I drove Yellow Cab in Houston for a few tough months in Houston while I was in school and the taxi business is far worse than anything I've heard at Uber -- especially for those doing day-leases. The taxi business is more blue collar by comparison with Uber. I am definitely not defending Uber -- I am saying that Uber is getting this press because the situation affects educated (mostly white) liberal engineering type while taxi business practices often go unnoticed because taxi employees aren't typically the demographic that starts blogs or talks to The NY Times -- nor do they raise VC money thus entangling them in SV politics and media.
I never once saw a female taxi mechanic -- the only female employees I ever saw were grizzled old dispatchers too tough to take any crap or the occasional girl out of college working as a marketing assistant. Operations was almost exclusively men -- the mechanics in the yard were all men.
Pay attention to how taxi companies try to 'sell' cars to drivers at insane terms to were drivers would have to work 5 days out of a week just to pay the note. Try scratching a day lease car and watch how the repair costs get taken out of your money (despite also paying for "insurance" to cover such things.) Yoy get robbed when picking up a dispatch passenger and lose all your money -- too bad, you still have to pay the day lease. I get it -- drivers are independent contractors -- however any criticism of Uber ought to be tempered by a fair assessment of the industry they are ostensibly replacing.
I didn't say Lyft was better (though it seems clear from settled lawsuits and FTC fines and police reports that Uber is much worse) the takeaway is that engineers are responsible for the output of their employers.
Engineers used to understand that and would debate taking positions in the military industrial complex, and would discuss the ethics of whistleblowing.
Go through my comments the past few days and witness today's engineers basically saying "Uber has been good to me, I am not responsible for the other parts"