record, neither Google Maps nor Apple Maps have ever had trouble
distinguishing between those two locations (though humans sometimes do), so
they broke it all by themselves.

~~~
good_claire
Author here - very interesting to find that someone else had the same strange
experience. Street names have no place in GPS navigation! The instance I spoke
about was a time when there had been a concert at the Greek Theatre in
Berkeley, and I am sure that all available UBER drivers were busy driving
people home - hence, even though I was 20 minutes away, I might still have
been the closest driver. But the estimation of "3 minutes" combined the GPS
path showing me leaving from Piedmont Ave. in Berkeley - when I was on the
same-named street in Oakland - makes you doubt their app works at all!

------
bko
> After waiting 20 minutes, I called the driver, who did not speak any version
> of English I am familiar with. He claimed to be relatively near my house but
> was unable to tell me how he was going to get there. I canceled and tried
> again. This time I got a young woman who also apparently didn’t speak
> English well.

As someone whose parents speak English with accents, it really makes me cringe
when some Americans complain about non-native English speakers in service
level jobs. I would hate to have one of my parents deemed less worthy of a job
due to their accents. I understand that some jobs benefit greatly from
employees that speak English fluently, but I don't think a driver is one of
those positions and I doubt many would pay a premium to have a native speaker
as a driver.

Maybe I'm overreacting but statements like the one quoted above always come
off as slightly xenophobic. It almost makes me throw out the rest of the
authors arguments as a rant.

~~~
x0x0
It's not xenophobic to want not to have so much difficulty that it interferes
with the service. When you have a hard time communicating directions, it's a
problem. Which is what this person experienced. Xenophobia is disliking of
people, not disliking the inability to share directions.

------
roarktoohey
"Also, considering the company’s huge profits, Uber owes it to the little guys
doing their driving to provide much better software..."

Is it typical for reporters to confuse profits with revenue? None of the decks
I've seen show profits, I've always assumed that my rides are subsidized by VC
money.

~~~
frostmatthew
> Is it typical for reporters to confuse profits with revenue?

The author isn't a reporter (or, at the very least, she's new to it). _Claire
Callahan Goodman is a Bay Area native from a large family, whose careers have
included Classical Musician, Software Engineer and Mom._ [1]

[1]
[http://www.salon.com/writer/claire_callahan_goodman/](http://www.salon.com/writer/claire_callahan_goodman/)

~~~
good_claire
Author here - no, I am not a reporter, but I know the difference between
profits, net, VC, and the difference between a privately and publicly-held
company. That said, since UBER is privately held, no one can say what they are
"worth" (a term which also has many interpretations).

The article published in Salon was a draft I sent them and they ran with it.
Once I knew they were interested, I did a lot more research and number
crunching, assuming they would want more facts and detail. They didn't change
a thing! They published the article in their "Life" section. I think this
section is reserved for non-reporters writing about life experiences and
that's why they didn't require expert fact-checking. I do agree that no one
knows who gets paid what in the upper-echelons of UBER - but I would guess
it's a LOT.

------
denzil_correa
Let me add an slightly alternate (may be off topic) perspective!

In India, the maps are (surprisingly) accurate on the Uber app. The ETA is
close to expected and everything's fine. BUT, the driver has no idea on how to
use them! It results in the driver calling multiple times to locate where you
are. I think Uber must provide a little bit of training to the drivers on the
use of navigation system on their app.

------
moonka
I've used Uber since they showed up in Seattle, and was a big proponent of it.
Lately, I've been seeing a lot of issues with the estimated eta being off by
20 minutes or so, which has led me to start using other services (Lyft,
sidecar, & crown car), all of which seem to do a better job of giving me an
ETA which is within a couple of minutes of them showing up.

~~~
jess23
I have also seen the GPS estimates degrade over time -- which begs the
question: shouldn't those estimate be improving over time, unless something
shady is going on?

~~~
aetherson
I would guess that GPS experiences like the article mentions are either driver
app errors or scaling problems. That is, it sounds like the server is
calculating the ETA of the driver based on a stale location. The location
would be stale either because the driver app is not updating it correctly or
because even when it is updating location correctly, the server is (sometimes)
using an older location, probably due to an eventually consistent data store.

When I worked for Flywheel (Uber competitor, same general needs of "figure out
the closest driver and provide an ETA"), we'd occasionally see drivers whose
phones seemed to get "stuck" in a location, essentially because the location
service crashed in the O/S and would stop updating the app (though this was on
Android phones and not iOS, and I'd be slightly surprised to see it happen in
iOS).

But I think that the scaling issue is the most likely. Location updates come
fast and furious, and must be queried quickly. I wouldn't be at all surprised
if Uber is using some kind of big scalable highly available database that
could in the event of fairly routine network partitions report stale driver
locations some of the time, and/or a cache in front of their underlying store
that sometimes fails to get invalidated. That seems like it's consistent with
the experience of the driver that the problem tends to happen on particular
nights (when they're having some kind of underlying problem with, say,
communication between components of their data store cluster), and why you
might see it getting worse over time (as they scale).

~~~
lockes5hadow
Why can't they just serve the client's location to the driver's device and
then have the drivers device handle the estimate?

~~~
jarek
That would lose scale-dependent ways to improve estimates like current traffic
data from other cars, historical traffic and trip-time records, etc

Also won't help with stale GPS location on the phone (which anecdotally has
been happening on my N5 more since upgrade to L as well)

------
cddotdotslash
I've had incredibly mixed experiences using Uber in NYC and DC. It used to be
great. Now, it seems that every other driver has no idea how to get both to me
and then my destination. In DC, the drivers routinely go ten to twenty minutes
out of the way. Almost every trip I have to submit a refund request which is
always granted, but it's still a pain. In NYC, drivers have yet to figure out
one way streets and watching them go up the wrong avenue and circle around my
apartment three times has become a past time of mine. After reading this
article, it seems like the GPS might be to blame.

------
dnautics
I'm not sure how her back to back drives add up to only $10/hr. I drive
Uber/Lyft in San Diego, routinely don't get back-to-back rides and have some
long stretches of downtime, and usually make $1000 on a 50 hour on-call week
(~30h of actual drive time). So that's about $20/hour. If you minus gas
(~150/wk) that's a little bit less; I drive a honda insight, which gets
slightly worse gas mileage than the prius, and the per hour and per mile in SF
is higher than than in San Diego.

~~~
bane
> and usually make $1000 on a 50 hour on-call week (~30h of actual drive
> time). So that's about $20/hour.

Now subtract car payments, insurance, wear and tear, etc.

Here's an example of how this breaks down:

You work 215 hours per month on average (50 * 4.3 weeks) and make $4,300
revenue during that time (or $51,600/year).

\- Subtract self-employment tax 15.3% - ~$7900

\- Taxable income 37,650 - ~$5,300 in taxes so subtract that

\- You put about 70k miles per year on your car assuming an average speed of
about 45mph (30 hours * 45mph * 4.3 weeks * 12) - IRS says that's $.56 per
mile - ~$39k or basically your entire car + a bit more in one year. This
includes the cost of gas.

\- The Prius is about a $23k car, financed completely at 3% for 5 years brings
you payments to about $400/mo or about $4,800/year

So 51,600 - 7,900 - 5,300 - 39,000 - 4,800 = -5,400 ouch

Most of your cost is in car wear and tear, so let's waive a magic wand and
make that go away, it's a Toyota after all. But we can't get rid of gas costs,
so let's substitute that in.

A prius gets about 51mpg in the city. It looks like I can get gas for about
$2.80/gal in San Diego right now. You'll need about 1.4k gallons per year.
Assuming gas prices stay the same, about $3.8k per year in gas. _edit_ I see
I'm estimating about half the gas pricing you are, so just double my figure
here.

So 51,600 - 7,900 - 5,300 - 4,800 - 3,800 = $29,800 in take home pay

 _edit_ or $26k take home when using your gas figures which makes it an even
$10/hr

At your self described work hours of 50hr/wk or 2600hr/year, that's $11.50/hr

I assume you wash your car and keep it clean because of passengers, so
subtract that out also. I'm going to guess that your take-home pay ends up at
around $10/hr if we assume your car takes no wear and tear of any sort driving
70,000 miles a year.

 _edit_ I'm not even counting commercial car insurance, which I'm sure you
have, or state taxes, inspections, licensing costs, etc. or any other
expenses.

 _edit_ Taxi insurance appears to run around $7-10k per year.

 _edit_ so let's use the new gas figures, you end up with about $21k take home
when you subtract $7k of taxi insurance. Or about $8/hr.

Once you deduct state taxes, property taxes etc. I'm sure there's other
expenses I'm missing, I have a feeling your take home pay is about on par with
California minimum wage.

~~~
Retric
You should be using pre tax numbers for expenses.

~~~
zb
He should be using pre-tax numbers for _everything_ \- not only is he not
deducting any expenses, he's comparing the final after-tax number with the
before-tax minimum wage.

Still, assuming his research is accurate at best it comes out at like ~$12 per
hour before tax, unless you play russian roulette on the insurance. This of
course assumes that it's your full-time job, otherwise the car payments will
further reduce the hourly rate.

~~~
Retric
Sorry, your wrong.

Self employment tax is higher than just social security tax so you need to
look at after tax earrings to compare a 1099 job to a w-2 job. Also, more
expences can be deducted as an uber driver than a wage slave ex: a percentage
of your cell phone bill and car depreciation.

------
ghshephard
Regarding ETA times - They were really, really good on the Peninsula in the
bay area - over 50 or so rides, and ETA of 5-15 minutes would usually be
within 2 minutes of the correct time.

Here in Dubai - they are ludicrously incorrect. I'll see a "8 minute ETA" that
turns out to be 35 minutes, more often than not.

This _seems_ to be a very solvable problem. During certain hours, traffic is
very slow. I've only been here a month, but I can tell you at 3:30 - 4:30, you
need to add about 15-20 minutes if you are going near the interchange at Wafi
Mall - That's without even taking into account the various traffic flow
indicators that I'm sure Uber has access to.

~~~
ekanes
Consider that Dubai might have different cultural norms as well, which could
affect drivers' hurry/accuracy factor.

~~~
ghshephard
That's not it - I've taken UberX here about 15 or so times - and the drivers
have all been courteous, professional and timely. A lot of them are black car
drivers as well, so it's hit and miss when you summon an UberX vehicle, you
might just end up with a Lexus a professional driver.

When I see where the cars are, and where I am, I can usually make a guess as
to how long they will be based on a months worth of local knowledge - another
example is traffic flows to/from Sharjah, the emirate next to Dubai. In the
morning all the traffic comes _from_ Sharjah, and in the evening it all goes
the return direction. The Exact same trip from Business Bay in Dubai to Al
Qusais might take 15 minutes or 60 minutes - but the time is entirely
predicable - Uber just doesn't seem to do it here.

------
cpks
The Uber drvers I speak to have generally have had a much more positive
experience.

One difference may be point-of-reference. A software engineer has much higher
expectations for income, treatment, etc. than blue collar or unskilled workers
do. The Radio Shack article a few weeks back is much closer to what happens to
most people in the US.

When you talk to taxi drivers, the experience is much, much worse. They have
to lease a medallion. The rates vary by market, but typical price might be
$150 per day. Because they lease the medallion, they're generally forced to
work insane hours. An 8 hour shift is a guaranteed money-losing proposition.
Still, if they make less than $150 -- which happens on a bad day, they come
out behind. If they have a good day, they'll make a bit over minimum wage. The
income is incredibly variable -- a fixed $150/day cost, combined with variable
revenue, guarantees that. That makes financial management tough.

It's a really tough, really bad business.

Compared to that, Uber and similar services are a breath of fresh air.

------
mathattack
I can see the issue here. Someone says, "Why is this so hard on me when the
company shuffling paper is making all the money?" I could see Lyft or Uber
having a competitive advantage if they gave equity or something like equity to
drivers. Pre-IPO equity may be difficult for regulatory reasons around # of
shareholders, but perhaps bonuses based on valuation?

~~~
dougabug
I think these companies want to avoid making the drivers look any more like
employees than they already do.

Frankly, it seems to me that they are in fact employees, over which Uber
exerts enormous control, to the point of spying on them, monitoring what they
post on social media, what they say to customers about the company, supplying
talking points, directing them to disregard certain local transportation
regulations.

~~~
mathattack
True - it benefits Uber immensely from a tax perspective (and benefits?) for
them to be independent consultants. It's also harder for independent
consultants to unionize.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Its going to be brutal on Uber (and Lyft) when the IRS recategroizes all of
those drivers as employees, and both companies need to cough up the employment
taxes they should've been paying. It happened to Fedex (their Ground division)
[1].

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/08/27/fedex-
misc...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/08/27/fedex-
misclassified-drivers-as-independent-contractors-rules-ninth-circuit/)

~~~
mathattack
I'm not a lawyer - is this a done deal? With FedEx they were working full
time, right? If someone is driving for both Uber and Lyft, isn't it hard to
say they should be an employee of one or the other?

~~~
toomuchtodo
It's a done deal:

[http://www.woodllp.com/Publications/Articles/pdf/AlexandervF...](http://www.woodllp.com/Publications/Articles/pdf/AlexandervFedEx.pdf)

Also, it wasn't the time required from contractors that put them into employee
status, but the requirements they were required to follow.

~~~
mathattack
I meant is it a done deal for Uber and Lyft?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Ahh! No no, not at all. It hasn't even come up yet with a court or the IRS.

------
LeoPanthera
I'm surprised she complains about the directions. I was under the impression
that it used Google Maps. I'm not an Uber driver but I have used the Google
Maps app for driving directions and always found it to be pretty good.

~~~
rifung
This probably depends on where you live? I use Google Maps and when I was
living in California it was completely awesome. However, having moved to
Seattle recently, it definitely is not as reliable as it used to be. This
might have to do with the roads here being much more complicated though.

~~~
jschwartzi
I've noticed that in downtown Seattle, the GPS has some difficulties
maintaining a tight fix on your location. Couple that with how close together
some of the roads are and you may find yourself teleporting from one avenue to
the other as you move toward your destination.

It works great in suburbia, as expected.

~~~
saraid216
It's been explained to me that tall buildings play merry havoc with the GPS,
but I haven't been able to test that out at all.

------
SyneRyder
I'm not so sure about the "lousy GPS". In an UberX ride I had the other week,
the driver & I were joking about how dodgy GPS can be, and we both agreed to
ignore its suggestions... Uber was suggesting we take a tunnel that would take
us away from our destination, and it's a tunnel no regular taxi driver has
ever used with me when driving to that destination before.

Well, after dealing with evening crowds & inner city construction work that
night, we had to take a number of detours to get to the destination. And near
the end of our lengthy detour, there was that tunnel that we'd opted not to
take. We probably would have saved 10 minutes. The driver immediately
apologized: "Maybe the Uber GPS was right after all."

~~~
easytiger
You mean its Navigation Software? I'd hate for GPS to become a synonym for
route planning.

~~~
mbrameld
It's been a synonym now for a long time.

~~~
danieldk
That does not mean one can't protest it ;). You need a way to refer to an
actual lousy GPS as well (long fix time, inaccurate). Lumping everything
together makes it hard to be precise (like using 'begging the question'
wrongly somewhere else in these comments ;)).

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
"protest _against_ it"

Sorry. I'm still fighting a rearguard action against you crazy Americans'
perversion of our language a "long time" ago.

(I know. I know. Someone will be along in a minute to tell me that "protest
it" was original authentic British English centuries ago.)

~~~
danieldk
_" protest _against_ it"_

Good point :). As a non-native speaker, I sometimes mess up prepositions...
And of course, have a carte blanche to make errors :p.

------
beedogs
Just uninstalled the Uber app this morning. Never used it, and, given the way
they treat their employees and their customers, I see there's absolutely no
reason to start.

------
LeoPanthera
> Having accepted a rider, the driver has no idea of the destination.

Only if you don't enter your destination in the app, which you can totally do.

~~~
martinko
This is not true, at least according to my limited experience in Prague. The
driver will see the destination I put in only after he STARTS the ride, ie
after I get in the car (as opposed to seeing it before or after he accepts the
ride).

~~~
pbreit
In the US, at least, entering the destination is optional.

~~~
martinko
Here too, but the driver doesnt see it either way.

------
hagope
I've had only awesome experiences as an Uber rider (in the Boston area and Bay
Area) and all the drivers I talked to seem pretty happy (especially ex-taxi
drivers). I agree the software is a bit shotty, but I'd bet they are aware of
and working out all the kinks.

~~~
jacalata
My understanding is that Uber drivers are always happy about being uber
drivers when talking to customers because there is a "secret shopper" program
that considers complaining about the company to be a bad thing.

~~~
Fede_V
I understand why the company does it, but that's horrific. There was a
sandwhich chain (mostly based in the UK) that even had a collective punishment
thing - if someone at a shop was found to be insufficiently cheerful, everyone
lost on the weekly bonus.

[http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112204/pret-manger-
when-c...](http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112204/pret-manger-when-
corporations-enforce-happiness)

------
pyrophane
Does Uber use Apple Maps for its drivers? I would assume so, if they are on
iOS. That could certainly explain why several comments in this thread mention
Uber's direction finding services getting worse. My rather subjective
experience with Apple Maps is that they haven't caught up with Google yet.

~~~
no_future
I remember reading somewhere that they use the Foursquare API for something.

~~~
jarek
They might use Foursquare API for geolocating points of interest? Citymapper
uses that and I assume it's for a reason (cheaper than Google?)

