Ruined by Design / sample chapter

[EMJ]

Once Uber’s goal moved from providing a car-sharing service to using a car-sharing service to make themselves and their investors rich, the delicate balance between drivers, riders, and Uber was destroyed. Only one of those parties was going to benefit from Uber’s future success. There’s nothing wrong with making money, but there is something inherently wrong with profiting from the labor of others without giving them a piece of the success they’ve earned.

Uber set out to build a tool that democratized access to cars. It ended up building a tool that further impoverished the poor. The service model was fine, but the financial model it used for growth could only ever be as ethical as the people who strove to benefit the most.

Sadly, Uber is not an exception, but the rule and aspiration in Silicon Valley. Take a bunch of entitled white boys, give them a ton of money, fill them with the fear of the money running out, and you’ve created a perfect recipe for inexperienced people making really bad short-term decisions that have a tendency to fuck everything up. (To be fair, in Travis’ defense, he did have the experience. He’s just a dick.)

Short-term decisions are all Silicon Valley seems to care about. We don’t build businesses for the long haul anymore, at least not the venture-backed ones. Those only need to last long enough to make it to their liquidity event so the investors can get their payday. So if Uber can show growth by squeezing drivers and riders, and Twitter can increase their engagement numbers by relying on white supremacists and outrage, and Facebook can rake in some extra cash from Russian fake news sites—they will do it. And we know they’ll do it, because they did it. Silicon Valley has exhibited total comfort with destroying the social fabric of humanity to make a profit.

I got mine. Fuck you.
https://www.ruinedby.design/sample-chapter

[unemployable]

If you don't like Uber, Twitter or Facebook you have two non-mutually-exclusive options: don't use them, and/or come up with a better idea. You know, the free market.

[IlliniDave]

The impression I get from that excerpt is that the book is probably as reliable a source of information and ideas as CNN. I don't know much about Silicon Valley or Uber, being just a Flyover Country bumpkin, but I'll hazard a guess that the writer's thesis is SV (along with an ensemble cast of "bad" actors) is creating an epic crisis for humanity and only a virtually omnipotent central government enacting heavy-handed Socialism can save the world from it. I want yours, so screw you.

[Gilberto de Piento]

So being white makes me an asshole from the jump, huh?

I'm fairly far left and I'm tired of this stuff too. I don't think too many people actually buy into it but it seems to have become part of progressive culture because a small group is very vocal about it.

I thought the article had some good points. "Greyball" wall something I hadn't heard about before. What they were thinking? It seems obvious that this would get exposed at some point. It seems like the guy at the top of Uber is just a scumbag. That said, I still have the app and it is my go to option when I am traveling. Maybe I should try Lyft.

Hold on, we’re not done. Somewhere in 2017, that Uber designed a tool called Greyball, which they used to flag riders they believed were associated with cities officials or regulatory bodies Uber had labeled as enemies. (NY Times reporter Mike Isaac did an excellent job exposing this. He’s currently writing a book about Uber. Read it when it comes out.) Greyball tracked phone numbers associated with those “enemies”, who were then told there were no cars available when they used the app. This was fraud. Everyone involved in the conception, design, execution, and maintenance of that tool acted unethically.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greyball has more detail.

[Riggerjack]

@ EMJ

Any chance there was a suggested solution in there? I am not interested in angst and complaints about what other people did.

I am interested in creative solutions. If the SV model is wrong, are there other options suggested? Because I suspect ID is dead on, this is going to be just another diatribe on the evils of capitalism, with appeals for collective and/or government action, with no introspection about the failings of those approaches.

And I have read all of those I have time for...

[7Wannabe5]

Although the piece did have more than a bit of a political bias, it might also be read as a call out to small potatoes investors.

Also, the learning curve has moved on past this article already. Individual contractors or dealers, whether running gigs or selling lots, have gotten wise to the game. Almost every driver I have used was simultaneously contracting for Lyft and Uber. One of my sisters was doing shopping for one of the delivery services, and when they recently made a change which gave the shoppers a smaller share of their tips, the shoppers dropped out in droves, and the service provider had to immediately reverse policy or face inability to provide customers with service.

I think the mechanisms of the gig economy are less the problem than the fact that it takes a minute for people to grok what it means to be a contractor vs. a W2 employee. IOW, driving for Uber is NOT a job that happens to be flexible. Uber is a tool which you, the contractor of your own vigor*time or life-energy, can make good use of... or not. The youngsters are catching on to this much more quickly, and are actually also applying the same modus operandi to part-time W-2 jobs which make use of similar technology for scheduling. One of the older managers at the Big Box Home Improvement Store where I worked garden rush complained to me "These kids today, they have no work ethic, they just quit the minute they get any offer that pays a little more." IOW, they are agile quick learners who have observed that the margin is where the action is at these-a-days.

[tonyedgecombe]

"These kids today, they have no work ethic, they just quit the minute they get any offer that pays a little more."

There are as many entitled employers as employees. What do they expect people to do, ignore better opportunities.

Corporations wanted this, they were the ones calling for less workers rights. If a company has no loyalty to its staff then they shouldn't be surprised if the staff have no loyalty to the business.

[IlliniDave]

There are as many entitled employers as employees. What do they expect people to do, ignore better opportunities.

Corporations wanted this, they were the ones calling for less workers rights. If a company has no loyalty to its staff then the staff then they shouldn't be surprised if they have no loyalty to the business.

+1 Nothing new about people leaving and employer for higher paying jobs, or about employers seeking to keep their costs low. Very few businesses have the market clout to charge customers whatever they want.

[7Wannabe5]

There are as many entitled employers as employees. What do they expect people to do, ignore better opportunities.

Yup. At will is at will. OTOH, I think what the manager was speaking to was the ever increasing pace of the churn. For obvious reasons, it is quite analogous to complaints about the outcome of dating apps. A gig in the $10-$20/hr range is as easy for anybody to pick up these days as a casual Friday night date for a reasonably attractive woman, because the transition hurdles have been greatly reduced.