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Food delivery isn't creating a "vast digital underclass." Companies like GrubHub pay their delivery drivers the way you'd expect them to be paid and local pizz

Food delivery isn't creating a "vast digital underclass." Companies like GrubHub pay their delivery drivers the way you'd expect them to be paid and local pizza places and chinese restaurants have been profitably doing food delivery for decades. There are certainly good examples of technology disrupting the current labor market in ways that take advantage of people, but DoorDash being shitty isn't really one of them.

twalla 7y ago
Every time I see a hit piece on "big tech" from an established journalism entity like a newspaper or magazine I just consider who used to be the main ad-delivery mechanism and who the main one is now.
- core-questions 7y ago
  Fantastic point.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- arkitaip 7y ago
  Everything is a "hit piece" when the truth threatens your interests.
- snowwrestler 7y ago
  You fundamentally misunderstand how journalism works, then, and what is being lost in this shift. In a newspaper there are two or three teams: news and/or opinion, and business. The teams do not tell each other what to do. Business doesn't tell news what to report on or how to write their stories. News doesn't tell opinion what to write or publish. And news doesn't tell business what ads are OK to run. News and opinion take direct responsibility for what they publish. Every piece of content is put into the paper on purpose, usually written in-house. Their goal is to inform, enlighten, provoke, etc. -- to serve their society. The job of the business team is to keep the lights on so more journalism can get done. In a tech company like Facebook or YouTube, there are no such distinctions. Every decision, content or otherwise, is made for a business reason, and only for a business reason. That's why YouTube and Facebook publish horrible, abusive, ugly content every day that no news or opinion editor would ever have cleared for publication. Facebook and YouTube don't care; they have no sense of a duty to society, and have no master other than the pageview, the click, the ad sale. There are no "Chinese Walls" in modern ad-driven tech companies. It's worth remembering that those walls were built in journalism for a reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall
  - core-questions 7y ago
    There's no way any reasonable person can believe for a minute that advertising doesn't have a tremendous impact on what news outlets will publish. You seem to be operating in some 1950s dream world where the news media is honest and operating in the public interest. > Their goal is to inform, enlighten, provoke, etc. -- to serve their society. No. Their goal is to get eyeballs looking at ads and turn those into conversions so that the paper can sell more ads. If tabloid content achieves that goal, then that's what you will get. If pushing a narrative accomplishes that, or is more profitable in other ways for the shareholders, then you'll get that instead.
TrackerFF 7y ago
Paying the going rate is one thing, but shoving business expenses (fully or partially) on your "contractor" is another thing - and also a central point in the new "side hustle" economy.
- CountSessine 7y ago
  Most pizza delivery is done with the driver's car. It's pretty common that jobs like this require having a car.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  I don't know if gas would be considered a business expense? But I know at some of the pizza and chinese places in my city you pay your own gas. (I mean, as a delivery guy.) But you more than make up for it on tips generally speaking. At least you used to be able to make up for it on tips back in my day.
  - briandear 7y ago
    You can deduct mileage and gas from your income taxes.
    - TrackerFF 7y ago
      I've heard that some of these places operate with covering a certain amount of gas, from point A to point B, and then if you spend more than they estimated (maybe you needed to take another route because of traffic jam), that's on you. You then deduct that mileage. But again, that sounds like a massive hassle if you're doing these gigs 365 days a year, and need to collect all documentations.
- phil248 7y ago
  As long as the "thing" in question is perfectly legal, it makes much more sense to pressure government to create better regulations, not denigrate law-abiding businesses because they aren't voluntarily adhering to our individual versions of fairness or morality.
bilbo0s 7y ago
True, there have been crappy pizza delivery jobs for long, long time now. It's likely an industry worth billions of dollars, and has been for decades as you state. But, to my knowledge, no one has gone after Pizza Hut and the like for creating that underclass. (If people have gone after them then I was honestly unaware of it.)
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Pizza Hut weren't operating at this unimaginable scale.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    Maybe? But the pizza delivery industry as a whole was operating at the same unimaginable scale. And still does today.
  - malandrew 7y ago
    If conditions are basically the same, why does scale make it something we should care about now?
  - phil248 7y ago
    The service industry has been operating at a much larger scale for decades now with all of the same bad labor practices and no one cared. The service industry invented ways to pay below minimum wage (tip exemptions, age exemptions), push costs on to employees (buy your own uniform), and make their lives subject to the whims of business needs (randomly changing schedules, cut shifts, etc). None of this is new.
  - RandallBrown 7y ago
    Yes it was/is. Pizza Hut and Dominos both have revenue in the billions of dollars per year. Does DoorDash?
tomatotomato37 7y ago
I think part of the friction is the "disruption" part; a lot of the tech culture is exclaiming how they are going to change the world and show off their responsibility by only buying desks made out of reclaimed plastic or whatever, so when such "socially-conscious" companies actually end up not disrupting shit and instead do business as usual it irritates people to call them out on their hypocrisy.
healsjnr1 7y ago
There is more to this than just economics. I worked as a delivery driver for a pizza place while at uni. I loved it, the driving was fun, but more than that I loved the shop. The kitchen and wait staff were great fun. We worked in the kitchen in dead spots, we knew that business, we were actually employees. Now I look at uber eats drivers and see people who are disenfranchised. The flexibility inherent in these models doesn't just create financial insecurity, it also creates social insecurity.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  I really don't think you can judge a strangers internal mental state just by looking at them. You may have enjoyed delivering pizza at college but tons of people did not enjoy that life (maybe they weren't even in college!).
anigbrowl 7y ago
There's a huge qualitative difference between individual local restaurants having delivery drivers working cheap and a quasi-monopolist doing the same thing.

twalla 7y ago

Every time I see a hit piece on "big tech" from an established journalism entity like a newspaper or magazine I just consider who used to be the main ad-delivery mechanism and who the main one is now.

core-questions 7y ago
Fantastic point.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
arkitaip 7y ago
Everything is a "hit piece" when the truth threatens your interests.
snowwrestler 7y ago
You fundamentally misunderstand how journalism works, then, and what is being lost in this shift. In a newspaper there are two or three teams: news and/or opinion, and business. The teams do not tell each other what to do. Business doesn't tell news what to report on or how to write their stories. News doesn't tell opinion what to write or publish. And news doesn't tell business what ads are OK to run. News and opinion take direct responsibility for what they publish. Every piece of content is put into the paper on purpose, usually written in-house. Their goal is to inform, enlighten, provoke, etc. -- to serve their society. The job of the business team is to keep the lights on so more journalism can get done. In a tech company like Facebook or YouTube, there are no such distinctions. Every decision, content or otherwise, is made for a business reason, and only for a business reason. That's why YouTube and Facebook publish horrible, abusive, ugly content every day that no news or opinion editor would ever have cleared for publication. Facebook and YouTube don't care; they have no sense of a duty to society, and have no master other than the pageview, the click, the ad sale. There are no "Chinese Walls" in modern ad-driven tech companies. It's worth remembering that those walls were built in journalism for a reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_wall
- core-questions 7y ago
  There's no way any reasonable person can believe for a minute that advertising doesn't have a tremendous impact on what news outlets will publish. You seem to be operating in some 1950s dream world where the news media is honest and operating in the public interest. > Their goal is to inform, enlighten, provoke, etc. -- to serve their society. No. Their goal is to get eyeballs looking at ads and turn those into conversions so that the paper can sell more ads. If tabloid content achieves that goal, then that's what you will get. If pushing a narrative accomplishes that, or is more profitable in other ways for the shareholders, then you'll get that instead.

TrackerFF 7y ago

Paying the going rate is one thing, but shoving business expenses (fully or partially) on your "contractor" is another thing - and also a central point in the new "side hustle" economy.

CountSessine 7y ago
Most pizza delivery is done with the driver's car. It's pretty common that jobs like this require having a car.
bilbo0s 7y ago
I don't know if gas would be considered a business expense? But I know at some of the pizza and chinese places in my city you pay your own gas. (I mean, as a delivery guy.) But you more than make up for it on tips generally speaking. At least you used to be able to make up for it on tips back in my day.
- briandear 7y ago
  You can deduct mileage and gas from your income taxes.
  - TrackerFF 7y ago
    I've heard that some of these places operate with covering a certain amount of gas, from point A to point B, and then if you spend more than they estimated (maybe you needed to take another route because of traffic jam), that's on you. You then deduct that mileage. But again, that sounds like a massive hassle if you're doing these gigs 365 days a year, and need to collect all documentations.
phil248 7y ago
As long as the "thing" in question is perfectly legal, it makes much more sense to pressure government to create better regulations, not denigrate law-abiding businesses because they aren't voluntarily adhering to our individual versions of fairness or morality.

bilbo0s 7y ago

True, there have been crappy pizza delivery jobs for long, long time now. It's likely an industry worth billions of dollars, and has been for decades as you state. But, to my knowledge, no one has gone after Pizza Hut and the like for creating that underclass. (If people have gone after them then I was honestly unaware of it.)

cameronbrown 7y ago
Pizza Hut weren't operating at this unimaginable scale.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Maybe? But the pizza delivery industry as a whole was operating at the same unimaginable scale. And still does today.
- malandrew 7y ago
  If conditions are basically the same, why does scale make it something we should care about now?
- phil248 7y ago
  The service industry has been operating at a much larger scale for decades now with all of the same bad labor practices and no one cared. The service industry invented ways to pay below minimum wage (tip exemptions, age exemptions), push costs on to employees (buy your own uniform), and make their lives subject to the whims of business needs (randomly changing schedules, cut shifts, etc). None of this is new.
- RandallBrown 7y ago
  Yes it was/is. Pizza Hut and Dominos both have revenue in the billions of dollars per year. Does DoorDash?

tomatotomato37 7y ago

I think part of the friction is the "disruption" part; a lot of the tech culture is exclaiming how they are going to change the world and show off their responsibility by only buying desks made out of reclaimed plastic or whatever, so when such "socially-conscious" companies actually end up not disrupting shit and instead do business as usual it irritates people to call them out on their hypocrisy.

healsjnr1 7y ago

There is more to this than just economics. I worked as a delivery driver for a pizza place while at uni. I loved it, the driving was fun, but more than that I loved the shop. The kitchen and wait staff were great fun. We worked in the kitchen in dead spots, we knew that business, we were actually employees. Now I look at uber eats drivers and see people who are disenfranchised. The flexibility inherent in these models doesn't just create financial insecurity, it also creates social insecurity.

malvosenior 7y ago
I really don't think you can judge a strangers internal mental state just by looking at them. You may have enjoyed delivering pizza at college but tons of people did not enjoy that life (maybe they weren't even in college!).

anigbrowl 7y ago

There's a huge qualitative difference between individual local restaurants having delivery drivers working cheap and a quasi-monopolist doing the same thing.