6 ms·

> Why did NO ONE in any meetings when designing this "feature" or process say anything? Who's to say someone didn't? All we know is they decided to steal tips,

• crushcrashcrush 8y ago
  I address that later in my comment... Is this a function of schooling? MBA programs? Corporatism?
  • jonknee 8y ago
    The Excel models all look a lot nicer if you take the tips!
  • airstrike 8y ago
    As an MBA, I really take issue with this cynicism of MBA programs. It's not like we're cold greedy bastards. Stop generalizing. People can make great and terrible decisions, regardless of grad school degree choice.
    • resters 8y ago
      Hah. Well it's obviously a case where the consumer habit of tipping for delivery means that on a $100 order there may be $105 that the customer is willing to (or used to having to) pay. Thus leaving that $5 on the table is perhaps a stupid business decision. I should hope an MBA would point that out, so long as another MBA pointed out that the user experience may be more important than the few extra dollars.
      • airstrike 8y ago
        An MBA would point out that in the this isn't a sustainable strategy, regardless of any concept of fairness. Backlash from customers and workers is virtually guaranteed to hurt long-term profits.
        • save_ferris 8y ago
          Serious question: are ethics taught in MBA programs, and if so, how? Generally speaking, how are MBA's taught to avoid making this very mistake?
          • throwaway5752 8y ago
            Pardon my interruption, but I think a perfectly adequate response would be to counter by asking if ethics are taught in CS/CE programs (or what curricula have ethics prereqs)
            • tedmiston 8y ago
              Yes, ethics are a required component of the ABET CS model curriculum.
              • throwaway5752 8y ago
                That's a model curriculum and has no mechanism for enforcment. I am not able to find more than a handful of CS degree programs with ethics prerequisites. Plenty of engineering schools offer compute ethics courses as electives, but then again, plenty of business schools offer business ethics electives in MBA programs.
                • davidcuddeback 8y ago
                  > That's a model curriculum and has no mechanism for enforcment. The mechanism for enforcement is ABET accreditation. When I was at Cal Poly SLO, our CS program was up for re-accreditation, and yes, we were required to take an ethics course, mostly due to remarks from prior accreditation reviews. Edit: > I am not able to find more than a handful of CS degree programs with ethics prerequisites ABET accreditation allows for ethics to be covered as part of other courses in the curriculum. IIRC, it requires at least 4 units worth coursework to focus on ethics. Schools are allowed to cover this as part of a software engineering capstone series, for example.
    • dba7dba 8y ago
      Someone signed off on that feature that stole $4 from a $5 tip given to a person making minimum wage. Was that person an MBA graduate or not?
      • airstrike 8y ago
        Let's blame all males if that was their gender too!
        • dba7dba 8y ago
          I don't care about all that gender stuff. The point is someone signed off on that. And in a business, it's usually someone with an MBA. I can't imagine a business of that popularity having someone making business decisions without an MBA under their belt.
  • Judgmentality 8y ago
    I mean ultimately it's the executives that call the shots. I've seen people stand up to executives over things like this and then they get fired and it's business as usual. Most people aren't willing to risk their jobs over screwing over gig workers, especially when you feel powerless to actually stop it from happening. I mean it's so socially acceptable we've even coined the term "gig economy" Chances are the people that really feel strongly about these things just refuse to work for those companies in the first place.
    • anigbrowl 8y ago
      Most people aren't willing to risk their jobs over screwing over gig workers Ironic that they may have ended doing long term damage to their careers as a result.
      • ergothus 8y ago
        Did they? Can you name the people to blame? If someone shows up with Instacart on their resume, is it hard for them to act like they were either ignorant or against the decision?
        • anigbrowl 8y ago
          I'd definitely discount applicants on that basis. is it hard for them to act like they were either ignorant or against the decision? No, but fooling me if I want to know is a different matter.
      • imtringued 8y ago
        In what way? The vast majority of employers want cogs. They don't want rebels.
  • rjpr 8y ago
    It's just greed, plain and simple. It doesn't have to be more complex than that.
  • dragonwriter 8y ago
    We don't have corporatism (corporate crony capitalism, which is a bit redundant, but not corporatism which is a completely different thing; the corpora referred to in corporatism is the body formed by the whole of society, not each individual firm as a corporation.)
  • save_ferris 8y ago
    Hard to say exactly without being privy to their conversations, but the aggressive growth pressure that young companies with VC funding face almost always factors in somehow. It's hard to truly expect companies to make the correct ethical decision in this scenario when the survival of founders is dependent on raising more and more money. The "grow now, profit later" model truly puts pressure on execs to take whatever they can. And in this case, they clearly thought either nobody would notice or care.
    • Apocryphon 8y ago
      Who polices the VCs? It seems like they have no accountability, even financially speaking. If one investment fails they have nine more to reallocate towards, so to speak.
      • save_ferris 8y ago
        > Who polices the VCs? Great question. They benefit tremendously by minimizing their own risk and maximizing the leverage they have over founders they invest in.
        • pas 8y ago
          The market, obviously. If they invest in shit startups, then eventually they will lose all of their money. Now the problem is, what if people still use something and give their money to even if that service/company is unethical? Is it unethical to make very bad employment deals with people who have no better opportunities on the job market? Well, now that's where again people come in. Some people say, no, because if they don't like the job, they can start their own company (ehm, ehm, maybe that's why we are here, too many people trying to start stupid companies built on almost stealing from each other). Some people say, fuck no, that's just a race to the bottom Somalia. Some people pitch NIT (negative income tax, a form of universal basic income). Some full blown direct action style socialism/anarchism. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      • bspn 8y ago
        Technically LPs, but they're more-often-than-not large, faceless funds only interested in returns and mostly insulated from any blowback so moral considerations don't always concern them.
  • ilaksh 8y ago
    Its a function of money. The people who make the decisions (CEO, board) are judged on how much money the company makes. They are paid based on it. They keep their job only if they make more money. Basically imagine you are an investor who spent $70 million on this company. That money could represent anything. Money can be used for anything so people can imagine it will all be used for altruistic purposes if they want. Sometimes a portion of it is. It can represent 50 or 500 or 5000 people who are counting on that money to grow. The point being, it is very easy for a person in charge of a large sum of money to come up with a moral justification for maintaining or increasing that sum of money. The least of which is keeping their job or social standing -- but that one alone is usually enough for people to justify many things. In this case, they will probably just say something like "well, its not our responsibility to make sure that people earn a good wage". In the end, the only thing they are really being held accountable for is how much money they make.
  • rchaud 8y ago
    It is the ancient philosophy of nickel-and-diming employees in low-margin hospitality sector businesses. I don't have access to the financials, but at no point has 'on demand food delivery' seemed to be anything other than a highly risky business servicing an extremely price-sensitive market.
    • ModFightsCron 8y ago
      that's funny. a market with almost inelastic demand is high risk for a business. right. on demand food delivery is risky and price-sensitive? what are you talking about. there is always an almost inelastic guaranteed demand for food delivery, irrelevant of economic factors. unemployed white trash get pizza delivered. there is zero price sensitivity, because compared to the food the price is low, and the laziness is high. If someone wants food delivered, making the delivery fee double, will not make them go get food or cook. it will just make them find the lowest delivery fee and order there. you are literally saying the opposite of what is obviously true.
• ChuckMcM 8y ago
  I would believe that someone did/has. If you look at things like Project Maven at Google people did speak out, or the Chinese search engine. Speaking out doesn't help if you're not in a position to modify the plan though. I've been in both places, both where I could keep a bad idea from going through and times when I could only share my concerns. For me, it was situations like this that gave me the motivation to get better at pitching (and shooting down) ideas. Using the tip fiasco as an example, you can argue it at the social justice level which will be ignored by the Chief Product Officer because they don't care about social justice, so for them you argue it at the product angle, "This policy/product is going to stain our product and make us look like greedy chumps, look at how our competitors product idea to do <x> resulted in so much bad publicity they had to pay <y>, which totally negated any value to the company. Do you want to be the guy that costs this company that money? Are you ready to be out on the street looking for a job where your last idea turned out to be reviled by press? It will be you because the CEO certainly isn't going to take the blame for it, they are going to fire you and say 'See? We thought it was horrible too and we fired the person responsible.', and that is going to be you. Think about that before you move forward on this product idea, kthx bye." That makes is personal to someone in a position to actually stop it from going out the door. If you can show them the risk in a way they will understand, then, and only then, do you get any traction in stopping it.
  • crushcrashcrush 8y ago
    I wish I could upvote you twice, and I'm stealing your quoted paragraph as essentially a template for when these situations appear in future meetings.
  • Fede_V 8y ago
    I totally agree with this, and I think this makes the point that social outrage can sometimes play a positive role. In an ideal world, we could get people to act ethically because it's the right thing to do: if we can't do that, at least we can appeal to their self interest and point out how horribly this could backfire if people found out.
    • Apocryphon 8y ago
• anigbrowl 8y ago
  True, but once someone knows something illegal or deeply unethical is going down and sticks around, they can't complain about getting part of the blame for it.
• tomc1985 8y ago
  I think it is more, "Why does this keep happening?" and "What can we do to stop it?"
• minimaxir 8y ago
  The argument, especially for low-margin businesses like these delivery startups, is that the company might go under if financial tricks aren't in place. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Might as well take the path of least embarrassment and hope no one calls out the tricks.
  • deogeo 8y ago
    > Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Surely that should be "Business goes under if you don't, executives go to jail for mass fraud if you do."
    • minimaxir 8y ago
      I'm not a lawyer, but I do wonder what the legal threshold between "following ethics" and "fiduciary duty" is.
  • criddell 8y ago
    I'd have more sympathy if there were also giving equity to the people they are stealing from.
  • cannonedhamster 8y ago
    So maybe your business model is flawed? If you can't survive without robbing your employees then you shouldn't survive at all. This would easily be solvable by building growth organically, or having companies that hook into your service willingly to offer delivery at lower cost to them than hiring a full time employee. This would necessarily limit usefulness to larger population centers, but would make it more viable long term.