Uber / Lyft: How Does It Work?
Uber and Lyft have been in the news in the past few years given the rise of rideshare use across the country and due to their recent IPO’s.
You can read about the full history of the company on Wikipedia. I can testify from the driver’s seat that, despite a rocky start, Uber has been doing many good things to improve its relationships with and offerings to its drivers. The media is reporting that Uber is now boring compared to what it used to be. That’s not a bad thing.
I don’t have any hidden motivations for saying these things. Uber has always offered a fair deal to its drivers, IMHO. You may hear rumors that the drivers are paid less than minimum wage overall. That might be the case for drivers who work sporadically and who don’t strategize to maximize their revenue as much as I do
My experience has been that if you drive a lot, drive smart by strategizing to optimize your work time, and you if you take advantage of bonus and / or surge programs that both Lyft and Uber offer each week, you can cash out nicely. Last year I may have been one of the few who grossed over $100K/year. No joke.
But I want to be up front . I worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day on average for much of the past year. I’m generally satisfied with what I’m making overall. This is important because we all know that disheartening sense of feeling underpaid for long hours behind the wheel.
What has made this job worth working so much for is the unexpected and interesting experiences with riders day to day. I almost never have a bad day driving for Uber or Lyft. I might feel crappy in the morning and not want to go to work. But simply driving and interacting with passengers, even if some say nothing at all, is an uplifting experience that put a person in a good mood. It’s the strangest thing.
One of the other intriguing things about working for Uber and Lyft is that you have no supervisor except yourself and your passengers. You work whenever you want to. When you feel like working you turn the app on, and you’re clocked in. When you feel like taking a break, you turn the app off. This could mean turning it off at the end of a ride just to catch your breath. Or turning it off to have lunch. Or like I do, to go home for a midday nap. You are the boss.
Instead of dealing with a supervisor, you are ranked by each rider on a scale of 1-5 for each ride you give. The customer is your supervisor. But don't let that scare you. One of the secrets I’ve come to learn in my five years of doing this is that the rider is hoping that you will be nice/friendly to chat with. Or a lot of times that you’ll not chat at all if they are busy doing some work on a laptop or on the phone. Many times people use their Uber/Lyft ride to chill out in their little back-seat oasis. You’ll know when you are not supposed to say anything.
The concept of working with no supervisor can be a bit unnerving for some. It takes some getting used to. But the motivation in all this is clear – easy money. Or “easier” money. It is not easy to be a driver. But being able to hop into the car and work any time of day without any supervisor, and getting paid every day if you want—that is worth the effort of riding the learning curve. If you've worked too many BS jobs in an office, you know what I mean. Doing Uber is better than doing menial office work.
I adjusted without much difficulty perhaps because for years I ran an Internet business. You don’t deal with a supervisor or office manager there, either. You just learn how to operate their system on your own with the help of tech support for questions. Uber and Lyft have a similar system. You can communicate with tech support all you want.
That said, what you develop is an ever present, unspoken feeling swirling about you that you must be your upmost professional self so you can strive to get a feedback rating of 5 every time. Particularly when you first start out. Rest assured, this never happens and you do not get 5's all the time. The good news is that once you accept this, you’ll feel better. Yet you can still achieve a high score (4.8 – 4.9), and get a few sub 5’s now and then. It doesn’t make you any less qualified or stellar in what you do.
Someone will always be out there to give you a lower score for something. Over time the 4s and 5s you earn will add up to deflect the occasional 1, 2 or 3 you might get. As of this writing, I have given over 8,000 rides and my score on Uber is 4.91; 4.94 on Lyft. To stay this high over time take diligence and hard work. As to what might happen to get you kicked off Uber/Lyft, either as a rider or a driver, my sense is that the chances are rather low if you have good scores. I’ll get into this more later.
There are a multitude of other aspects of how Uber and Lyft work from the rider and driver perspectives. But this is the introductory overview.
