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Not what I expected, it seems to me the CEO did the right thing. I'm not a customer of Instacart, my only knowledge of it comes from following the various HN st

Not what I expected, it seems to me the CEO did the right thing. I'm not a customer of Instacart, my only knowledge of it comes from following the various HN stories about this whole ordeal. The "right thing" he did: 1) Apologize, explaining that he made a mistake. Self-deprecation is good here. 2) Make it right, not just going forward - they are retroactively paying the delta to the impacted employees.

soared 8y ago
Doing the right thing after significant public outcry still seems wrong.
ProAm 8y ago
They were caught stealing from their employees/contractors. Did the right thing? They are pleading forgiveness for abhorrent behavior, let's not sugar coat this.
- Rainymood 8y ago
  How is it stealing if you agreed to their terms? The contractors still got paid.
- bonestamp2 8y ago
  Also stealing from their customers. They told us our tips were "100%" going to the shopper. Really, only the percentage that exceeded the base pay was going to the shopper because instacart was reducing their base pay by the amount of the tip. If that's not fraud, I don't know what is.
ori_b 8y ago
That would be more than enough if this was an accident -- but it wasn't. Dropping compensation when a customer tips is a deliberate choice that required engineering time and manager signoff to implement and ship. Building and shipping this feature was a calculated, deliberate decision. Who made this choice, and how has the company changed things to ensure that they won't make this choice again?
- enra 8y ago
  How do you know that though? Simplest solution would be that that for each order, pay out $10 whether there were enough tips or not. Instacart potentially thought that they are just guaranteeing a specific tip, regardless if there are tips or not, and not really thinking the model through. If a pizza delivery guy gets tipped nothing, or $1, I don't think the pizza company compensates? In some way you could see this an equalizing tips, everyone gets paid the same for each batch, as you would potentially do with normal wages. Bigger issue for me coming from non-tip culture, that's ok not to pay any kind of employees enough and instead rely on customers to tip them.
  - fredophile 8y ago
    The pizza company pays the delivery driver an hourly wage and possibly some compensation for mileage driven. The tip is added on top of the base compensation. Your proposed simplest solution isn't guaranteeing a minimum tip. It's saying that the first $x of a customer's tip will go to the company instead of the employee. This is theft. The company already charged the customer a fee for this service and should be using this to pay their expenses.
  - tkxxx7 8y ago
    It’s difficult to imagine thinking those words and not considering “what if there’s more than enough tips” to which was added “we’ll keep them, and lie to everyone.”
jonknee 8y ago
It's depressing when paying back the money you stole and apologizing is "not what I expected" in a good way. Jumping over the world's lowest bar.
wlesieutre 8y ago
The Right Thing would be not stealing from your employees' (contractors'?) tips in the first place
bootlooped 8y ago
I think most people get the impression that they would rather still be doing this, if only there hadn't been a social media outcry.
CountSessine 8y ago
1) Apologize, explaining that he made a mistake. Self-deprecation is good here. "Hey - we tried to cheat you blind. We thought we could cheat you without you noticing. Clearly that was a mistake - you noticed. I'm sorry that you noticed when we tried to cheat you." 2) Make it right, not just going forward - they are retroactively paying the delta to the impacted employees. "The state attorney general's office phoned me and it was scary. I'm going to return the money that we cheated you out of because I don't want to go to jail." "In the future, I promise to not cheat you in ways that you will notice."
- HillaryBriss 8y ago
  so brilliant and so true if I were advising this CEO, I'd suggest sending every shopper who ever got a tip an additional 50% of their lifetime Instacart earnings, just to regain the community's confidence.
mikestew 8y ago
The time to do the right thing has already passed. What you are observing is called "damage control" after it has been found that company was not, in fact, doing the right thing.
hunter23 8y ago
As I posted elsewhere - the apology misses half of the equation. Instacart was putting a tip section of the app to fool users into thinking that improved the wage of their workers when it kept to stable. So not only were they stealing from their workers they were stealing from their customers. Where's the apology for using the word tip deceptively?

soared 8y ago

Doing the right thing after significant public outcry still seems wrong.

ProAm 8y ago

They were caught stealing from their employees/contractors. Did the right thing? They are pleading forgiveness for abhorrent behavior, let's not sugar coat this.

Rainymood 8y ago
How is it stealing if you agreed to their terms? The contractors still got paid.
bonestamp2 8y ago
Also stealing from their customers. They told us our tips were "100%" going to the shopper. Really, only the percentage that exceeded the base pay was going to the shopper because instacart was reducing their base pay by the amount of the tip. If that's not fraud, I don't know what is.

ori_b 8y ago

That would be more than enough if this was an accident -- but it wasn't. Dropping compensation when a customer tips is a deliberate choice that required engineering time and manager signoff to implement and ship. Building and shipping this feature was a calculated, deliberate decision. Who made this choice, and how has the company changed things to ensure that they won't make this choice again?

enra 8y ago
How do you know that though? Simplest solution would be that that for each order, pay out $10 whether there were enough tips or not. Instacart potentially thought that they are just guaranteeing a specific tip, regardless if there are tips or not, and not really thinking the model through. If a pizza delivery guy gets tipped nothing, or $1, I don't think the pizza company compensates? In some way you could see this an equalizing tips, everyone gets paid the same for each batch, as you would potentially do with normal wages. Bigger issue for me coming from non-tip culture, that's ok not to pay any kind of employees enough and instead rely on customers to tip them.
- fredophile 8y ago
  The pizza company pays the delivery driver an hourly wage and possibly some compensation for mileage driven. The tip is added on top of the base compensation. Your proposed simplest solution isn't guaranteeing a minimum tip. It's saying that the first $x of a customer's tip will go to the company instead of the employee. This is theft. The company already charged the customer a fee for this service and should be using this to pay their expenses.
- tkxxx7 8y ago
  It’s difficult to imagine thinking those words and not considering “what if there’s more than enough tips” to which was added “we’ll keep them, and lie to everyone.”

jonknee 8y ago

It's depressing when paying back the money you stole and apologizing is "not what I expected" in a good way. Jumping over the world's lowest bar.

wlesieutre 8y ago

The Right Thing would be not stealing from your employees' (contractors'?) tips in the first place

bootlooped 8y ago

I think most people get the impression that they would rather still be doing this, if only there hadn't been a social media outcry.

CountSessine 8y ago

1) Apologize, explaining that he made a mistake. Self-deprecation is good here. "Hey - we tried to cheat you blind. We thought we could cheat you without you noticing. Clearly that was a mistake - you noticed. I'm sorry that you noticed when we tried to cheat you." 2) Make it right, not just going forward - they are retroactively paying the delta to the impacted employees. "The state attorney general's office phoned me and it was scary. I'm going to return the money that we cheated you out of because I don't want to go to jail." "In the future, I promise to not cheat you in ways that you will notice."

HillaryBriss 8y ago
so brilliant and so true if I were advising this CEO, I'd suggest sending every shopper who ever got a tip an additional 50% of their lifetime Instacart earnings, just to regain the community's confidence.

mikestew 8y ago

The time to do the right thing has already passed. What you are observing is called "damage control" after it has been found that company was not, in fact, doing the right thing.

hunter23 8y ago

As I posted elsewhere - the apology misses half of the equation. Instacart was putting a tip section of the app to fool users into thinking that improved the wage of their workers when it kept to stable. So not only were they stealing from their workers they were stealing from their customers. Where's the apology for using the word tip deceptively?