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I spent two weeks delivering for Uber Eats and made $4.40 per hour

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383 points imartin2k | 5 comments | 13 May 17 10:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.834s | source
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fastball ◴[13 May 17 11:38 UTC] No.14330444[source]▶
I rode for UberEats for two weeks and made roughly £22 an hour.

To be fair, this was when they were just coming into London and offering crazy bonuses to steal market share from Deliveroo, but still, this isn't controversial - if someone pays you bad wages, don't work for them...

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libeclipse ◴[13 May 17 12:13 UTC] No.14330546[source]▶
That's some solid advice, but for some people, that's simply not an option.

If you can't find work elsewhere, you'd rather work for pennies than for nothing.

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Murkin ◴[13 May 17 12:35 UTC] No.14330657[source]▶
So its better that Uber didn't offer this job at all?
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jacobr ◴[13 May 17 12:44 UTC] No.14330678[source]▶
It would be better if they offered the job with reasonable wages and conditions. If consumers are not willing to pay enough for Uber to be able to offer this, they have a poor business model or are in the wrong market.

You could say the same about any regulation, if you cannot manufacture something at a reasonable price without polluting more than allowed, you need to change your prices or adjust your business model.

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1. dominotw ◴[13 May 17 13:57 UTC] No.14330986[source]▶
> you need to change your prices or adjust your business model.

so its better for a job to not exist rather than exist without reasonable wage?

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2. jacobr ◴[13 May 17 14:19 UTC] No.14331095[source]▶
The alternative is for Uber to invest in increased productivity, just like other industries. Making each worked hour give more return. They could supply better bikes, as another poster suggested less downtime for drivers, better algorithms to cut the length of the routes, higher fees for customers... I'm sure there are clever people that can figure it out.
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3. vertex-four ◴[13 May 17 14:25 UTC] No.14331132[source]▶
Back in the real world, the job exists without Uber - delivery drivers have existed for a long, long time. Deliveroo, Uber Eats, etc have primarily just shifted work away from individual restaurants employing drivers to the Uber model.
4. ◴[13 May 17 14:41 UTC] No.14331210[source]▶
5. Fnoord ◴[13 May 17 18:29 UTC] No.14332273[source]▶
> so its better for a job to not exist rather than exist without reasonable wage?

This is quite obviously a false dichotomy. Its not necessary bad when a job doesn't exist (e.g. the job 'head of slave labour team' doesn't exist anymore), and the obvious best outcome appears to be a fair wage for a (therefore existing) job.

Uber doesn't seem to follow local laws. For example [and this is really one of the many examples], in The Netherlands you need a license to drive a taxi which made UberPop illegal. Uber didn't care, they launched it anyway. This appears to be the modus operandus of Uber: shoot first, ask questions later.

The way they try to get drivers for Uber as documented here (again, in The Netherlands, article in Dutch use Google Translate) [1], underpaying them after they're in, is also disheartening and only benefits Uber; neither the customers nor the drivers. So what Uber did there was invest in driving their competition away. Of course, people don't wanna pay for pennies, but that's why they have the Uber brand. They use this branding together with state of the art technology to get customers (workers and clients).

The more this information gets out, the less victims Uber is able to make.

[1] http://www.taxibelangen.nl/ervaringen-ex-uber-chauffeur/