Scooter mechanic, once homeless, says cheap rides now help him pay rent | Hacker News Reader

Scooter mechanic, once homeless, says cheap rides now help him pay rent

sfchronicle.com

I feel like I've read this article plenty of times, just replace the scooter company with a rideshare company or a delivery company or anything else from the "gig economy." And after a few months or years, how many of these jobs remain stable and well-paying, if they still exist at all? Of course it's good that someone who was homeless is given a chance to reenter the workforce but looking to these incredibly volatile startup/gig economy companies to provide that seems like, after all the recent examples, a bad idea.

Well, this is the eternal debate between job and career, right? If a government "creates jobs" by investing in infrastructure then it's the same problem. When that road is paved or that park is built then those people face the same dilemma. So we just hope that the economy itself keeps going in a manner that we can have things cycle and people can switch jobs as needed.

It's a "stepping stone" job, not meant as a destination.

You're welcome to try your way to provide good careers to these people. Just because other entrepreneurs didn't do it doesn't mean you should let it stop you!

I find this comment confusing, as there's no expectation of entrepreneurs to create jobs- its just a side effect of trying to make money. I agree with the top comment where this feels like more of the same and when the subsidy/vc money dries up they are going to be fired just as if they were a contractor as the company dissolves. There just wasn't anything in this piece that felt like more than a template fluff about how company X creates a service around consumer product Y and is paying some token people a few dollars over minimum wage. Which in itself is fine, but there was no real information on how they were going to sustain themselves and become a stable business.

The thing that irks me about this article is the feeling that it's going to be used as a powerpoint footnote/feel good slide forever well after the primary person in this article has long since departed.

It seems like scooters are here to stay. Gaining skills and experience at repairing small transportation devices is probably not a bad plan.

This is interesting to me though, because if it's the case that a person without a permanent address can start making money through the gig economy, that's providing more equitable employment opportunities than what was available prior.

Didn't we saw the same narrative when Uber was trying to capture the market?

The emotional stories about a long lost relative found on Facebook?

The single mom who started writing a blog and thanks to the wonders of AdSense she's rich?

and the small mom & pop store who found huge success with Groupon? ( How that went out? eh?)

At this point, the prevailing mood is so negative that some positive stories going against the grain seem useful, to help shade black-and-white thinking with a bit of grey. Occasionally the actions of tech companies do have positive effects.

Now that's got to be a Submarine Article, with the repeated mentions of one company and the underlying narrative of Scooter companies being job providers. Simultaneously a job ad and an attempt to sway public and/or local government option in favour of scooter companies (or at the least, this scooter company) remaining in SF.

Otherwise, it's hard to believe that 'person gets a blue collar job' is something that an article would be written about...

Stop trying to make the word "submarine" happen. It's not going to happen.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18259355

In your linked post, you seem to be saying "Everyone knows that positive articles are usually PR, you don't need to point it out."

Everyone doesn't know that. You know it because you were an ad exec. Educating people who aren't yet sufficiently cynical about stealth advertising is a valuable goal.

Yes, if anything they should be the one trying to spread the knowledge. The fact that they are doing the opposite leads me to suspect their comments are Submarine Comments of the PR industry.

It's not stealth advertising. The SF Chronicle is a legitimate news organization that has journalistic standards.

Maybe a PR person suggested the story, maybe nobody did. Maybe the author came up with the idea and just wrote it. Maybe the author emailed around looking for examples and a PR person jumped on the idea. Who fucking knows. But nobody in this thread has any first hand info about it.

Either way it's not advertising, it's a story in the newspaper by a journalist that has ethical standards to live up to. We live in an era now where people are trying to blur the difference between ads and journalism, for a reason, so I personally care about the difference.

Also the word submarine is fucking stupid.

I understand what it means and it quite succinctly describes an article that is bought and paid for but not disclosed as such.

Regarding the link, I can see why an ex-marking executive would be annoyed about a way to easily communicate such tactics with a "buzzword". Submarine articles probably work quite well when trying to build an image for a company.

Journalists are always looking for stories to get people to read and human interest stories get clicks. So yeah there was probably a PR professional that set this up but it doesn't mean that money was exchanged behind the scenes. Certainly the PR rep was probably being paid but did they need to send a payment to the journalist or their company, not necessarily. It could be that the scooter company advertises on this media outlet and thus there was extra incentive to write this story. Who knows except the people involved. A lot of tech journalism is essentially cribbing the press release and talking all about the newest greatest piece of soon to be e-waste. The fact that we are talking about this article means it was effective in getting this story out there and associating the scooter company with humans that get paid versus the cold calculating algorithms that are replacing what would of been a human logistics team. Shrug.

Money was almost certainly not exchanged behind the scenes, as that would be completely and totally unethical, and it's pretty obnoxious to accuse the author, who has a name, of being unethical without any evidence at all.

What does it matter whether the newspaper is paid cash, or the PR firm writes the article for them? In both cases, they're getting something of value in return for favorable coverage.

Meme replies don't really belong here, you could easily copy your general argument or paraphrase it instead.

Submarine happened. I knew exactly what was meant.

How about "Paid Programming" as a term instead? Submarine might still be better. It as article intended to deceive the public as being a journalistic act, but one which is really a piece of advertising. Active deceptive acts by corporations should always be identified and called out.

I’m with you...submarine is way to nice, let’s go back to calling them “paid for PR fluff pieces”.

Now let’s write the truth...tech start up that litters public streets with their crap hired a homeless man and exploited him for the purpose of paying even scummier media folks to print a PR fluff piece under the guise of a legitimate news story...probably the same company will try to milk investors for even more money using the article as proof of their goodwill and growth.

It's not like the submarine metaphor is without precedent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_patent

There's a new class every year that need to learn the concept. Perhaps submarine is not optimal, but it is good enough.

This is exactly the first things I thought of. The only thing missing was the byline of the PR firm that either wrote the article or paid to have it written.

I wish that had to be disclosed, it's every bit as much conflict of interest as if they had paid the newspaper to include a story.

PR firms don't write articles for legit journalists and they certainly don't pay staff journalists at the reputable publications to write them (not without disclosing them as sponsored content). At most journalist publications sponsored content is handled by an entirely different group (not the editorial team). And journalists get really annoyed if they feel like a company or PR firm is trying to tell them what to write.

A PR firm will help find a story, write a pitch, and package up the details to make the reporter's life easier (studies, data, contact info, etc). They might help with things like vetting the subject or coordinating scheduling for an interview, etc. In this case, even the photos were taken by a staff photographer for the SF Chronicle.

Is the company going to pitch a story on how many ER doctors their scooters are keeping employed because customers injure themselves? Probably not. But it's not their job to and it's certainly not unethical to pitch a positive human interest story.

Anyone can pitch a journalist. That's frequently how they find stories. And it helps if you include information that will make writing about it easier.

I don't believe this to be true. Many examples up in Canada where national newspapers kept reporting on the amazoning housing markets in many cities that mirrored press releases from the realtor associations. Real data contraticted that many times over.

"The scooter technician gig didn’t exist a little more than a year ago. It’s an example of how shifts in business models, social norms and consumer habits spurred by startups can spawn new kinds of work, defying predictions that new technologies will destroy more jobs than they create."

Ya... people riding scooters once drove expensive cars fixed by mechanics earning far more than 22$/hour. Manpower is the only real cost in any organization. So any new tech or business model that is cheaper than an old system (ie scooters instead of taxis) almost certainly means someone somewhere is earning less money than under the old scheme.

> It’s an example of how shifts in business models, social norms and consumer habits spurred by startups can spawn new kinds of work, defying predictions that new technologies will destroy more jobs than they create.

Hands up everyone who predicted that scooter companies would destroy jobs. No-one? thought not.

I like the idea, but there are a lot of issues apparently. I went to visit a friend in Baltimore, and he told me rental scooters are being vandalized all the time for no reason. I also read an article that the accident rate and ER visits due to scooters went really high with this business. No idea if it's the quality of the scooters or what.

I haven't tried one yet myself. I want to after this insurance season...

>he told me rental scooters are being vandalized all the time for no reason

The bikes in Seattle get vandalized/destroyed all the time. People seem to enjoy throwing them into the sound

When they first showed up in SF people chucked dozens of em right into the bay.

Those people are crazy... acting like territorial animals...

Must be the local culture. In East Lansing a lot of the students tend to be destructive in general but everybody seems to treat the Bird and Line scooters with respect. Not sure why.

A shame $45K/year only "helps" him pay his rent.

Edit: Article says he paid in full.

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is anyone else getting this 403 error?

EDIT: Comment is at -1 now and i'm still getting the error. Could the downvoters comment on why this comment is worthy of downvotes?

Ironically, as a couple assholes buzzed by me today on the sidewalk in Atlanta, I imagined one of the people running me over and the scooter company fighting to eschew liability once I made a legal claim.

People are gonna die on these things and kill other people if they haven't already. These scooters have no place in my city.

Would it be okay if they were required to drive in bike lanes? I think public safety concerns such as the ones you raised are very important, but I feel slightly baffled at what I perceive as an almost curmudgeonly, visceral dislike for them :(

I assume they would be required to use bike lanes in most American cities. I am concerned about the liability involved. A local journalist here in Austin was hit by a drunk guy on a scooter badly enough to dent her driver-side door and render the door inoperative. Then he claimed she hit him. His auto insurance, if he has any doesn't cover his usage of electric scooters.

So she was facing a liability for fixing the car, perhaps some sort of insurance fraud on his part, AND her insurance was going to list an incidence of her "striking a pedestrian." Fortunately she found out there was some CCTV footage that exonerated her, but all of that just so some drunk a--hole can zoom around on a scooter and the scooter companies make money?

It sounds like it's the exact same situation as if they owned their own scooter or bike and crashed into the car.

How does it typically work if I am riding my own bike or scooter and something like this accident happened? Most people don't carry liability insurance for their bicycles, skateboards etc.

If you get into an accident, call the cops. If the other party is drunk, they'll definitely make note of it.

If you make a claim and the other party doesn't have insurance (it's unlikely the law requires someone to have liability insurance for their bike) and you need to make a claim, you could be SOL, but that's really a problem with how insurance companies operate.

In many cities, two-wheeled vehicles are required to not be on the sidewalk. I'll bet parent is equally annoyed by being almost run down by bicyclists while on the sidewalk....

All true. Bicycles can go 20mph, vs pedestrians' 2mph. Not a good fit. Scooters have to be even worse (heavier, worse collisions).

Faster than that I have see bikes going more than 20 in London - and blasting through junctions at a read light.

I absolutely hate when bikes fly past me on the sidewalk.

You can rarely hear them coming (I don't wear headphones or anything), and they'll zip by with enough speed to cause serious harm.

What if I had stepped to the side? Or done a stretch and moved my arm to the side?

I'm not trying to be in physical therapy for a year or more because you can't walk your bike from the nearest corner to wherever you intend to park it.

Have some empathy. If something almost ran you over a few hours ago, it's perfectly normal to have a visceral dislike for it.

As far as requiring these things be in bike lanes, it's all well and good to say that. But at least in my city, there seems to be a ton of confusion from bike riders, cars and pedestrians alike about what the exact laws are, let alone reliable enforcement of these laws.

Cops are rarely going to see misuse anyway, so that wouldn't have helped the parent poster.

Confusing. Are you wanting to make a legal claim against Toyota, Ford, Chevy, etc. if someone drives an automobile in a way that makes you have to file a legal claim? This comes across as just "get off my lawn" sort of reaction.

The scooter sharing company isn't (necessarily) the manufacturer in your analogy.

This is like Ford rented someone a car for off-roading with FWD, no seatbelts and racing slicks, didn't ask for proof of a license or any experience driving at all, and they ended up driving off a cliff.

Your comment sounds a lot like "joggers have no place on my bike path" or "the road is for cars, not bikes"

Scooters solve a niche in the "not quite big enough to be regulated like a motor vehicle" transportation segment. There's no inherent reason they can't be used in public spaces.

The only reason scooters are an "issue" is because they are new and that newness results in them existing in a legal gray area that causes people to feel entitled to all the speed of real vehicles with all of the responsibility to operate safely that a pedestrian has (i.e. none other than your understanding of physics and desire not to be hit by other traffic). This "issue" will be solved eventually if scooters do become popular enough to take part in accidents actually harm people with any meaningful regularity.

>Your comment sounds a lot like "joggers have no place on my bike path" or "the road is for cars, not bikes"

Bikes on roads are required to obey the same signals and markings cars do, as well as staking in their lane (if one exists). Plenty of bike paths have separate lanes for walkers/joggers and bikes...the closing speed of one can be an order of magnitude higher than the other....

>The only reason scooters are an "issue" is because they are new and that newness

No, operating a powered vehicle on sidewalks is nowhere near as novel as you think it is, and the courts should have no difficulty addressing the fining/prosecution of those that do so. I don't know why people think "battery-electric scooter/skateboard" requires a paradigm shift in how to define a moving violation.

>This "issue" will be solved eventually if scooters do become popular enough to take part in accidents actually harm people with any meaningful regularity.

Great. We just need a sufficient number of electric-scooter related deaths and injuries to overcome the natural inertia of the criminal justice system &&|| trial bar. Then someone will fix the problem.

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