If You Want to Feel Good About Your Job, Read This

by Steph Willems

Published: January 23rd, 2017

if you want to feel good about your job read this

Is your boss really grinding your ass today? Did Karen book your top choice for vacation week? Is Kyle playing fast and loose with his lunchtime hours? Consider yourself lucky.

There’s an altogether different alternative to the white- and blue-collar jobs out there today. Uber. Yes, the ride-hailing service that allows people to pocket a little extra cash in their off hours can be just that, or a grueling, never-ending career.

Economy-class syndrome isn’t just for airline travelers.

In a lengthy exposé that will leave you wondering about your driver’s lifestyle, Bloomberg took a look at the nation’s most hardcore Uber drivers, revealing the extreme length of some workdays, their original hopes and dreams, and the location of the best parking lots for sleep.

The story reveals that half of all Uber trips in the U.S. are made by drivers who work 35 hours or more a week. To keep the money rolling, some drivers without nearby lodging resort to camping out for several nights at a time. There’s no bonfire or marshmallows in sight.

Many were drawn in by the hopes of high weekly earnings, only to find themselves without an alternative when the company lowered its rates. Not surprisingly, Uber has faced lawsuits over misleading advertising. Take a read, sit back, and — assuming you’re not an Uber driver yourself — be thankful for your lot in life.

[Image: Jason Tester Guerrilla Futures/ Flickr ( CC BY-ND 2.0)]

#Jobs #Ride-hailing #Uber

Steph Willems

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9 of 82 comments

Carguy67 on Jan 24, 2017

If Uber/Lyft ever manage to approach profitability Amazon.com will install their drone software in Moller Skycars and put them both out of business.

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FreedMike on Jan 24, 2017

I think what this article really illustrates is two things: 1) How incredibly hard it is to make it without a six-figure, white-collar job in a place like San Francisco. Uber didn't cause that problem. 2) When you hear stories about how someone's used to making $40 an hour, and now makes only $12.50, that *is* on Uber. I know some folks who Uber. None use it as a primary income. On that level, I think it makes sense. But it sounds like it's damned hard to make a full time wage doing this.

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- 28-Cars-Later on Jan 24, 2017
  
  I agree. Although I have not been in well over a decade, conversations with people who have been to SF more recently indicate a 100K salary is almost the "minimum" adult living wage there.
  
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- Master Baiter on Jan 24, 2017
  
  @28-Cars-Later "conversations with people who have been to SF more recently indicate a 100K salary is almost the “minimum” adult living wage there." Absolutely true. It's deep blue politically, meaning it's almost impossible to build anything around here, so housing prices are through the roof; every other cost scales with that. Add a 10% sales tax, and real estate taxes that are proportional to home value and you have a situation where it's difficult to live on even $75K/year. The solution is not to double down on leftism by raising the minimum wage, but rather to open up areas of undeveloped land and build more housing units. . .
  
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- FreedMike on Jan 24, 2017
  
  @Master Baiter "The solution is not to double down on leftism by raising the minimum wage, but rather to open up areas of undeveloped land and build more housing units." I don't seem to recall a lot of land in San Francisco waiting for the contractor's shovel... Leftism or right-ism has nothing to do with why San Francisco, New York or other places are expensive. It has to do with per capita income. The more people make, the more they can pay for housing. And since the primary economic activities in San Francisco are particularly lucrative (tech, banking, trade), lots of rich folks will want to live there. Add in high densities and a shortage of available land (unless, of course, you'd like to do a landfill job on San Francisco Bay), and you have high demand for a limited amount of housing, and the people who are after that housing have high incomes. I'll let you fill in the Econ 101 blanks from there. San Francisco is a victim of its' own success, not a particular brand of politics. But if you want to make it about liberal versus conservative, then you just killed your own argument.
  
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- Dal20402 on Jan 24, 2017
  
  @FreedMike Master Baiter has a point that the housing situation in SF is at least partly because it's near-impossible to build more housing. There's little undeveloped land, but plenty of underdeveloped land. In any growing city, there is a huge tension between existing homeowners, who want to extract maximum rents, and developers who want to build housing to satisfy demand. All five of the major West Coast metro areas are among the fastest-growing and most economically successful in the nation. Unfortunately, in all of them, the existing homeowners have the upper hand politically, and development is near-impossible. (And I say this as a Seattle single-family homeowner who stands to benefit financially from it.) It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what will happen when a stable or slowly growing housing supply is combined with tremendous growth and housing demand.
  
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- Master Baiter on Jan 24, 2017
  
  @FreedMike "I don’t seem to recall a lot of land in San Francisco waiting for the contractor’s shovel…" The whole corridor along I280 between SFO and Stanford is undeveloped. Yes, parts are very hilly, but no so much so that housing can't be built there. Not that I should care. I own a home, and its value has gone from $1.35M to $1.8M in the three years I've owned it. . .
  
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Madman2k on Jan 24, 2017

I drove for them for a few months when I still had my Prius. It was pretty frustrating and I quit when they cut the rates for the second time in less than four months. I always did the late-night friday/saturday times because it was usually hard to make much money outside those hours. My wife hated having me gone at night and it's a pretty dangerous time to be out on the road, making pennies and hoping nothing bad happens. Then I started delivering food with Postmates - less money, but more palatable working hours and the wife and boys can ride along and my oldest son can even help. Still, I enjoy spending the evening at home more than I enjoy making between 30 and 60 bucks for driving around in traffic for 4 or 5 hours, so I haven't been doing it much lately. The good thing about Postmates is that customers can tip, so sometimes you get a really generous customer. If you take the tips out of the equation, it's worse than minimum wage for sure.

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NeilM on Jan 25, 2017

turbo_awd writes: "Just because people think they’re making money in the short term, doesn’t mean it’s long-term sustainable, when all costs are factored in." Yes, it's easy to confuse positive cash flow with profitability. Then the Uber driver gets hit with a big car repair bill, or has to replace the vehicle altogether and it all hits the fan. As FreedMike said, Uber driving may work for making extra income, but it could be tough to make your living doing only that. I've only taken an Uber just three times, twice locally here in Indiana and once on a trip to Cleveland. The first time was in the evening in a Chrysler minivan in good condition, but certainly fully depreciated. The next was a new seeming Kia sedan driven by an older retired guy making extra money. In Cleveland I had a newish GM SUV — a Traverse, maybe? — driven by a nice lady in her mid-thirties. In all cases I was surprised by how cheap the fare was, a reaction I can't ever recall having with a metered taxi anywhere. My longest ride was about 25 minutes/8 miles and still only cost $12. When I'm paying only $5 or $6 for a couple of miles city ride I have to wonder how much the driver is making after expenses and Uber taking its cut. On the other hand the worst Uber vehicle, the minivan, was better in every way than almost any metered taxi I've used in at least a couple of decades, and they all came quicker and got me where I needed to go. The main problem with Uber seems to be the company, not its drivers or the underlying business model.

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