The goal is not to impose hardship on them, but instead remind them for two months out of the year just how little minimum wage actually is. Most of them could probably blow that $500 paycheck on a single trip to the grocery store.
Thanks for the feedback. Screening resumes is handled by HR. Can I ask, what was your expectation?
If you feel you didn't get due consideration, forward the rejection to the above address with your resume and I'll take another look. Our process starts with resume screen, recruiter phone screen and coding exercise. If you reach out, I'll have the coding exercise sent to you.
When you go to a casino to gamble, your gains expectancy is negative because of the house's cut. You pay to have more risk.
When you go to your insurance company, your gains expectancy is negative as well, because the insurance company is profitable. You pay to have less risk.
So people pay to have more risk, and other people pay to have less. I'd like to know if those two groups can meet.
> AirBNB has greatly increased the supply of housing in each city, thus causing price drops and forcing hotels to drop their prices in order to remain competitive.
That's 2-3 major claims that I just can't believe at face value. I'd like to, but you'll have to convince me.
People are converting rental properties to AirBnBs, which actually could mean less supply of rental properties and the same amount of people looking for them.
Is AirBnB leading to development of new housing to offset this? Maybe. idk
Being a professional driver (even aided by GPS and Waze) and speaking fluent English are absolutely valuable skills on the US market.
One in five US residents speaks a language other than English at home. Of those that speak a language other than English, only 58% speak English "very well" Older people are less likely to speak English "very well" than younger people. https://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/acs-22.pdf
So when you're looking at the bottom 10% or so of the workforce, speaking fluent English is a HUGELY marketable job skill.
And if you want to drive for Uber, you need to meet Uber's requirements. You need to be 21 or older. You need to have 3 years of driving experience (you can't just go out and get a license if you decide you want to drive for Uber). Clean driving record, background check, no criminal history at all in the last 7 years...
You need to have a clean 4-door sedan in good condition that can pass an inspection.
Even if you manage to jump through all those hoops, driving for Uber can be customer service in the extreme. Sure, I can drive myself to the grocery store and back like a champ, but Uber drivers are driving on unfamiliar roads to unknown destinations every day. And they're doing it with a paying customer in the backseat. I live in Boston, and there are certain sections of town where the GPS routinely doesn't work/jumps around, and those sections happen to be a minefield of winding one-way streets and construction.
How do you deal with GPS issues? Surprise construction? Traffic that Waze didn't predict? How do you mollify customers when things go wrong? Can you drive defensively and still make a timely arrival to your destination? I've taken a lot of Ubers and have seen some REALLY bad drivers, and some really fantastic ones that handled the car like a pro.
My point is, working as a cook at McDonalds requires far fewer resources and job skills than driving an Uber, hands down. You could make a more compelling argument for working the register, but cooking fries is trivial and requires very few skills or resources.
> Right now you're spoiled with cheap and fast, which will change eventually; I'd recommend planning for this.
I think this is the big picture with Uber right now; Uber subsidizing the costs cannot continue forever, or at least it really doesn't look like they can; if public transit isn't an option for you, then you need to be prepared to accept that your costs right now are not reflective of the actual cost to provide the service.
The Uber/Lyft model is very cool and it does meet an important need for many US cities, but unfortunately what is offered now doesn't represent the full cost of supporting such a service. I really appreciate the difficulty you have with your commute - before I moved abroad, I lived in a smaller US city which had tragically experienced a catastrophe with its public transit that resulted in it being even further underfunded. An 3 hour total commute each day does take it out of you, but it's the cost of cities in the US being underfunded for public transit and for cities being designed around everyone owning a car.
You can continue to live off Uber for as long as it lasts, but if you're going to have the same commute long term, it might be better to start putting your money and effort towards trying to improve the public transit; most cities have public transit boards/committees that are happy to have people join them, and the more people they can get to assist, the more influence they can have on local and state governments to improve the situation. Being reliant on Uber pretty much means you're reliant on public transportation, so your choices are either be ready to start paying the actual cost, or work to improve the cheaper public transit alternatives.
To be even more fair, a huge factor in them being underpaid is that the average driver will have a hard time factoring in depreciation, which hits you on a delay.
Not to mention that Uber pretty much bait-and-switched a lot of drivers, starting with artificially high payouts and then aggressively pushing the price down, fishing money out of the drivers' pockets and making their investments unprofitable. Which is what the driver in the recent video was complaining to Kalanick about.
I think you'd have to limit their usage of previously acquired funds. Once you're rich, you can ride out a 2 month storm like it's nothing.