Since its inception over a decade ago, Uber has deployed public relations to distract from the many reported problems with its business model, such as paying drivers wages so low they’ve been forced to sleep in their cars, or choose between working or risking COVID-19, or go hours without using the restroom. On Saturday, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi continued this tradition by tweeting that he spent a few hours delivering Uber Eats and posting how much he made.
"Spent a few hours delivering for @UberEats," Khosrowshahi tweeted. "1. SF is an absolutely incredible town. 2. Restaurant workers were incredibly nice, every time. 3. It was busy!! - 3:24 delivering out of 3:30 online. 4. I'm hungry - time to order some 🍔🍟🍺”
Khosrowshahi then added a picture he took at 6:36 PM PT showing he earned $98.91 over the course of the day, completing 10 trips for 45 points on the app. An hour later, he shared another picture showing he made six of the trips from 11:51 AM to 5:35 PM, with a four-hour break between some deliveries. He claimed he only spent just under four hours actually logged into the app, and making deliveries for about 3.5 hours. The implication of his stunt was clear: Uber drivers make decent money; more than minimum wage, in fact. This claim is a longstanding element of Uber’s PR narrative, despite reports and research over the years showing that they often don’t.
In typical fashion for Uber PR, which often relies on asymmetries of information or perception, Khosrowshahi’s tweets only show part of the story of being an Uber Eats driver.
For one, Khosrowshahi doesn’t have to live on this income. If he needs to take an hours-long break between deliveries as his screenshots show, potentially due to low demand, he can earn money at his CEO job, whereas another worker may not have the means to make such “flexibility” work to their advantage. Indeed, reports have shown that the long amounts of time gig workers can spend logged into their platforms without making a delivery (time referred to as “deadhead” by workers) can work out to sub-minimum wages.
Another issue is that the pay is not reliable. Khosrowshahi delivered again the next day but earned half as much. Couriers are also at the mercy of constant pricing experiments that the company carries out that may increase prices while keeping worker pay status quo. Finally, many workers must pay for maintenance, fuel if they’re using a car, electricity if delivering by e-bike, meals, and then rent, health insurance, and other bills.
Uber responded to Motherboard’s request for comment by pointing out that Khosrowshahi has an Uber Pro account without additional perks, and noting that although Khosrowshahi made much less money on his second day of deliveries, he also worked for an hour and a half less.
It’s hard to imagine the chief executive of Uber Eats tweeting out that he was tip-baited, or that customers were angry about him, or other unfortunate realities of being a gig worker. On Reddit, this disconnect was apparent on the r/UberEATS subreddit.
"YOU are taking a vacation day out of the office, smiling and having fun riding your bike around San Fran, slumming it for slave wages," one Reddit user wrote in reaction to Khosrowshahi’s tweet. "WE have to do this, and grind it, day in and day out just to survive. When my car broke down last winter, I tried to deliver on my bicycle, and you jerks had me pick up an extra large pizza in the middle of a snowstorm. On my bicycle."
“Dara is so full of shit,” another user wrote. “I live in Oakland and used to do Eats in SF because it would always advertise $3-$4 surges during dinner. So I’d pay the $6 toll to drive over the bridge and try to make some money during dinner rush. Man is it horrible. Traffic obviously, but I also barely got any orders, and the ones I did get would frequently take me all the way to South SF. Also the tips were horrendous. Idk. Maybe it’s different on a bike, but car deliveries have always been horrible for me in the city, no matter the time of day.”
The discussion around Khosrowshahi’s tweets once again highlights how ride-hail companies often deploy information asymmetries. By denying passengers, workers, regulators, and competitors the information necessary to make a full and proper assessment of gig companies’ activities, or eliding less-rosy realities, the companies are more free to pursue monopoly status, or whatever new and shiny public-facing narrative is currently being used.
Khosrowshahi’s tweets are a continuation of a recent turn to a more direct form of PR, with Khosrowshahi himself disputing reporting or penning op-eds repeating well-worn talking points instead of focusing its expansive PR machine on reporters covering the company.
At the end of the day, however, it doesn’t really matter what Khosrowshahi saw when he was delivering food on his bicycle. He may very well have had a great experience, but it’s not indicative of the wide scope of worker experiences and given Uber’s long history of deploying various asymmetries, it’s not clear why anyone should care about what he or any other Uber executive has to say about working for the company.
Update: This article was updated with comment from an Uber spokesperson.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, whose annual salary is more than $12 million, revealed on Twitter how much Uber Eats drivers can make, after tweeting about his experience and profits working on the app for a day in San Francisco.
“Spent a few hours delivering for @UberEats,” he wrote on Saturday. “SF is an absolutely beautiful town. Restaurant workers were incredibly nice, every time. It was busy!!”
Twitter users asked him to share a detailed breakdown of his trips on the food delivery app, and the log of deliveries he posted showed that he earned $106.71 during a half-day period, meaning his hourly rate was roughly $30 an hour, well above the local, state and federal minimum wages.
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Uber declined to answer questions about the average earnings of drivers in San Francisco and nationally as compared to the minimum wage. According to April 2021 data from the company, an Uber driver in San Francisco on the app for 20 hours a week earns a median wage of $25.28 per hour before tips or expenses.
Uber Eats drivers, however, are part-time contractors who provide their own transportation, food, healthcare, etc, and it has been claimed that they can take home less than that median figure, sometimes less than minimum wage.
This article was amended on 28 June 2021. The headline and article originally claimed that Mr Khosrowshahi’s tweet revealed that drivers barely make the minimum wage, but that was incorrect. We are happy to set the record straight.
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Dara Khosrowshahi logged five and a half hours as an Uber Eats courier over the weekend and posted his earnings, prompting some complaints on social media. Forbes took a look at the pay gap between the CEO and Uber contractors.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi faced criticism on Twitter over the weekend after posting about his experience moonlighting as an Uber Eats delivery man in a PR stunt that cast a spotlight on the enormous wealth gap between himself and Uber’s thousands of couriers.
Khosrowshahi, wearing a bicycle helmet and yellow reflective jacket, pocketed $149.54 after completing 16 deliveries in five and a half hours of work Saturday and Sunday — an equivalent of $27 per hour — according to two posts from Khosrowshahi’s Twitter account.
Khosrowshahi delivered meals for three and a half hours on Saturday:
He then worked an additional two hours on Sunday:
A few people praised Khosrowshahi for getting his hands dirty, but most slammed the CEO for failing to read the room and underpaying full-time Uber Eats delivery people.
“Now do it for a month and try to feed your family and pay your bills with those earnings alone,” said one Twitter user. “I dare you to do this everyday for a month and see if you can survive in SF making $98/day,” said another. “Now try doing it as your only source of income,” echoed a third.
A quick look into Khosrowshahi’s annual pay shows that, indeed, the pay gap between Uber’s CEO and Uber Eats contractors is substantial.
The average Uber Eats courier in San Francisco makes $23.34 per hour, according to a 2020 study from Gridwise, an application used by rideshare drivers. That works out to an annual salary of $48,547, assuming a 40-hour work week with no vacation time. This number does not include tips, but it also does not factor in vehicle costs like maintenance and gas, which drive down net income for couriers.
By comparison, Khosrowshahi waived his $1 million salary for 2020 starting May 1 (due to the pandemic), but he still earned $336,598 for the first four months of the year — then received a $1,560,000 cash bonus at the end of the year for meeting the company’s performance targets. Khosrowshahi’s total cash compensation in 2020, $1,896,598, was 39 times larger than the average amount earned by his San Francisco-based couriers.
Dara Khosrowshahi pictured in 2019.
Getty Images for Concordia Summit
In addition, Khosrowshahi was rewarded with potentially lucrative stock options. In 2020, Khosrowshahi received $6.25 million in stock awards that vest over four years, and an additional $6.25 million that will vest in three years if Khosrowshahi meets performance targets, as shown in financial filings. Some Uber contractors were given money to buy shares in the company’s IPO, but couriers do not receive equity as part of their compensation.
Wider still is the wealth gap. Forbes estimates Khosrowshahi’s net worth to be $235 million. He built much of his fortune while serving as CEO of Expedia Group from 2005 to 2017, accumulating hundreds of thousands of shares as part of his compensation for work at the travel company. Since then, Khosrowshahi has pocketed about $140 million after-tax from selling his Expedia holdings, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings and Forbes’ estimates.
Khosrowshahi has also stockpiled a wealth of Uber shares. Since joining as CEO in 2017, he has amassed over 750,000 shares in the ride hailing company. At Monday’s closing price, Khosrowshahi’s Uber stock is worth more than $38 million.
A representative for Khosrowshahi has not replied to a request for comment.
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