I quit: Miseries of an Uber driver
salon.com
salon.com
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.
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.
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.
Where do you see that from the article you linked? It says So $10 billion of gross revenue would equate to $2 billion of net revenue. To have profits of over $1B on $2B of revenue would mean a profit margin of over 50%!
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]
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.
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.
It's easier for me to just take Metro and use car2Go to fill in the gaps.
I'm wondering if they developed their own routing algorithm which would explain why it isn't as good as other navigation systems.
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).
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)
San Francisco also might have more competition from other drivers.
The vehicle driver might be aware of that and take the risk anyway, but passengers are usually not aware of this and need some protections.
Although this question is slightly less interesting because of typical insurance policies being neutral on the number of kilometers driven.
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.
I think Uber's current pricing advantage over standard cabs relies on their driver's not being aware of these costs (especially Taxi insurance). That said, I think they could just raise prices to cover it and still have a great business.
Also, $10/hour is more than I ever made as a shift worker. It sucks, but plenty of people are willing to work for that rate. Thus the OP may be making a moot point.
- Car payments are the same
- Gas is the same
- Insurance is the same
- Vehicle wear and tear is the same
I'm sure I made a mistake somewhere or overlooked something...
"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 - ~$5,300 in taxes so subtract that"
You don't pay self employment tax on revenue you pay it on profit. So if your paying ex:10,000 in expences for gas then you would pay (51,600 - 10,000) * 15.3% = 6364$ in self employment taxes.
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.
But you are right, I should deduct expenses before taxes.
I don't think the end-result is terribly different though. Maybe $1-2/hr
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.
Also income tax is deducted off of profits not driver revenue.
I'm not double dipping because I won't be deducting gasoline or insurance expenses as a part of the .56/mi deduction. (I don't keep my gas receipts)
Of course comparing to a postdoc is unfair because you're putting in ~80 hours a week, which is certainly below minimum wage, and the postdoc market is totally insane.
Nonetheless, I am definitely making more than minimum wage - for the first time in my life I have savings and investments. Not to mention the fact that I have launched a nonprofit, sinking quite a bit of my own out-of-pocket to get that running. Granted, the take home was much higher at the beginning of the year (avg 1400/wk) than it is now.
80 hours/wk * 52 weeks * $9 = $37,440 pre-taxes
> Now, I make those payments and (I think) I can deduct them from my taxes.
If you use your vehicle for only business purposes, then yes, you can. If you mix personal and business use, you have to determine the percentage of use, and you can deduce the business percentage.
Since your business involves your car better than 40 hours/week, you should be able to deduct most of the payments.
> Granted, the take home was much higher at the beginning of the year (avg 1400/wk) than it is now.
So wait, do you make 1000/wk now before or after you deduct expenses and taxes or before? I'm assuming that's your pretax/expense earn?
Regardless, if it's working for you and you enjoy it, that's cool. I just hope you're modeling your expenses and taxes correctly and don't get freaked out come tax season.
Most people I know who 1099 get it grossly wrong every year. Which is why it's recommended you do quarterly taxes.
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.
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.
After presenting my complaints, Uber gave me a nice credit for my troubles and confirmed it was a difficult operating environment due to local conditions.
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.
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.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/08/27/fedex-misc...
http://www.woodllp.com/Publications/Articles/pdf/AlexandervF...
Also, it wasn't the time required from contractors that put them into employee status, but the requirements they were required to follow.
It works great in suburbia, as expected.
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."
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.)
Good point :). As a non-native speaker, I sometimes mess up prepositions... And of course, have a carte blanche to make errors :p.
But that train left the station a long time ago, and I've stopped arguing with people about it because it's a losing battle. Every normal I know, from my parents to my network of friends, refers to Garmin and TomTom auto units as "GPS." They have unfortunately become identified in the common mind with the technology.
Only if you don't enter your destination in the app, which you can totally do.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/112204/pret-manger-when-c...