Why I'm jumping on the #DeleteUber bandwagon

I know I've been quiet here for a while, and FYI this is going to be a bit of a different kind of post, but it's a topic that I think needs to be heard.

In a blog post yesterday, Susan J Fowler, a respected engineer and author of Production-Ready Microservices: Building Standardized Systems Across an Engineering Organization, described a year working for Uber as a Site Reliability Engineer in terms of what I can only describe as rampant and systemic sexual harassment. Uber's CEO responded with a statement, but I have to agree with others on the Internet who have observed that if he had no clue this type of behavior was happening in his organization, he's not doing his job properly.

This has inspired me to finally join onto the #DeleteUber bandwagon; as of today, I am going to drive and ride solely with Lyft whenever possible. I would prefer to take in less money than support any company contributing to the sexist culture that unfortunately pervades our world, and especially the tech sector.

Those who know me may remember that during the last wave of #DeleteUber I was defending Uber. I felt they got a bad shake during the response to Trump's immigration ban, when tensions were very high. I saw a lot of misinformation going around, and what I perceived to be people making decisions to change their habits based on that misinformation, so I tried to help correct that. This time, though, it just plain looks bad.

Gender inclusivity in the tech sector is a challenge many great companies are struggling with. I applaud that Travis Kalanick plans to open an investigation, and I hope those responsible for the incidents Susan described are dealt with appropriately - by nothing less than losing their jobs, no matter how "high performing" they may be. If even half of what Susan says is true (and it all rings true to stories I hear nearly every day, so I certainly have no reason not to believe her), they deserve nothing more than an immediate termination.

I've never felt like Uber really cared or made efforts to help their drivers; the simple fact is that they were the "better" choice because they had the bigger platform. But this is one step too far - this is my personal breaking point. I am deleting Uber, and I hope you will consider doing so as well.

I'm still thinking about what to do with the title of this blog, which I do hope to update a bit more again, especially as I discover how things really go with Lyft when I stick with it and don't fall back to Uber. "TNC Geek" would seem to be the "correct" genericization of "Uber Geek" (TNC stands for "Transportation Network Company", the legal term used for services like Uber and Lyft), but I don't know how that scans just yet. Stay tuned on that front.

Pick up trick: flashing color

Hey Uber and Lyft, I just had a great idea for you. How about when a driver gets close to their rider, you assign the rider a reasonably unique color and ask them to hold their phone up, facing the street, with the display facing out, flashing that color brightly. Alternatively or additional, give drivers a way to have a programmable display on their car that does something similar. Would make pick ups in busy city areas a lot easier across the board.

My Gear

Geeks gotta have gear, right? Let's talk about my Uber/Lyft setup! I've been promising this post for a while, but now I'm actually writing it!

First off, the most important "gear" of all, the car. I drive a 2013 Ford Explorer XLT, in gray, with black leather interior. It's pretty well loaded - we got a great deal buying it used in 2014, with only just over 10k miles on it, and it's still under 25k miles. We didn't really drive it all that much before I started the Uber/Lyft thing (and really I still don't, in the grand scheme of mileage).

Even though the car is 3 years old and we weren't even the original owner, I still have riders all the time telling me it still has new car smell. It's nice to hear, though funny to me because I totally don't notice it. But hey, if it keeps the five star ratings coming, I'm happy!

A nice feature for my passengers is that the car has rear climate controls, so they can set the AC or heat however it suits them. I'm not sure how often people actually change it, but I do sometimes point it out, especially when I'm not sure how well-cooled the back has gotten on a hot day, etc. It can't hurt, and I know as a passenger I love having this feature!

On the phone side, I've been an iPhone user since the start, and like to stay on the "S" train, so I'm currently using an iPhone 6S. I haven't gone Plus because it just seems too close to a phablet, though I keep thinking about it, we'll see.

I of course have a gajillion apps, but the important ones here are the Uber passenger and partner apps, the Lyft app, and for navigation I exclusively use Waze. Have I mentioned how awesome Waze is? I swear, every time I try to second-guess Waze, I end up paying for it (well, except for the route home from the north via I-93S and Albany St - but I can forgive Waze not learning that one well because of the tunnel and the hell it plays with GPS).

To keep that phone in place I've got a Ram X-Grip Mount, which was recommended by a colleague and is totally awesome. The suction and mounting are rock-solid, but the X-Grip is infinitely adjustable and super easy to take the phone in and out of, or rotate a little bit to get the right angle. Highly recommended, well worth the price.

Then to keep everyone in the car powered up, I have two AmazonBasics 4.0 Amp dual-port USB car chargers, one for me up front and one in the back for passengers. The back one has an AmazonBasics Lightning cable and an AmazonBasics MicroUSB cable, coiled and zip tied together. This goes over really well, especially with Pokémon Go's popularity. Gotta catch 'em all, and stay powered while doing it! I've found that this charger is easily able to keep up with my phone while running multiple GPS apps and streaming music over bluetooth. I really love Amazon's AmazonBasics line, I don't know that I've had a problem with it yet.

I'm currently toying with the idea of getting a dash cam. I don't know if I really NEED one, but you don't know you need it until it's too late, right? I just think it would be neat to be able to share some of the crazy stuff you see on the roads around Boston. It would also be handy for my Waze map editing, to help me remember intersections, speed limit signs, etc. Has anyone played with one? Are they any good?

Payment/ride summary: Aug 8-14

After the comparison of Uber vs Lyft I got in the previous week, I decided to go more Uber this past week. I don't know what has changed again, but I didn't get the oversaturated feeling enough at any point to switch back to Lyft - in fact, at some points I was busier than I expected or wanted to be!

Over the course of 3 days, I spent 7 hours and 30 minutes online, gave 21 trips, and earned $168.29. In the previous update I said tolls aren't summarized well, but I lied, they're in the e-mail, just not in the web interface. $10.75 of this week's total payout was tolls. And I did get an additional $2.00 tip!

My most notable trip last week was a combination, actually - I took a couple down from Boston down to the Blue Hills Reservation in Milton, and then was surprised to pick up a trip request from Quincy almost immediately. The pickup was 11 minutes away, which is one of the longest I've had, but I guess I just got lucky. Normally I expect to go riderless from down there, and I was getting ready to head home, so I had actually planned to fire up Lyft with a destination filter. But Uber magically provided, go figure! That ride went smoothly (though it was sadly a Pool, earning less money, but all the way to Cambridge, so at least there's that), and then I did just head home.

Payment/ride summary: August 1-7

Uber

So during the August 1-7 week, I did something kind of crazy - I drove both Uber and Lyft. Well, it's not that crazy, because it had been my plan / reason for signing up for Lyft all along - to drive it when Uber seemed too slow.

What ended up happening this week is that I drove Lyft for two evenings at the beginning of the week, then when I went online on Saturday I decided to go Uber. I really like that Lyft explicitly includes how long you've been online in their calculation of who gets allocated the next ride, but I just haven't really been feeling like there's as much activity, even when Uber is somewhat over-saturated. It seems like the ridership just isn't quite there on the Lyft platform yet (hence why they're advertising so heavily in this market, I presume).

Lyft

As you can see, I made more with Uber than with Lyft, and the total time online was actually comparable. The "type" of hours was very different though - weekday evenings vs Saturday daytime - and the weather was probably also different, so I'm not sure how much to read into it. My gut, though, says Uber is just busier. Also, maybe some of the drivers who were oversaturating the market left? It's really hard to tell.

Uber had 3 hours 6 minutes online, 16 trips, and $96.95 total payout. Some portion of that was probably tolls, but it's not that easily broken out on the summary screen and I'm too lazy to dig it up. I didn't get any tips from Uber passengers.

On Lyft I was online for 3 hours 18 minutes, 7 trips, and $49.40 paid out, including $3.00 in tips and $1.00 in tolls.

Overall, it continues to be the case that Lyft is better for getting tips, and also seems to have somewhat higher base rates, but if you're not getting as many rides, it doesn't seem to make up for it. My Uber rating at the end of this week was either 4.93 or 4.94 - I got another 4 star review that dragged it down. I haven't yet figured out how to actually find my Lyft rating, go figure.

Payment/ride summary: July 25-31

The week of July 25-31 I tried going all Lyft. "All" didn't turn out to be all that much time, but it sure did turn out to be a big difference in tips. In a single week of Lyft driving I got more in tips than I've ever gotten with Uber, I think.

To be fair, that number isn't quite right though, because I managed to screw up on my very first Lyft ride and hit the drop off rider button as soon as I'd picked the rider up. Doh! I still took them to their destination, and they were very understanding and offered to just use a custom tip amount to bring the fare up to what their app had estimated. I didn't know what else to do, since them re-requesting would cost them the base trip amount again, so we did that, even though I'm pretty sure it's not kosher. PS Lyft: if you're reading this and want to yell at me, please get in touch rather than just killing my account, I'd be happy to make it right and know this isn't the right way to do things. :)

Total rides: 10, total earnings $80.57, including $6 of "real" tips, $4 of tolls. 4 hours 25 minutes online.

Interesting thing I learned after saying "hey, what?" at the toll amounts - Lyft only pays out the "in state" toll amounts, and EZPass MA has a discounted rate for some of the Boston area tolls, only if you have an in-state EZPass, which I wasn't aware of. So my NH EZPass was costing me where I'm using it most, and discounting on NH tolls I almost never use - whoops. I've since fixed that glitch, since MA is on real EZPass now and has no up-front fee, unlike the old evil FastLane system. Now I pocket a little bit on Uber's toll reimbursement, and don't lose out on Lyft's.

Lyft vs Uber: Real driving impressions

So I've posted a few things about Lyft vs Uber impressions but haven't really talked about the actual meat of driving. Well, that's about to change!

The overall flow of Lyft is very similar to Uber. You go online via the app, and drive around waiting to get a ride request. When the request comes in, you get a name, location, and rating, and 15 seconds to tap and accept the ride. Then you launch your nav and head to the rider. The first real difference comes on arrival - you have to explicitly confirm your arrival (with two taps, no less), whereas Uber infers it from your GPS location vs. the rider's pin. These extra taps do come with a bonus, though - a countdown timer for 5 minutes, after which you can cancel the ride (preferably after giving the rider a courtesy call) and get paid the minimum fare cancellation fee.

Actually giving the ride, again, is very much the same as Uber. Navigate, get there, confirm drop-off, and wait for more rides. The in-app reporting, though, is very different. The Uber driver app provides quite detailed information on your earnings and ratings through several screens within the app. It's not always super live updated as you're driving, but you shouldn't be looking too much as you're driving, right? Lyft provides less detailed earnings data, and doesn't expose rating info at all that I could see in the app.

The really annoying / different thing about the in-app reporting is that Uber reports your net earnings, after they've taken out their cuts, while Lyft only shows your gross earnings - the amount paid by riders. It also doesn't include tip information in-app (though I guess this makes sense because riders have up to 24 hours to finalize that, as I understand it). This makes it a bit harder to visualize how much you've actually made in a session with Lyft, which is annoying, but not the end of the world.

Of course, the really big difference is buried in that paragraph - TIPS! Tipping is a built-in part of the Lyft platform, and riders are able to choose a tip amount. This amount is charged to the rider and passed through to the driver 100%, without any fees taken out of it by Lyft. In only 17 rides given with Lyft so far, I've gotten $8.00 in tips from 3 or 4 different trips - vs over almost 100 Uber rides given before getting my first tip! This is definitely a big difference for drivers - and to me it feels like it is indicative of a more driver-friendly attitude on Lyft's part vs Uber.

Of course, the best app / tip / etc experience in the world doesn't help if you don't have riders on your platform to keep your drivers busy. With all the over-saturation of Uber I've felt in Boston lately, Lyft has felt better, in general. They also have another driver-friendly policy - the longer you've been online but not on a trip, the further out you will be considered as "best driver" for a ride request. This potentially increases rider wait times (to a limit, I'm sure), but helps more evenly spread out the love among drivers, rather than benefiting drivers who are in the right place at the right time. I still think the distance algorithm should include rating as a factor, but it doesn't seem anyone is doing this yet. Maybe I should start my own Uber! (Yeah, right.)

Hilarious e-mail from Uber

I just got this e-mail from Uber, and I had to share:

Hi (tim)timothy, 

You’re one of our valued partners in Boston, but haven’t been driving with Uber lately. I wanted to personally reach out and see if you had any questions or concerns, or if you needed any support from the team. 

Uber demand in Boston is growing every month, and there's a big opportunity to earn even more this weekend helping people get around the city. If there's anything we can help with just visit help.uber.com and we'll get back to you right away. 

Best, 

Best, 

Melissa

(And yes, the e-mail did say "Best," twice.) Haha, yeah, right. I couldn't resist replying:

Really? Demand is growing? Because I've been finding it less and less possible to get ride requests around the city. When I look at the Uber passenger app, half the cars around me are other Uber drivers. It seems you've been recruiting too aggressively, and the "peak hours" promotions virtually guarantee during those hours it's impossible to stay busy.

My first week driving, I was never idle, but since then I've been idle more and more often, despite an extremely high rating. What value is my rating if it doesn't keep me more busy throughout the day?

Tim

I'm interested to see if I get a response, will keep you informed.

 

Lyft vs Uber: App First Impressions

I did my first significant Lyft driving last weekend, and it was very interesting comparing their app experience to Uber's.

The first big difference is the app setup itself - Uber provides a separate driver ("Partner") app, which you have to download from them and trust their developer certificate for - it's not published on the app stores (at least not on iOS). Lyft, on the other hand, built the driver functionality right into their regular passenger app - instead of opening a different app, you just open the Lyft app and switch to driver mode. I'm not yet sure what, if any, difference this will make from a practical standpoint, though it is nice to have one less app to deal with.

Another app thing I really noticed when driving was the way that Lyft interacts with Waze. Like Uber, Lyft lets you choose what navigation app you want to use. When it launches Waze, though, unlike Uber it does some sort of "data sharing" thing that Waze asks permission for, and you actually get a Lyft logo in the Waze map that you can use to go back to the Lyft app. That's pretty neat.

Lyft also seems to actually send destination info to Waze differently. With Uber, your destination is always a pin, which appears to be set with lat/long coordinates to match the pin in the Uber app, even if the app displayed an address. When you go into Waze from Uber, it dives right into navigation mode. Lyft, on the other hand, sometimes (maybe always? I wasn't quite sure) seems to send the street address shown, into search mode, so you have to select it, then hit Go twice, to actually start navigation (I think both "Go"s have timers on them to auto-select but still).

On the one hand, Lyft's way is better in cases like Newbury St in Boston, where there are back alleys on either side, and if the pin Uber sends is closer to one of those than to Newbury St, Waze will incorrectly route you to the alley, thinking you really want to be on that side. By contrast, when Lyft sends an actual street address on Newbury St to Waze, Waze can "know" the real destination better and apply its own logic. On the other hand, the additional clicks are annoying, and when I had a fare to the airport, the search results were super weird and made me nervous, so I re-searched and put in the airport manually. So that was sub-optimal.

Next post: more about the meat of the app, driving, and getting paid.

Lyft vs Uber: Onboarding Experiences

I mentioned this briefly in some other posts, but after the Boston market started to feel over-saturated with Uber drivers, I decided to sign up with Lyft to see if things were any different with them, and to have another option if things seemed too dead and I wanted to try something else. I'll be doing a few posts about the differences, so, yay, content!

First, the onboarding experience is very different. For Uber I had no actual human interaction - I just submitted my info, and a while later, everything cleared, and I could go on the road. That said there was a decent amount of documentation on the site, and the opportunity to go to their Boston driver center if I wanted to, I just didn't particularly feel the need. No one ever looked at my car, etc. I don't know if background check / age of car factored into that or if it was just par for the course.

Lyft, on the other hand, requires a "mentor session" before they'll actually fire off your background check. This is a session conducted with an experienced Lyft driver, who goes over the basics of Lyft with you, and also does your initial documentation verification and photos. They also do a very basic inspection of your vehicle (lights, horn, signals) and take a "test ride" with you (mine was literally just a loop around the block). The mentor walks you through the app and some of their various promotions. Overall the session took less than 30 minutes, and was quite easy - and would have been even if I wasn't familiar with the concepts from driving with Uber.

One interesting thing about this was that the mentor I had actually doesn't really drive much any more - he just makes money by doing these mentor sessions. He gets a flat rate from Lyft for each one (I didn't have to pay; presumably it comes out of their part of riders' fees, as a way of building their network), and in the income summaries he showed me from his e-mail (I didn't closely inspect them but they didn't seem fake) he was bringing in on the order of $2000 per week from doing it - not too shabby.

Lyft only starts your background check after your mentor session - which is smart business on their part. If you don't pass (crappy car, can't drive, etc), it doesn't make sense for them to spend the money to run your background check. It is frustrating, though - I waited a week for a mentor session appointment that fit me, then my background check took another whole week. With Uber I actually got my background check complete before I had uploaded all of my documents, because I was being lazy about it. It makes sense, though, just a little sad.

I went out and did my first real Lyft driving last weekend, so next up I'll have some impressions from the actual app / driver experience!

Payment/ride summary: July 18-24

Not a very busy week this week - well, except for the fact that I was too busy to post this earlier. So I guess busy, but not driving for Uber busy. :)

3.76 hours online, 8 trips, 4.9 stars total rating. 92% acceptance rate and 2 driver cancelations (because they keep sending me UberXL fares, dangit!). Those 4.9 stars brought me back down to 4.93 overall, so sad.

The most interesting thing I learned last week was that the PoolPass program that Uber is running in Boston (and possibly other cities, I'm too lazy to look it up. Internets are hard) does, in fact, still pay the driver regular fares, not the $0.01 fares that riders pay for their rides from the pass. I figured that had to be the case, but I had never had a rider I knew was using the pass until this week, when I took a pool rider from downtown out to Brookline. The fare (before toll - not sure how that works with the pass) was $12.06, netting me $10.29 (including the toll). The pool pass math definitely works out well if you use that trip as your basis, I've got to say. But you know my thoughts on UberPOOL.

UberPOOL - great for riders, not so much for drivers

With UberPOOL, riders with 1 or 2 passengers and a pre-determined destination can save money and eliminate ambiguity by paying a set fare, with the understanding that they may be matched with other riders along the way. Uber sells this to riders as a great way to save money, and sells it to drivers as a way to make more money by being more busy.

While it is certainly true that it can keep you active and on paying rides longer, a big problem with UberPOOL from a driver's perspective is those set fares. The actual fare calculation is opaque to both driver and rider - it's not at all clear what time and distance are being factored in. What this means is that if you hit traffic, or need to take a longer route due to traffic or construction, there's no adjustment. You're still getting paid based on the rider's pre-set fare.

Additionally, that "longer trips" logic doesn't quite work out, because when you're being diverted off the route the rider did pay for to go pick up another rider, you're not being paid for that - neither rider's fare includes it. Sure, it's possible you would have been off-fare entirely during that time and not being paid for that as well, but it's certain that you're taking longer to get the one (low) fare you are getting to their destination, and thus missing out on possible revenue.

Finally, the rate is just plain lower, whatever it is (see above about opaque fares) - Uber is again incentivized incorrectly - they make their flat reservation fee on every ride, plus their percentage, they're not paying a portion of vehicle upkeep, gas, etc, which is what the fare calculation is supposed to include.

Bottom line, I think UberPOOL is a pretty bum deal for drivers. If I could opt out of it, I might, though Uber is pushing it so hard with promotions like a PoolPass in Boston that I'd be a little bit afraid of missing out.

Payment/ride summary: July 11-17

Woot, pay day! I was online 14.82 hours last week, completed 44 trips, and got all 5 stars, supposedly. Total earnings were $279.70. That said, my rating actually went down and then up during the week - I have 5 4-star ratings now, instead of my old 4, which briefly brought me down to 4.93, but now I'm back up and higher at 4.95, yay!

Interesting conversation of the week award goes to the law student I had on an UberPOOL ride, who is planning to go into youth offender public defense - an extremely noble plan. He apparently helped with a bill that is/was before the Massachusetts Senate (having already passed the house) to allow youth records to be expunged at age 18, rather than the current 3 year waiting period to age 21 (I may be oversimplifying, this was a short conversation). I was horrified to hear that just being picked up by the police, even if you're never charged or even see the inside of a jail cell, can be on someone's record until three years AFTER they turn 18, and even then, expunging isn't automatic. During that time they'll potentially have to disclose that record and lose out on job opportunities, scholarships, etc. It's no wonder we have a youth crime problem when the system closes off legitimate routes for youth who may not have even done anything wrong.

Anyway, off my soapbox, that's it for this week. I should be getting approved for Lyft soon once my background check completes, and then I'll have more fun things to talk about! :)

Day 6, Night Driving Part 1 (Surge: Low)

A few weeks back, I was awake after a Red Sox night game and decided to give the late night / closing time hours a try. This is the last of my "details about all of the rides" posts (and it's out of sequence with more recent stuff), but it's got some exciting ones in it. Well, it'll probably be multiple posts, we'll see.

I picked up my first ride of the night on Huntington Ave in Boston, around 11:15pm, heading out to Somerville. This was a very nice surge, but overall a pretty quiet ride. Perhaps it was lulling me into a false sense of security...

Trip 1 earnings: $22.06

I headed back towards Boston because that seemed the likliest to have activity - no hits on the way there made me sad, but eventually I got a quick ride from Wally's Jazz Cafe to The Gallows - all in the South End, nothing exciting, again.

Trip 2 earnings: $3.75

But now it was after midnight, so the exciting started... my next ping was at Jacque's Cabaret - of course, I didn't realize that when I accepted it. But it became clear enough when I got there, from the crowd outside. And then in piled the ladies... four ladies in varying states of intoxication. They were heading over to the Cambridgeside area - okay, no problem.

Well, it was the longest 10.5 minute ride ever. :) Turns out they were a bachelorette party from New Jersey, and boy did they hit the stereotypical New Jersey accent/attitude/volume when drunk. The bride-to-be was probably the most drunk of them all, and kept addressing me as "TIMOTHY" (loudly, imagine the caps talking for real) the whole trip.

They spent much of the trip asking random questions, talking about all the ludicrous bachelorette things they were doing, inviting me back to their "afterparty" (with the more sober ones rebuking and basically retracting the invitation - don't worry Liz, I declined regardless of the number of offers :)), and discussing the show at Jacque's, and just what are drag queens, transvestites, etc. It was... entertaining. And noisy. But thankfully otherwise uneventful. A harmless example of drunken hilarity.

Trip 3 earnings: $6.11 (hardly enough for the earplugs I really needed!)

Trip 4 wasn't particularly noteworthy, a couple going from Kendall Square area to the Fenway.

Trip 4 earnings: $5.67

While I was trolling for my next trip, heading out towards Brookline because it seemed likely there'd be some college kids still going out or something (in retrospect I'm not sure that makes a lot of sense), at one point I opened up the Uber passenger app, to see how many other Ubers were around me... and literally every car I could see around me, on both sides of the road, appeared to be an Uber. Suffice to say that was my signal to turn around and get out of that hell of Ubers.

I eventually got a pick-up while still in Brookline, and they headed back where I'd started before, Kendall Square area. Again nothing exciting (aka I don't even remember any details now because I didn't write any down).

Trip 5 earnings: $7.31

I think that's enough for this post - the night wrapped up with a couple of UberPOOL trips, which can maybe fill their own post. At least, I need to pad my post count, right? ;)

100 trips! And a 5-star comment!

Went out for my usual evening tonight, waiting on a milestone - my 100th trip! I was at 99, so my first trip of the night was the ol' century. Woohoo! My very first trip was June 6th, so it took a bit over a month to hit 100 trips. Not too bad for doing it very part time.

Tonight was three different pool groupings, each with two sets of riders. Not a lot of money, $26.26 for a bit under two hours online.

Also exciting, I got my first 5-star comment! I've been pretty consistently managing the 5-star ratings - I'm currently at a 4.94 overall rating on 105 trips - 70 of which were rated, and 66 of those were 5-star. I haven't gotten a sub-5-star rating in a couple of weeks now. Tonight, though, I actually got a comment attached to a 5-star rating, which was a first! It was super exciting, too: "Thanks, Tim!" :) But it shows someone cared enough / was happy enough to type, rather than just hitting the stars. So thanks, rider!

Oh, and with all of that, my first pair of riders were quite talkative. We talked about a wide range of subjects, from Pokémon Go, to the political situation in Venezuela, to the state of the US justice system, in particular as it relates to underprivileged youth, to self-driving cars. Very interesting and totally the reason I started doing this!

Last couple of weeks' earnings

Uber issues pay statements on Mondays covering the previous Monday - Sunday period, so since I'm not doing detailed write-ups anymore (though I still owe you the post from my late night run, I know!) I'll at least try to get some interesting insights out of those for you. So, here's the last couple of weeks.

June 27 - July 3

18 trips
9 hours 32 minutes online
86% acceptance rate
0 driver cancelations
$226.70 total earnings (including $53.49 promotional/incentive credit for the outage on June 30th)
$1.25 tolls included in total earnings

July 4 - 10

24 trips
10 hours, 35 minutes online
83% acceptance rate
4 driver cancelations
$156.42 total earnings
$8.24 tolls included in total earnings

I think the driver cancelations here were largely UberXL trips that I had accidentally accepted. They may also account for my lower-than-I-would-expect acceptance rates. They had fixed my classification to stop me from getting UberXL requests, supposedly, but I'm getting them again now, so who really knows...

ZOMG Tips!

It finally happened. On my 89th trip as an Uber driver, I got my first tip! A couple of nights ago I took a couple down to Quincy, and we had a good chat on the way down, and at the end of the ride they handed me $2. Woohoo, a tip!

And then, the next day, I got another tip! Also $2, apparently when it "rains" it "pours"!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not ungrateful for the tips. They're just not really something I expected - after all, as an Uber passenger, I've never really been one to tip. I've always bought Uber's line that it's part of the trip, or that they're fairly compensated. That said, I'm not so sure of that anymore. I haven't changed my behaviors as a rider, but I certainly do think about it more.

What do you think? Do you tip Uber drivers? What about Lyft, where they offer you a tipping option in the app (I'm told; I haven't ever actually ridden with Lyft)? Does that make a difference to you?

A terrible tale of misaligned incentives

After going out last evening again to a massively over-saturated Boston market, I did some thinking on the alignment of incentives in the driver/Uber/rider relationships. What I discovered is that, probably not unsurprisingly, they're really not very well aligned at all.

To think about this, let's consider the business model. Uber makes money from riders, and pays money to drivers. Uber is thus incentivized to maximize income from rides, through more rides, more expensive rides, or some combination thereof.

Riders in this ecosystem have three main motivations: fast, cheap, and safe. To meet the fast and cheap desires, Uber is incentivized to have more drivers available on the road - to increase the likelihood that there's a driver nearby when you make a request, and to avoid surge pricing (or just delays) when demand outstrips supply.

Drivers, as you might expect, want to maximize their earnings per unit time. To do this, we generally want to be giving rides as much as possible - any downtime is time we're not earning money.

And this is where the problem comes in - the drivers' and riders' motivations directly conflict, and Uber in the middle thus has to decide how to address it. Because if they put a ton of drivers on the road, over-saturating the market, riders are happy because it's easy to get rides, but drivers are sad because they each get fewer rides. If Uber puts fewer drivers on the road, demand surpasses supply, and wait times and/or prices go up. Drivers are happy because they're busy and possibly making extra money with surge pricing, but riders are unhappy and will switch to a competitor.

But wait, you say, Uber doesn't get to tell you when to drive, you told us that a long time ago! You're absolutely right, Uber can't dictate drivers' hours, that would make the relationship one of an employer, not a contractor, and that would make them very sad. However, they do have nearly infinite power to manipulate the supply of drivers.

You see, there's more than just rides and their fees when you're an Uber driver. Uber also uses a system of rewards and incentives to manipulate the supply system. In particular, in the past few weeks they have been running a "peak hours" promotion in Boston, where drivers receive an incentive payment depending on the number of rides they give during "peak hours", as defined by Uber. It turns out this is a brilliant tactic, because it causes a rush of drivers to the roads during these hours, providing an optimal rider experience, but because there are so many drivers on the road, it's very difficult for them to actually accrue the rides they need to qualify for the incentive. But we all keep trying anyway - what suckers!

At the end of the day, it's clear to me that Uber cares more about the riders than the drivers. After all, the riders are the ones paying - that makes them the customer. To Uber, I think drivers are essentially a limitless resource - if someone switches over to Lyft, or just stops driving entirely, it doesn't materially hurt them - after all, if demand is too high they'll just kick in surge pricing. If a rider leaves, though, that's actual potential money they're not going to make, and that's a problem. So it's clear where we drivers sit in the hierarchy - at the bottom.

Time to sign up for Lyft and see if they're any better. Somehow, I doubt it. :)

Blogfading...

I think I'm blogfading. I want to drive. I do drive. But I don't love writing about it. So much work. Does someone want to blog for me? :)

I think it was the Third of July (Surge: Low)

It finally happened, I drove a fellow Googler last night! Well, I guess it sort of happened before when I picked up an intern, but this one was different.

I picked up a couple along the Riverway in Boston, and we were heading to Somerville. We got off to a good start talking about the Red Sox - they had been to the game yesterday, as had I, and thankfully it was far better than the game on Saturday. As we headed along, the routing was a bit weird, and we were talking about different apps, Waze vs Google Maps in particular. I mentioned my hope that Google didn't do what they too often do and kill off Waze, and eventually my passenger mentioned something like "and I work at Google so I know about that". I then couldn't resist responding with "hey, me too!"

Then, of course, we started talking more about Google. But first there was a bit of a negotiation protocol, where the rider told me where in our Cambridge campus he worked, and I told him where I worked. I gave him a closer look in the rearview mirror and we decided that we hadn't run into each other (well, we probably have, but not knowingly, anyway). Despite the "negotiation" we still didn't talk about confidential stuff or anything, of course, but we did have some amusing discussions about internal culture stuff.

This wound up a 22 minute ride, 8.98 miles, $16.91 earned with a light surge.

As you can see from the title and date, yesterday was the 3rd of July. For those of you not from Boston, we have a huge Fourth of July concert and fireworks spectacular on the Esplanade every year (though almost every year they talk about whether or not they'll be able to find funding for the next year, and this year the chair of the organizing committee is stepping down too, so who knows). Tons of people from all around come to Boston for this event, and people were lining up early this morning of the Fourth to get in and claim their spots.

A slightly lesser-known fact, though, is that there's a dress rehearsal / preview concert on the 3rd every year. That's why we had to take a kind of crazy route for my Googler friend - they close Storrow Drive for both the preview and the real concert because it's used for the huge throngs of pedestrians. Makes getting around a bit crazy, but thankfully Waze was up to the task.

After dropping off the Googler in Somerville I got a couple of rides in the Cambridge area, and then was back to surge-hunting. A bit after 9pm the downtown area seemed to be surging, so I headed over there, despite the terror of traffic I expected due to the preview concert. It actually wasn't terrible, and when I flipped over to the rider app I didn't see a ton of Ubers flooding the streets, but I really didn't get much by way of ride requests. The only one I did get canceled on me when I was halfway through the loop I had to make to get back to them in the concert area. Fortunately, this was the first time I actually got paid the cancelation fee, so it wasn't a total loss.

I decided to move away from the insanity of the Esplanade since I wasn't getting riders, and chased more high surge into the Seaport District... but it also turned out to be a dud. I'm not sure if people are still upset about Uber's outage on Thursday, or it was just too nice of a night so folks were deciding to walk, especially when they saw the surge. It was a generally pretty quiet night in the end, but felt at least a bit better than the massive over-saturation on Saturday.

Total for the night: 3 trips (+1 cancelation), 14.26 miles of rides, $33.38 earnings (including the cancelation fee). I may go out for a bit this late morning/afternoon, not sure - it's another nice day, and traffic will be crazy, so I'm not sure how busy things will be, but I'll probably at least check out the scene.