Drive slower!

[Bloomberg] [Fully Charged]( From [Bloomberg]( [FOLLOW US [Facebook Share]]([Twitter Share]( [SUBSCRIBE [Subscribe]]( Hi all, it’s Eric. While everything is going wrong, Uber is doing at least one thing right: It’s trying to repair its relationship with drivers. Uber’s more than 1.5 million drivers globally aren’t upset about the same issues as the rest of us, though they were [angry]( that CEO Travis Kalanick treated one of their own [rudely]( on video. On Wednesday, I [went on NPR’s KQED Forum]( to talk about Uber’s many crises. The Uber drivers who called in were arguing about whether they should be driving slower. ??? Here’s the gist: One caller argued that if every driver carted their passengers around at more of a snail’s pace, Uber drivers might all be able to push up fares and induce surge pricing. (Some drivers at airports already try to coordinate, turning all their apps off at once in the hopes of activating surge pricing.) Another Uber driver called in and said that his fellow drivers should focus on getting more trips an hour, not driving slower. The on-air back-and-forth was a little bit silly, I’ll admit. I’m sharing the exchange to make the point that Uber drivers, like voters, care about pocketbook issues. That means, while drivers may chitchat about some of Uber corporate’s cultural failings, they’re more interested in their earnings and how hard their jobs are. Naturally, when Uber had a [press conference this week](, how many questions did the company get about its decisions that affect drivers or their wallets? Ummmm, that would be zero. I’m guilty here, too. I asked whether former Attorney General Eric Holder would make the findings of his investigation into the company’s human resources practices and cultural problems public. Board member Arianna Huffington said that there is an “absolute commitment that the findings will be made public and that they will inform all the actions.” The tech press is following the [headlines](, but I’d also argue that as a group, it’s far more sensitive to white collar issues, like [corporate diversity](, [office culture]( and [corporate espionage](. I’m not discounting any of those issues. They’re all super important. This is probably a good time to tell you to [read my story]( with Olivia Zaleski on Uber’s failures in diversity recruiting, which came out today. Thankfully, Uber has finally learned that it needs to worry about drivers, even when the press is looking elsewhere. There are more than 600,000 of them in the U.S. Driver turnover makes life difficult for the company. Uber needs to keep recruiting new drivers to replace the ones that leave and to cope with growth. “Drivers are at the center of the Uber experience,” Rachel Holt, the head of the U.S. operations, said during the [press call](. She mentioned that Uber had rolled out a redesign of its driver app and plans to add more features. Of course, Uber has plenty of faults when it comes to drivers. The company still tends to think every problem is just a project waiting for some well-intentioned project manager to solve. So the company rolls out tone deaf features like “[compliments](,” which lets riders give drivers positive feedback but not money. Uber is also in denial, at least in terms of its public statements, when it comes to who is doing the work. Much of the drive time, [as I have written](, is done by full-time drivers. What do these full-time drivers want? From talking them, I think they tend to want 1) better and predictable pay; 2) more visibility into how much they make and why; and 3) tips. That’s why I thought Uber’s decision to pay drivers [who wait]( for more than two minutes was smart. I think Uber will launch tipping, probably this year. I reported this week that Jeff Jones, the company’s recently departed president, [supported in-app tipping](. Jones’s tenure may have been short, but he will get credit for focusing Uber on the driver, with tipping being a top-requested feature. The product organization has worked on the idea, and Kalanick has said internally he’s more open to revisiting his opposition toward tipping and driver earnings. I think the company will wait for when they think they could get the most positive press out of it, but eventually I believe tips will be a reality, especially as the option for cash tips is [outlawed in more states](. One concern, however, is that it’s possible Uber over-designs it. Basically, there’s no question in my mind that Uber could put tipping into the app in a form that the corporate bosses could stomach. The question is whether that tipping feature would look enough like tipping that drivers would be satisfied. See also: the shady stuff that Recode’s Jason Del Rey [reported]( that Instacart was trying. The grocery delivery startup backtracked a bit, and the CEO [shrugged off the controversy](. “Some shoppers saw their wage go down, and some saw their wage go up,” he told my colleague Ellen Huet. Then, Instacart [settled a lawsuit]( related to the tip issue for $4.6 million. Unlike Instacart, Uber can’t afford to not get this right on the first try. Goodwill is in short supply, and the driver constituency is too important to the business. —[Eric Newcomer](mailto:enewcomer@bloomberg.net?cmpid=BBD032417_TECH&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=170324&utm_campaign=tech) And here’s what you need to know in global technology news Theranos will give investors more stock if they won’t sue. The bloodied health-care startup is trying a new strategy right now with investors, according to a [report]( in the Wall Street Journal. Apparently, Rupert Murdock sold his shares, once worth $125 million, for $1. Quite the tax write-off. More ownership in exchange for lawsuit indemnification is a tact that Zenefits [deployed]( successfully last year. Twitter is contemplating a paid TweetDeck service. If it means a better user experience, [sign me up](. Hey, techies, here’s an excuse to read the New Yorker. Jia Tolentino absolutely [scorches Lyft]( for a blog post that celebrated a Lyft driver who kept picking up passengers on the way to the hospital. It’s appropriately biting and worth a read. “Or maybe Mary kept accepting riders because the gig economy has further normalized the circumstances in which earning an extra eleven dollars can feel more important than seeking out the urgent medical care that these quasi-employers do not sponsor.” [Just read it](. You received this message because you are subscribed to the Bloomberg Technology newsletter Fully Charged. You can tell your friends to [sign up here](. [Unsubscribe]( | [Bloomberg.com]( | [Contact Us]( Bloomberg L.P. 731 Lexington, New York, NY, 10022