Lyft, but whatever, this extends to all those 'surveys' where the wide eyed and desperate looking sales help almost begs you for 'all tens'.
TIL: @lyft drivers get fired if their rating falls below 4.6/5. Basically, if riders mentally calibrate "4" as a "meets expectations", we're really setting drivers up to be fired. And there's no way to reward truly exceptional w/o punishing the perfectly adequate.
Indeed, the whole "revolutionary" part of the ride hailing companies is just how much they treat their drivers as disposable robotic cogs with the bonus of being in a high enough legal grade that they don't have to take responsibility when their cogs fuck up.
Uber has basically told drivers their days are numbered and as soon as robotic cars take off, they're all fired, er I mean the work for hire contract which absolves Uber of any responsibility sidestepping labor laws will be terminated.
Edit to add: I think it's important to point out what the ratings are actually for. Lyft/Uber doesn't actually give a crap how fantastic your ride was all they care about is "Will this person return to our service?" The out of 5 rating hides the fact that it's distilled down to a yes or no rating with 5 being a yes and anything less than that being a percentage of no. If you have a large enough pool of drivers then the system wants to keep only those with a guarantee they will bring back customers and prunes any of those uncertainties, even if there is nothing actually wrong with them as drivers. Which then ultimately rewards the people willing to push themselves to unhealthy levels, with the shitty reward of not being fired.
Has any other company had a more batshit year than Uber? In lieu of a traditional report card, I briefly considered just copying and pasting text from the Book of Revelation into this article. That’s how bad it was.
From what I read, it wasn't a street with vehicles parked on the side, but the person was jaywalking. I wonder if the "driver" was bored after days of riding around in autonomous mode and not really paying attention.
An extreme amount of irony would ensue if the person struck was waiting for an Uber.
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Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for the night. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life.
Human-driven Uber cars have killed humans: Uber sued over girl's death in S.F. - SFGate (2014) (as have human-driven non-Uber cars, of course - this article is more about shitty Uber management practices).
Tesla Autopilot has also killed a human, although in this case it was the driver and it was driver-assistance technology rather than driverless (mind you, the recent Uber incident also had a "human safety driver supervising the vehicle"): Uber Death Likely to Spur Tesla-Like Scrutiny, Finger-Pointing - Bloomberg
Ok, this is where is gets interesting: human causes the death of an Uber driver: 16-Year-Old Girl Allegedly Hacks Uber Driver To Death With Machete (2017) - she bought the weapons and then called the Uber. The converse of this would be driverless cars actively hunting down humans. And you know that's going to happen.
Uber CEO on Saudi Arabia's killing of Jamal Khashoggi: "It's a serious mistake. We've made mistakes too, right, with self-driving ... So I think that people make mistakes. It doesn't mean that they can never be forgiven" pic.twitter.com/EvinRrh3SE
A senior executive at Uber suggested that the company should consider hiring a team of opposition researchers to dig up dirt on its critics in the media — and specifically to spread details of the personal life of a female journalist who has criticized the company.
The executive, Emil Michael, made the comments in a conversation he later said he believed was off the record. In a statement through Uber Monday evening, he said he regretted them and that they didn’t reflect his or the company’s views.
His remarks came as Uber seeks to improve its relationship with the media and the image of its management team, who have been cast as insensitive and hyper-aggressive even as the company’s business and cultural reach have boomed.
My favorite part of that is how they were already struggling to overcome the "insensitive and hyper-aggressive" image before this clown said this.
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
I received a message from a recruiter, saying they are from "Travis Kalanick's new venture." I'm not always up on industry, so I looked this Travis person up. Former CEO of Uber, Libertarian and Ayn Rand fan, but cozied up to the Saudis (and possibly Trump).
This was supposed to help sell me on the business?
It's quite helpful sometimes that right-wingers and business psycopaths and the people (like recruiters) who hang around them so often lack self-awareness.
A San Francisco Superior Court judge ordered Uber and Lyft on Monday to stop treating their drivers as independent contractors, granting a request from California Attorney General Xavier Becerra that the companies comply with a new statewide classification standard. The order came with a 10-day stay, and the companies said they would appeal.
But if that effort for a legal reprieve fails, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in an MSNBC interview, the company could halt its service until the November election, when California voters will weigh in on an Uber-funded ballot initiative that would allow the company to continue treating its drivers as independent contractors.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
Reclassify every driver? That is excellent. Just stop serving California and ratchet up the pressure. That preliminary injunction is a gift to Uber and Lyft - quick 8-K to report an unscheduled material event and instant cover for earnings miss (or credit for an earnings surprise) in next quarter.
I meant to post that here yesterday but I got bored halfway through the article when it became apparent that the company has a pretty rock-solid "that was then, this is now" defense against any of his critiques.
True dat, and I guess the journalistic rationale for the exposé is how easy is it for big companies - not just Über - to twist governments and laws. But we don't have a thread for that.
Re: Momo Fukuber
Reclassify every driver? That is excellent. Just stop serving California and ratchet up the pressure. That preliminary injunction is a gift to Uber and Lyft - quick 8-K to report an unscheduled material event and instant cover for earnings miss (or credit for an earnings surprise) in next quarter.
Linear Mode
