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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.
        throwaway5752 8y ago
        This has digressed a bit. Let's recap: someone asked if ethics were an MBA requirement. I responded by asking if it was CS/CE requirement. Then someone brought up the ABET model curriculum, and now here we are. The general point is that it started with a altogether too common dig at MBAs. I think those are usually unwarranted without any further examination. But I also found some studies that indicate leadership in a corporation is neutral to positive on corporate social responsibility (didn't share it earlier, but here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25782028 https://www.jstor.org/stable/25782028). The ABET model curricula is admirable, but the ethics requirement is not overly stringent. And there are very prominent CS/CE programs that are not accredited (http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx, I won't name names, but they are top 10 schools, easily). It would be great if every damn high school student had to take semester of secular ethics, let alone MBAs or Engineers. I could easily see any degree having a 1 or 2 credit hour course in profession specific ethics. But to the original point, I just don't like people getting high and mighty over people with MBA degrees for no good reason (I don't have an MBA). ps - and to bring it all the way back around, there were many, many people involved in this. UX design, backend development, PM, project management, testing... it's just lazy scapegoating to pin this on a hypothetical MBA pulling all the strings.
- 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.

The Excel models all look a lot nicer if you take the tips!

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.
        throwaway5752 8y ago
        This has digressed a bit. Let's recap: someone asked if ethics were an MBA requirement. I responded by asking if it was CS/CE requirement. Then someone brought up the ABET model curriculum, and now here we are. The general point is that it started with a altogether too common dig at MBAs. I think those are usually unwarranted without any further examination. But I also found some studies that indicate leadership in a corporation is neutral to positive on corporate social responsibility (didn't share it earlier, but here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25782028 https://www.jstor.org/stable/25782028). The ABET model curricula is admirable, but the ethics requirement is not overly stringent. And there are very prominent CS/CE programs that are not accredited (http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx http://main.abet.org/aps/Accreditedprogramsearch.aspx, I won't name names, but they are top 10 schools, easily). It would be great if every damn high school student had to take semester of secular ethics, let alone MBAs or Engineers. I could easily see any degree having a 1 or 2 credit hour course in profession specific ethics. But to the original point, I just don't like people getting high and mighty over people with MBA degrees for no good reason (I don't have an MBA). ps - and to bring it all the way back around, there were many, many people involved in this. UX design, backend development, PM, project management, testing... it's just lazy scapegoating to pin this on a hypothetical MBA pulling all the strings.
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.