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Comment by listenallyall | Hacker News Reader

Scenario: It's raining. Twice as many people are requesting rides as normal. You have, as you described, only full-time employees. Go!

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Same deal as it is now no? Its not like you recruit more drivers during a rainstorm in the current model. You dangle hazard pay to make your employees grab their keys and drive after hours, same as any job with full time employees and sudden after hours demand.

Half of people get rides, the other half don’t, as happens with taxis today. It’s unreasonable to assume the physical world has the elasticity of technology resources.

That's a pretty terrible solution. Leaving good, willing-to-pay customers out in the rain? Not really customer-service oriented, are we?

Customer obsession is worker abuse veiled as clever business practices.

Workers > Customers > Shareholders (this is Costco’s stated priority by the way; they do very well and treat their employees well)

Try to get Costco to show up at your house 7 minutes from now.

That’s the point

That’s a competitive advantage over taxis, then. It’s one of several reasons I choose uber over yellow cabs when in NYC (9 times out of 10, anyway).

Up until Uber exhausts cash on hand. And then you’ll be back to using taxis or public transit, no?

A competitive advantage has no value without a path to profitability.

So are you going to start this business now or wait until Uber folds?

Start what business? Have taxis gone out of business? Or did they adopt their own ridehailing apps and continue to exist? I still see cabs everywhere in NYC, Chicago, and SF.

If you can’t kill taxis with tens of billions of dollars of VC investment, how does the last bit of cash Uber has help?

> Up until Uber exhausts cash on hand.

Uber's rideshare business appears to be almost revenue-neutral. So if you're waiting for Uber to run out of cash, you'll be waiting a while. Worst case scenario, they stop pouring money into their money-losing ventures and focus on rideshare.

Perhaps human mobility solutions should be run as non-profit.

> A competitive advantage has no value without a path to profitability.

It's a real pity that there is no 'HN Quotes' section, I'd definitely nominate this one.

This seems based on the assertion that people are only using Uber because it's cheaper which, as far as I can tell, is completely unfounded.

There could still be “surge” pricing though, as long as the company paid the employee-drivers overtime. So perhaps drivers who are “off” could be incentivized to drive during the additional demand.

Assume all drivers (taxi or Uber alike) have the same rights as other employees (min/max working hours, minimum pay, benefits).

If the idea of “independent contractors” is punctured so that Uber has to ensure drivers make minimum wage in 40h after their own operating expenses, then Uber won’t have a huge competitive advantage anymore.

This is handled the same way 24/7 availability is handled. The company employs some multiple of the employees it needs to handle regular demand during the day. Some of these employees happen to like working at night. Others like working during the day. All are required to put in some number of hours per week in order to qualify for the perks that come with full time employment.

When a spike in demand occurs, a page goes out to all employees who currently aren’t on the road requesting that all those who can do so safely proceed immediately to an area that has unfilled demand.

These hypothetical employees are expected to be 24/7 on-call? If they're required to have their "pager" on and respond to pages, this is unreasonable. Nobody would put up with such absurdity. If they aren't, it's also unreasonable, after all, nobody would put up with such absurdity.

Put in work preferences. Would like to work hours X; is willing to be notified of opportunities for overtime hours Y. When it's a big deal time, call up everyone who seems to be legal for DOT workrules, regardless of their preferences.

Awesome. I've put in a full day of work and I'm finally chilling out with my kids playing Xbox, can't wait to "immediately" get my ass back on the road. Not exploitative at all.

So long as the pay is good enough without answering any overtime calls (ie at least minimum wage plus operating costs for 40h per week) then I don’t see the issue with some limited voluntary overtime.

The q is: can the driver play Xbox with his kid and get him a higher education, with the pager off? Then it’s an ok solution. Otherwise not.

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