[throwaway189262]

Most gigs jobs are exploitative.

You're not setting your own rates. You can't choose which rides you take. You can't follow your own rules.

Remember when Uber was giving back to back rides to drivers that had Lyft driver app installed so they couldn't effectively drive for both? That doesn't sound like freelance work to me.

Much of the pay structure is based on hitting a certain number of rides per week. So to get "decent" pay rate you need to work a certain number of hours.

Sometimes the company even owns your car and leases it to you contingent on doing a certain number of rides.

And you have no input on which rides you get once you go online.

It's nothing like traditional freelance work. It's more like high tech pizza delivery driver. And those workers are all considered employees.

[wavepruner]

Uber driver here.

> You're not setting your own rates. You can't choose which rides you take. You can't follow your own rules.

As of a few years ago you can choose which rides you take without penalty. This is effectively how you negotiate rates as well. Only drive during busy times and accept high rate rides.

> Remember when Uber was giving back to back rides to drivers that had Lyft driver app installed so they couldn't effectively drive for both? That doesn't sound like freelance work to me.

The back-to-back ride thing has nothing to do with having the Lyft app installed or not. It's a great feature that allows you to have your next ride lined up while on the current ride. It dramatically increases profit and efficiency (which also means less dead-miles -> less gas wasted -> less emissions). You can decline these "back-to-back" rides just like any other ride request.

> Much of the pay structure is based on hitting a certain number of rides per week. So to get "decent" pay rate you need to work a certain number of hours.

If you drive when it's busy the incentives don't matter. My take home-profit (even after depreciation of vehicle) is $15-30/hr for about 20 hours per week.

> Sometimes the company even owns your car and leases it to you contingent on doing a certain number of rides.

I don't know any Uber drivers in my city who lease their cars from Uber. Never heard of this happening.

> And you have no input on which rides you get once you go online. You get all the ride requests near you. You can decline at will with no penalty.

[sundaeofshock]

> As of a few years ago you can choose which rides you take without penalty. This is effectively how you negotiate rates as well. Only drive during busy times and accept high rate rides. <

Apparently, that was harming Uber’s business and they are considering removing that feature from the driver app.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Uber-may-stop-l...

[throwaway189262]

> As of a few years ago you can choose which rides you take without penalty.

That wasn't there before and I have no reason to believe it now without evidence. Turning down rides always had negative effects such as less rides being assigned to you.

> The back-to-back ride thing has nothing to do with having the Lyft app installed or not

You should look this up in older news articles. AFAIK that's just not true. Maybe it's changed, but at one point Uber was changing their app behavior when you had Lyft driver app installed.

> If you drive when it's busy the incentives don't matter.

So you're implicitly agreeing with me that the incentives are perverse and encourage you to drive during peak times?

> I don't know any Uber drivers in my city who lease their cars from Uber. Never heard of this happening.

Then I encourage you to read about this. There's a large fraction of people who don't believe anything unless it's happened to them or their friends personally. And I think this is a shame given how available information is with today's internet. This definitely 1000% happens. I've seen it with my own eyes.