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How on earth was this an "algorithm glitch" or anything close to "black box"? It's how they calculated pay, by setting a minimum hourly rate and subtracting any
by dahdum 8y ago
How on earth was this an "algorithm glitch" or anything close to "black box"? It's how they calculated pay, by setting a minimum hourly rate and subtracting any tips from that before paying out themselves.
This reporter is far too trusting.
> Instacart still hasn’t explained exactly what went wrong in calculating Arrigo’s 80-cent fee. But it shows the risks inherent in relying entirely on the “black box” of algorithms that, regardless how clever they are, can sometimes produce baffling results.
- bb88 8y agoOr the developers are just stupid. Now they simply can add a simple if-statement. if driver_pay < 3: driver_pay == 3 No need to bother with unit tests on that one. [Edit:] LOL as seen below. That's probably how they coded it.
- dymk 8y agoActually you should have tested your code, because this does a no-op equality test against 3 (==), rather than your intention to set driver_pay to 3 (=)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- throwaway2016a 8y agoI thought you did that intentionally to be sarcastic / ironic...
- throwaway2016a 8y agoI think they mean black box to the person paying and the one being paid not to Instacart. Though this is kind of frustrating. Because 99%+ Instacart themselves knew what the formula is. I give a 1% change they legitimately did the math wrong and somehow got it through QA and code review into production and a 99% chance they are being intentionally deceptive by calling it an "algorithm glitch".
- towelr34dy 8y agoI'm guessing they probably didn't have any instances where they didn't pay themselves by 'accident'.
- sp332 8y agoThe original article https://www.workingwa.org/instacart-eighty-cents https://www.workingwa.org/instacart-eighty-cents has a screenshot from an email with Instacart explicitly describing how it works and confirming that the calculation was correct.