Okay: I’ve now read the whole shebang. You certainly have some valid points, but your argument also has some fundamental problems:
- You’re making hugely broad generalizations, e.g. “it’s painfully apparent Uber doesn’t give a shit about its drivers.” For starters, there’s no logic at all supporting the proposition that Uber wants to make its drivers miserable or something. Uber literally cannot survive without a huge driver pool, and it is 100% counterintuitive to their long-term longevity for them to purposely try to drive (no pun intended) them away through meager earnings.
- Related to #1: you’re not adequately accounting for the fact that the experience of working for Uber can vary drastically depending on the market. Example: I took a look at that pic you tweeted illustrating a driver making three bucks and change around 1–2am on a Thursday night. Aside from the admittedly pathetic pay level, what struck me was that the car was empty for a full 45 minutes of the 75 minutes outlined. Where I live, the odds of that happening are pretty close to zero — and moreover, Uber is usually in surge mode most of the night Thursdays through Saturdays (at least if they’re working the “partier” section of downtown). So…
- I completely agree that driving for Uber is an exceptionally terrible job in cities like Detroit and L.A., due to a combination of causes: driver oversupply, trip lengths, a general inability to pick up pax after dropping someone off way outside of downtown, etc. Also, I happen to know Detroit pretty well — my father spent his entire childhood there, and I still have family in the area — and it’s stating the obvious that Detroit is, for the time being at least, largely fucked (and certainly Detroit proper far more so than most of its ‘burbs). Yes, that totally sucks, and no, there’s no easy fix. There may not be any real fix, considering America’s days as a manufacturing hub are dead and buried. Anyway, my point is that Detroit may be large in terms of land area, but I’ll hazard a guess that the total market size for a product like Uber is exceptionally small; as such, Uber cut prices to admittedly untenable levels in an attempt to increase demand. (And btw January is the slowest month of the year for virtually anything travel-related, unless you live in South Florida.)
Nevertheless: it isn’t Uber’s fault that the Michigan economy is an utter disaster. It isn’t their fault that they can’t generate a reasonable amount of passenger traffic even with rates so ridiculously low. Finally — and I’m guessing this will be the part you dislike the most — Uber is under no type of “obligation” to effectively subsidize its Detroit operations by paying its drivers significantly more than the company generates in revenue, or rather, this isn’t a viable means of operating a business for more than a short period of time. Uber’s never previously exited a market due to low demand (AFAIK), but Detroit could very well be the first. It’s almost like history is repeating itself: the American auto industry nearly failed because it used unsustainable operations methods for far too long, and as part of that most of America’s remaining auto factories have exited Michigan entirely.
One last thing: I realize they’ve never actually said anything to this effect, but I strongly suspect Uber had no idea such a large percentage of its drivers in certain markets — including Detroit and L.A. — would elect to drive for them as a full-time vocation. On whole over 80 percent of Uber and Lyft drivers work fewer than 20 hours a week, and 60 percent have full-time-salaried jobs, so they don’t have to worry about health insurance and other perks. And yeah: I totally agree that driving full-time for Uber (or Lyft) is a losing proposition. I can’t remember where I saw this stat, but apparently the “tipping point” between TNC driving going from a reasonable side gig to an untenable nearly-full-time one is around the point of working 26–28 hours per week.
Anyway, you wanted my perspective, and there you go.