The office employees definitely had a careerist tech-bro vibe, on the other hand
Belphegor posted:The HQs are lavish but as for the number of employees it seems necessity for some reason. When I was an Uber courier I often visited a similar HQ. The constant turnover of new people going through the paperwork + existing employees trying to get money when they inevitably get screwed out of it seemed to require a large staff. Even then,there were often long wait times
The office employees definitely had a careerist tech-bro vibe, on the other hand
thanks for the info. large churn through drivers and endless problems means that massive admin is also necessary, makes sense. i still sorta feel like there'd have to be a better way though. and all these companies trying to give the feel of an Apple Store raise suspicion in me. it's like they're projecting a success that just isnt there. maybe thats just the state of interior decorating.
Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 ()
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:it's like they're projecting a success that just isnt there. maybe thats just the state of interior decorating.
projecting a success that just isnt there IS the state of interior decorating
especially stuff like any problems with the app, any extra incentives they tried to give you (i know they game-ify), experiences with their admin etc.
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:tears posted:is the cash spend just them subsidising rides?
i think its a lot of different things
-subsidising rides, free promotional rides and so on
-lobbying, lawyers, fines etc
-incentives for new drivers. when they come to a new market uber give very good pay, luring taxi drivers, pizza delivery boys etc to quit their old jobs. then uber inevitably cut the rates to try to stop the haemorrhaging. uber has a very fast employee turnover so they often give one-off bonuses for new drivers signing up. they also sometimes give bonuses for drivers who refer other drivers to signup iirc.
-schemes like lending out cars (to try to trap drivers with indebtedness) which actually lost them money lol
-getting the best PR guys like david plouffe. im sure they dont come cheap
-i assume a lot of management and IT type stuff, they're always tweaking the app and the algorithms used to calculate pay. think about all the people needed to process things like passenger complaints.
-spending maybe 100 million dollars on a new CEO?
-programs like uberpool and ubereats which lead to even more subsidies i think.
something else: they pay out for incredible price dumping style discount "specials" for people working for big companies with a lot of employee travel, so often that they pretty much never end
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:btw i would love if you shared more about your experience with uber belphegor, if ya wanna.
especially stuff like any problems with the app, any extra incentives they tried to give you (i know they game-ify), experiences with their admin etc.
Yeah sure, I'll put down the interesting stuff I can remember.
First let me add the disclaimer that I was an 'UberEATS' bicycle food courier, and I don't have any experience with the car service part.
First the incentives were all over the place. The way I got into the gig was through a third-party full time recruiter, believe it or not. UberEATS was just starting up in the city so they were offering 150$ CAD to any new courier who completed at least 10 trips (which would average around 7-8 dollars a trip, 30% of which uber takes as a cut), and 150$ to the person who referred them. In exchange for guiding me through the set-up process, the guy who referred me got 150$. He didn't earn it, that's for sure, but I couldn't get MY 150 without having someone's referral code.
A lot of people burn out quickly (biking in the city is tiring and stressful), so I can't imagine how much cash uber burned through and continues to burn through to keep the streets full of couriers, in particular now that winter is here.
The second big incentives are rush bonuses. During peak hours, I saw them try two things. The first was guaranteeing a minimum daily revenue on the condition that you were 'online' for at least 6-8 hours and that you did not turn down too many fares. They have to do this because the orders come in in waves, so the couriers don't necessarily want to be on the streets waiting for the deadzone between lunch and dinner to pass. The second thing was the familiar surge pricing, where customers actually end up paying the extra money.
Even with the incentives, it was a real grind to even make as much as a full-time minimum wage job. If you worked in the spaces and times that were easier to bike in (day, downtown core), there was always a surplus of couriers. Uber keeps customer wait times down by increasing courier downtimes. I tried to reach out to the other couriers on the streets sometimes, but if you both hang out in the same place then you are decreasing your odds of getting the next order, since uber reaches out to the closest courier to the restaurant first, waits 30-60 seconds for them to accept, and then tries the next closest. Competing against all your coworkers was very alienating, and also 'civilian' cyclists and motorists hate you because you are always going fast and breaking traffic laws to try to make more money ( a Toronto bike courier was killed by a judge in a road rage incident a few years back. Google Darcy Allan Sheppard). I stopped working after I got a concussion from a crash and decided it wasn't worth it. Uber pays no sick days or anything for medical, of course. I have public health insurance, but it didn't cover the ambulance, so my crash wiped out all the money I had made so far that day.
As for gamification, the uber app had more than a few design parallels with pokemon GO lol.
As for administration, they tried to do as much through the app as possible, which was awkward. IF you called them, the wait times would be long, and they would often tell me to go through the app and call again. I wish I had saved the texts the sent me.They mirror the type of copy that UBER writes in its ads: very upbeat, motivational poster type stuff, in a conversational tone, as if it's your old pal' uber letting you in on some sweet earning potential!
Once I was delivering some Thai food and the bottom of the bag fell away the moment I handed it to the customer. They were real mad, and I had no idea how to handle it. The app did not have a category for this occurrence (they had stuff like 'can't find address' and 'customer no-show'. Also absent was a 'I crashed and I'm in the hospital now, tell that guy his burrito is not coming' option. After about half an hour playing telephone tag uber refunded the customer their money and I got to keep my fare. Uber ate 50$ on that one. I imagine if it happened too often they would start deducting money from me, but idk.
I know that this is a wall of text but it is nice to be able to share some of this stuff with other commies for once, thanks for asking c-goat
Edited by Belphegor ()
*the rhizome creaks as it strains to reach the Sakai thread through the sub-forum layer*
Payload will be my midnight cherry Tesla Roadster playing Space Oddity. Destination is Mars orbit. Will be in deep space for a billion years or so if it doesn’t blow up on ascent.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 2, 2017
..........
https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/1/16726822/spacex-falcon-heavy-tesla-roadster-launch-elon-musk
Every automaker is preparing a lineup of EVs. Unlike Tesla, they have their supply chains down pat, and they know how to get their assembly lines to function, and they know how to mass-produce vehicles. There are already about two dozen EV models on the market in the US. Like GM, these automakers are just using their EVs to lay the groundwork for the broader shift.
Belphegor posted:I also worked briefly as a foot rickshaw guy for tourists. My rickshaw coworkers mere more lumpen but they had a better understanding of class than many of the 'grinding my side-gig' uber workers.
*the rhizome creaks as it strains to reach the Sakai thread through the sub-forum layer*
I did this briefly when I was in college.
I think the last 'ride' I did was with a few other rickshaw runners to have a race while carrying a gang of yobbish tourists.... I slipped on the ice and the 2 drunk pricks I was pulling fell face first into the concrete
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/08/sources-apple-is-acquiring-music-recognition-app-shazam/
One source describes the deal as in the nine figures; another puts it at around £300 million ($401 million). We are still asking around. Notably, though, the numbers we’ve heard are lower than the $1.02 billion (according to PitchBook) post-money valuation the company had in its last funding round, in 2015.
Didi is the second-most valued, privately owned firm in the world after Uber. Its decision to begin recruiting drivers and offering rides in Mexico will surely be seen as shot across Uber’s bow at a time when the company has been seen reeling from a series of self-inflicted scandals.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/7/16748178/didi-chuxing-mexico-expand-ride-hail-uber
Didi Kuaidi says it controls 80 per cent of China’s ride-hailing market. Meanwhile, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick recently said Uber has increased its market share in China from one per cent to “30 to 35 per cent market share.” Market share inherently can’t exceed 100 per cent, so at least one company is being overly optimistic with its estimates.
you might check out:
https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/the-phases-of-the-industrial-cycle/the-phases-of-the-industrial-cycle-pt-4/
for a description of the stage in the buisiness cycle we are in at the moment
and:
https://monthlyreview.org/2017/02/01/the-tyranny-of-monopoly-finance-capital/
https://monthlyreview.org/2015/07/01/the-new-imperialism-of-globalized-monopoly-finance-capital/
there's lots of good stuff in Monthly review, though there are issues with the MR/baran & sweezy analysis of monopoly capital
the last 7 slides of this:
https://economicsofimperialism.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/das-kapital-finance-imperialism.html
are easy intro stuff, as is most of the stuff on Tony Norfield's blog, ive bought his book which was published in 2016: https://www.versobooks.com/books/2457-the-city but not got round to reading it, its supposed to be good and is all about (british) finance capital
if you're looking for more bigger stuff on imperialist finace i did a big list of books in the "book knowledge contest(?)" thread; but actual current up to date detailed marxist economic analysis of the current state of finance capital accessible in blog form is...limited
you might be better asking one of the more economics minded people like glomper or aspie muslim economist or marlax if they know other stuff, i tend to post the same few blogs over and over
im not sure if this has really given you what your looking for...
Edited by swampman ()
Heres a quote on the dot com bubble from nabuderes postscript on "the 2007-2008 Meltdown" from "the crash of international finance capital". I think you'd really like it.
This was also because economic growth in the pre-1999 period fell more sharply than had been anticipated. Employment had slowed down, in part because monetary policy was committed to such an outcome. But late in the year, the economy decelerated even more sharply. This sharper slowdown reflected, partly, the contribution of several additional shocks that reinforced the effect of monetary policy tightening. The result was increesed interest rates for low-rated borrowers and tighter underwriting standards at banks. The decline in equity valuations for high-tech firms, the virtual closing of opportunities for initial public offereings, and the higher quality spreads for low-rated borrowers naturally hit start-up and new technology firms especially hard. Equity prices fell sharply, particularly technology stocks, with the NASDAQ declining nearly 60% and internet stocks about 70% from their peaks.
This was, according to the Govenor, a prefect example of an unwinding of a pre-existing imbalance in the unsustainable rise in equity values in the technology sector caused by the initial rise in profits of the New Economy. The correction of equity prices presumably reflected, at least in part, a re-evaluation of the profit-ability of owning and producing high-tech capital and software, a deterioration in the expected earnings of telecommunications firms, and a reappraisal of the earnings prospects of dot-com firms, These re-assessments of the value of these firms had in fact much to do with earlier developments in the decline in industry and little to do with monetary policy or a slowdown in growth. The frenzy of investments arising from advances in technology resulted in some investments that were successful nad some that were not. This was a second example, and one that was perhaps less noticed earlier, of the unwinding of an unsustainable trend in the new sector. At any rate, a shake-up in the high-technology area and retrenchment of investment spending followed because of weakend demand, and the accumulation of inventories led to firms moving to cutdown production to not jut a level supported by the slowdown in demand, but one even lower to shed off the excess inventories. These were adjustments that were made to move away from the "old" industrial model, as well as the new one.
The chapter then goes on to say how this resulted in drastic cuts to interest rates (sound familiar?) which in turn primed the sub-prime morgage crisis - because the decadent imperialist rentier capital bourgioisie far preferes speculating in easy returns from usury than investing in production capacity. As for uber and clones i think its important to remember that its a labour intensive buisiness i.e. a very high organic composition of capital, and so theoretically represents a lot of actual surplus value, rather than super-profits derived from technological advantage or global labour arbitrage, to be extracted; that is if those pesky wage regulations didnt keep getting in the way
A serious threat is posed to uber by losing drivers, because – in this phase – any reduction in production capacity, or in this case ability to deliver rides – means a loss by uber to its competitors (if you cant get a ride with uber, you're going to go to lyft, or another taxi company and maybe you wont go back to uber because you now think they suck). We can see this because the number of rides they're delivering keeps going up, the market for "rides" is expanding with the boom phase. And since uber's main reason for claiming its sky high valuation is correct is its market share, rather than its profits, it becomes doubly important and it will do anything to maintain its share of the market, including losing money.
Because the position of labour is "relatively" strong due to low unemployment compared to the bust phase i.e. after the 2007 recession, labour feels more free to quit its shitty uber driver job and less inclined to accept shit from the uber; because there's no large uber drivers union, and because the way the gig economy is set up is perfect for undermining organised labour, the usual response to is just to stop driving for them and get a job elsewhere afaik, rather than press for strike action. In essence an inability for uber to find enough drivers (capacity) to meet demand would have the same effect as a strike, reducing the number of rides uber can offer and thus giving a boost to their competitors. That is why uber is so keen to pay bonuses to attract new drivers, so that it can keep up with demand.
THats the rock.
The hard place is the difficulty in making profit in the business which we've talked about a lot, the ability to extract surplus value is limited by minimum wage regulations as well as actual driver push-back which currently seems limited to demanding existing workers rights apply to gig economy workers. And there is also a need to actually keep the existing drivers, continued drops in wages will result in losing drivers because there is not high unemployment so other work is available; so they cant extract the surplus value they need to make it profitable. In order merely to push through the wage lowering programs they've already put through Uber needs lots of drivers recruited to form a sort of "internal" reserve army of labour sat in their cars waiting to do rides in order for its strike busting wage reducing policies to work, if it cant produce this internal reserve army, labour will actually strengthen its position, and since they can't raise wages under any circumstances they need to literally pay people to join and find new recruits for their internal reserve army of labour.
On the organised labour perspective, this is why uber is so keen to undermine labour rights above and beyond the reason of increased surplus value, because any threat by organised labour, any strike or work stoppage will lose uber market share – a prolonged strike would literally break them as a business, they would be forced to bow to labour very quickly or risk losing everything to another business...
...imo
Edited by tears ()
another ineffiency is uber's surge pricing. in the taxi industry, drivers are experienced and know where they are most likely to be needed, or they are dispatched somewhere. surge pricing sounds great if you're some libertarian type who thinks in terms of free markets and incentives, but really its admission that their drivers don't know where the fuck they should be and wont bother going there unless they're gonna be paid 3 times as much. you can imagine how customers feel the first time they get one of those surged bills, and i imagine the more transparent uber has become about this surge process the more they've lost customers who then hail a standard taxi instead.
uber are caught in at least a couple of catch 22s/contradictions:
their business appears to be less efficient than traditional taxis, and therefore should be more expensive. they are only cheaper through massive fare subsidies. if they increase fares they will lose their customer base and therefore their ~50 billion plus valuation which seems to be entirely based on market share. but if they don't increase fares they will continue losing money at an insane pace.
second contradiction is that uber is known for its quick service. but it's only quick by having too many drivers, as uber give very good pay when they expand to a new area. too many drivers means you gotta pay drivers to sit there doing nothing (the fare should cover the increased downtime). the more uber cut wages the more they lose drivers going back to their old jobs (or lyft or w/e). but of course that means there's administrative bloat processing new drivers paperwork, costs of trying to lure new drivers (sign up bonuses), and it means there's inexperienced drivers out there who don't know what they're doing. so you can't cut wages because drivers will quit and there will be no quick service, but you can't keep hemorrhaging money so you have to cut wages.
Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 ()
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/12/can-uber-ever-deliver-part-eleven-annual-uber-losses-now-approaching-5-billion.html
Chthonic_Goat_666 posted:
good post, reminded me of that earlier post where a group of people found a way to make money using uber, by getting together making an uber taxi company where they shaired cars. I remember talking to a regualr taxi driver about uber and he mentioned the same things about servicing and car maintinece and safety being ignored by uber/uber drivers.
accredited investors onoly, are allowed to maybe cash out, as long as they are accredited investors
swampman posted:did u see this one https://qz.com/1149381/uber-softbank-shares-debt/
accredited investors onoly, are allowed to maybe cash out, as long as they are accredited investors
cheers, as with everything uber it seems like a big clusterfukk. december 28 looks like the important date:
The deal is on the table until Dec. 28, and could fall through if there aren’t enough shares on offer for SoftBank and a small consortium of other investors to purchase at least a 14% stake in the company.
this basically seems like a race to IPO now, something which Hubert Horan didn't really mention much in his most article but should probably be a focal point going forward.
The P&L data illustrates why Uber cannot go public
Under Travis Kalanick, Uber had no interest in an IPO because he fully understood that the full financial disclosures required—including historical cash flows, balance sheets and much greater operational P&L detail—would expose Uber’s abysmal economics, and destroy its PR narrative where powerful efficiencies would inevitably lead to success. Dara Khosrowshahi, under pressure from certain Board factions when he was first hired to replace Kalanick, promised an IPO by the end of 2019. This could be a disaster unless Uber somehow finds convincing evidence of profitable economics that it can put in the prospectus.
If Uber had accounting data that could demonstrate billions in efficiencies and a clear path to profits, they have ample incentive to share that data with reporters. Since they have not done that, it is reasonable to assume that evidence does not exist, and the additional data that would emerge during an IPO would actually strengthen the case that (in the absence of significant anti-competitive market power) Uber’s business model can never produce sustainable profits.
the point of the IPO wouldn't be a longterm thing... it's just a chance for big investors to dump their shares off onto the lil guy before crash right? i'm not sure why horan is saying "this could be a disaster", he's well established that it's a disaster either way. the question is who's gonna be left holding the bag
Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 ()
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/14/bill-gurley-2017-profile-uber-stitchfix-snap.html
Gurley, whom Quattrone recruited to the West Coast in the 1990s, is rigorous with financials and company fundamentals. He commonly criticizes overvalued tech start-ups for having indefensible business models and chastises venture capitalists for herd investing. In Silicon Valley, he says, there are too many VCs chasing too few deals with too much money at too high prices.
:ironicat:
At the June LP meeting, one investor said, it was as if Gurley "knew a storm was going to take place" and the rest of the world had no idea what was coming.
To a large degree, he was right. Soon after the meeting, the Holder report was released. It contained a scathing rebuke of Uber's culture and made 47 recommendations to the company. They included creating a board oversight committee, rewriting Uber's cultural values, reducing alcohol use at work events and prohibiting intimate relationships between employees and their bosses.
yes im sure he was very stressed about uber company culture and not his theoretical 8 billion dollars vanishing in an instant. lets see if benchmark hand the problem off to softbank...
Edited by Chthonic_Goat_666 ()