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Comment by nerdjon | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if I am wrong, but both Uber and Lyft have almost no barrier to entry beyond a background check and maybe some hardware right (and obviously having a car)? Like no interview, no hoping to get it, you just get it? That was always my understanding.

If that is indeed the case, I feel like this makes sense and is a normal thing for a job. Making sure that your employee is staying productive to a certain degree and not over-hiring.

Too many drivers on the road means people have less work to share. I am super reluctant to side with either of them but to call this a "loophole" doesn't seem right. To me it seems like them doing what they should have been doing this entire time and making sure passenger demand and driver availability properly line up.

What am I missing here?

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The entire point of the article, which is that lockouts have nothing to do with customer demand, and are instead a way to skirt NYC's fair pay regulations, specifically. Per Lyft:

>The pay formula leads to the lockouts solution, said Lyft spokesperson CJ Macklin. “Which means drivers continue to see limits on when they can earn, riders are still waiting longer to get to where they need to go, and Lyft can’t serve New Yorkers in the way they are expecting,” he said. (By Lyft’s calculation, its customers have been waiting about two minutes longer per trip.)

>“This poor experience is why we don’t deploy lockouts anywhere else except in this unique situation, and it’s why we need a long-term fix,” he added.

That is the point of the article but I am failing to see that point fully made.

I am not seeing that it has nothing to do with customer demand but instead the quote you said to meis saying it leads to problems with responding to an increase in demand.

If I understand the point of this article properly they require 58% utilization to pay minimum wage.

The article even mentions the cost savings for these companies to optimize their drivers to have a higher utilization rate.

Edit:

> Do said in a Sept. 27 public testimony at the city council that his agency intends to announce rules by the end of the year that would limit new driver onboarding as a way of deterring future lockouts.

I don't think they would be contemplating the above if there was no relation to customer demand.

You're misinterpreting the quotes. The second one is about forcing the companies to use the drivers that are already there, not locking them out so that they don't have to pay minimum wage. The first quote is what it is on its face.

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