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Couriers mystified by the algorithms that control their jobs
- oldjim69 2y agoUnionize. Collective action is the only way to stand up to Uber and co.
- flerchin 2y agoThe critical industry of McDonald's delivery will never pay a living wage. There's not enough value. Folks will have to self-select out.
- wahnfrieden 2y agoMcD’s has doubled prices with rising profits
- lotsofpulp 2y agoAnd it gets those without having to pay drivers (and technically even workers in most McDonalds’ restaurants since they are franchised), so why would they start? Delivery and final assembly of food is not McDonald’s’ business.
- wahnfrieden 2y agoThey would start if workers organized against them. I'm responding to the notion that there's not enough value on the table for collective action
- titanomachy 2y ago"final assembly of food"? I haven't eaten McDonald's in a while, but from what I remember the food arrived fully assembled.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoMcDonald’s sells their marketing and logistics, and rents real estate, to franchisors. The franchisors’ business is the one that employs people who do final assembly of the food. The franchisors’ profits and profit margins are nowhere near McDonalds’.
- flerchin 2y agoThat's true, but the delivery people do not work for McD's. They do not legally work for the delivery companies (although practically they do). People that pay for delivery will not pay very much for delivery, generally less than minimum wage. They'll instead get the food themselves.
- Aloisius 2y agoMcD's is a franchise in the US. Franchisees set prices.
- edbrown23 2y agoI don't know how this actually works, but this can't _always_ be the case if they run national ad campaigns [1] for $5 meal deals, right? Unless they're baking a lot into "pricing and participation may vary" [1] https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/5-dollar-meals.html https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/full-menu/5-dollar-meals....
- Aloisius 2y agoIf you scroll down, in small text you'll see: *Prices and participation may vary. That said, McDonalds corporate isn't running promotions unilaterally. Instead, promotions are proposed by committees elected by franchisees and voted on by franchisees themselves, so participation rates tend to be high.
- wahnfrieden 2y agoSo? What I said is correct
- ryukoposting 2y agoHow? There's no workplace to speak in hushed tones. There's no manager or de facto leader to make first contact with union representatives. There's no way to know when you've reached a quorum of local drivers. Make no mistake, I sympathize with you. Rideshare/third-party delivery drivers have become America's new techno-feudalist underclass.
- parpfish 2y agoI’ve often felt like there would be a lot of value for an app that’d simply let gig workers in an area find each other to talk and actually create a “workplace”. But I’m not sure how you’d fund its creation. No VC would want it and there’s not a wealthy user base to bootstrap it.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoTypically such things are bootstrapped not by a wealthy user base but by a talented user base who write the code and set up the organization themselves. However, if you do need some money for boostrapping, there are likely unions out there that would be willing to grant/lend the sums needed, which should be five figures. Taking VC money would be counter-productive, making you beholden to conflicting interests. P.S. The motivation for setting something like this up doesn't necessarily need to be purely selfless. It's not going to make you a billionaire, but if successful a non-profit or co-op you set up to do this can pay you a six figure salary for a job that has significant meaningfulness and significant agency (aka control over your own work). And by being a non-profit or co-op the lack of conflict of interest should make it more likely to be successful.
- InsideOutSanta 2y agoThat's a smart idea. It seems like it shouldn't be too expensive to get something like this up and running, but scalability once it's available will be an issue. Estimates for how many gig workers there are in the US vary between "over 20 million" and "about 60 million." They're already tech-literate, they probably talk to each other, so there's a chance that an app like this would experience very quick growth. I wonder how gig services would react to something like this. They'd probably try to identify users and deplatform them, so in addition to the financial aspects, one difficult part would be how to protect and anonymize such a platform's users.
- Peroni 2y agoThey already have: https://www.gmb.org.uk/campaigns/deliveroo/ https://www.gmb.org.uk/campaigns/deliveroo/
- pluc 2y agoThat's AI working as intended. Your labor isn't considered, only efficiency and profitability. We all better get used to it.
- voidhorse 2y agoThis has been the game of capital since the 1700s. What's new with AI is actually a novel apex of irrationality, wherein the efficiency and profitability is being abandoned somewhat in favor of preservation and control over production (businesses are electing to sacrifice efficient deterministic modes of analysis in favor of less reliable stochastic approaches just because these technologies will allow them to continue to divest the laboring masses of any power over capital)
- readyplayernull 2y agoThat can be fixed with more capitalism, for example there is a business opportunity right there: > Why, when the restaurant is busy and crying out for couriers, does the app say there are none available? Let the restaurant know they can call you.
- kridsdale1 2y agoThe true paperclip problem is done with human hands, enslaved by the efficiency algorithm holding Damocles.
- Workaccount2 2y agoMy assumption would be that the orgs aren't quite sure how they work either.
- donatj 2y agoI was really hoping one of the P2P apps would take off. There's no real reason why we need a middle man injecting themselves and taking fees. The apps just get better marketing. We literally just need an app to connect restaurants to couriers.
- klodolph 2y agoI see the reason for the middle man is to: 1. develop the platform 2. set standards for what “delivery” is 3. be liable for orders not delivered, or orders fraudulently placed With a P2P app, wouldn’t you be engaging with a courier directly? That would mean that any problems would have to be taken up with the courier, I would think. It makes sense for restaurants to engage directly with couriers because they may have enough volume and repeat business that they can vet the couriers. But it does not make sense to me for individuals to engage with couriers directly, not for small-value items like meals.
- Ekaros 2y agoAlso payment processing. One charge to credit card or whatever is much simpler than having to individually send payment to first restaurant and then to courier.
- atvcatole 2y agoWith a business account it's even better. Where I work we get one electronic invoice at the end of the month that is automatically paid and entered into the accounting system with the correct VAT code for all purchases and deliveries that month. The savings compared to processing 20/40x traditional charges is way more than what they charge.
- LegionMammal978 2y agoIn principle, you could have independent review services that publish ratings for couriers. Perhaps they could even make money insuring orders. But then this would run into just the same levels of frustrating opaqueness from the couriers' perspective.
- axpvms 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- parpfish 2y agoi'm surprised that more gig work delivery folks haven't tried to 'go independent' and become a new sort of personal assistant: select a handful of good clients and get them pay a retainer for you to drive around doing their busywork all day. for the driver, consistent pay and the ability to weed out bad clients. for the client, you'd get a trustworthy assistant that should be able to take on a wider range of things that a single app wouldn't do. it may not be as fast as an on-demand delivery apps, but for most things that doesn't really matter.
- windowsrookie 2y agoThese are primarily people delivering food orders at lunch time for less than $10. The people paying for these services will not pay what it would cost to have a “personal assistant”. Also they can only deliver so many orders at a time. If all of your clients order lunch around the same time, it’s not possible to deliver in a reasonable amount of time.
- parpfish 2y agomost of the folks getting ubereats delivery are not the target demo for being a PA client. but you don't have to be super wealthy for the economics of it to work out. most tech employees make enough that they could pay 10-15 hrs of low wage work every week to do stuff like pick up your laundry/groceries, pick up a food order that you've called in, take stuff to the post office, etc.
- trumbitta2 2y agomost tech employees in SF
- ryandrake 2y agomost very high staff or director+ level tech employees of a handful of top FAANG companies in SF
- kirykl 2y agoAs long as they have a deep bench of zero barrier to entry replacements this likely wont change
- gosub100 2y ago> Why, when the restaurant is busy and crying out for couriers, does the app say there are none available? Good thing they test their developers so hard on DS&A. We don't want to let in those substandard developers who don't have a grasp on the advanced theoretical underpinnings on how to bring food to people.
- the_sleaze_ 2y agoCurrently in an idle search of a new position. Got denied for a car insurance company, one of the questions I bombed was "what is the topological sort algorithm make uses to build headers, and how do you implement it". The company doesn't use C.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- _fat_santa 2y agoI don't know if food delivery apps will be here to stay long term, their economics just don't work. It seems that everyone involved looses, the tech companies are constantly running in the red, the restaurants get screwed and the drivers get screwed. Long term, food delivery will still be a thing but likely run by restaurants and smaller local apps.
- tejohnso 2y agoFood delivery run by restaurants has existed fine for decades for pizza and chinese food. I guess the delivery app puts too many fingers into the pie.
- retrac 2y agoYes. Though at least in my market, that used to have delivery fees or minimum orders that made it unlikely you would order a single sandwich for lunch and have it delivered. The food delivery app services really emphasize that model of consumption but I'm not sure it's viable.
- roughly 2y agoRe: delivery fees and minimum orders - for all intents and purposes, a burrito delivered via door dash costs $30. I’m pretty sure if you’d offered the sandwich shop $20 more to deliver the sandwich, they’d at least have thought about it. It’s actually kind of wild how much DD & all have managed to change expectations on the cost of food delivery.
- roughly 2y agoIt reminds me of the early days of Uber - the value add over taxis wasn’t in the ride itself*, it was the app and the fact that a car would actually show up. I suspect DoorDash et al are similar - the value add is the restaurant selection and the app ordering, not the actual delivery. (* yes, yes, I too have stories about taxis. I now have stories about Uber drivers, too.)
- rvense 2y ago
- imzadi 2y agoI'm in the US, if these apps are going to depend on customers tipping for their drivers to get a reasonable wage, then tipping/delivery fee should be required. If people aren't willing to pay the drivers for their labor, they shouldn't place the order.
- thefounder 2y agoIf tipping is required it is no longer tipping. It’s a tax/fee. I don’t get why people are expecting to receive tips even if the service provided is fine at best.
- sarchertech 2y agoIt’s not about people being entitled it’s about employers recognizing an opportunity to subsidize their labor costs. The employer is the one building in the expectation for tips.
- thefounder 2y agoThen let’s just ban tipping.
- imzadi 2y agoLots of people get paid a normal wage to do subpar work. Why should delivery drivers be any different? If those jobs actually pay a decent wage, then better quality employees will be interested in doing them and the lower tier workers will get pushed out. It should naturally drive up the quality.
- mpalmer 2y agoI would be happier to do it if there was transparency about how much of the delivery costs the restaurant is covering. Delivery services benefit both producers and consumers. I'm not willing to be on the hook for the whole thing.
- mitthrowaway2 2y ago
- snakeyjake 2y agoThe developers who freely, voluntarily, and willingly work on these projects, min-maxing human suffering to add 0.01% to a cell in a spreadsheet somewhere, deserve everything that's coming for them.
- pjc50 2y agoOnce you actually read the article .. you see a similar kind of thing to complaints about Youtube or bank demonetization. People are accused of fraud, and have their access withdrawn - but nobody will explain what they allegedly did, because that would leak information about the fraud detection. It's a kind of automated low trust economy. The drivers don't trust the apps, and the app doesn't trust the drivers, so the thing has to be held together by surveillance and micromanagement.
- esafak 2y agoThat and the use of black box models whose predictions are not explainable.
- godelski 2y agoWhat's fun is you can still do black box probing. And guess what, spammers have done this. I get these emails that look like classic spam like a link to a home depot or wallmart giftcard, but they're addressed to someone who isn't me. After getting a bunch of these I decided to look at the original email. They are being sent to an outlook (e.g. notmyname@biggerish.someShortName01.shortname.outlook.com) and appear from something that looks like a store (e.g. contact_support.csz@fakestore.fr>). It passes SPF and DMARC but fails DKIM. The content? It used to be PAGES of stuff like "here's your email password reset link" or "thank you for signing up <legitimate place>". I was confused at first but then realized that yeah, this stuff likely bypass a ML filter. But the spammers have gotten better at it and now they can do it with only a page of content. Of course, I can easily filter these by just parsing the "To Address" (I use Thunderbird). But I reported tons of these and was deleting them. But in middle of last year I decided to just start collecting them. I have over 50... This is low hanging fruit stuff... Like a Naive Bayes could handle this. The current solution could probably handle it if they started actually fucking labeling the examples as spam and assumed that the labeling process was noisy (dear god I hope they use at least "legit" "unknown" "spam" and don't assume legit if it isn't marked as spam...) I have EVEN TALKED TO A PERSON and the issue couldn't be escalated... Which IMO is being complacent in spam.
- cyanydeez 2y ago
- randysalami 2y agoThere is room for a food delivery horror game. Procedurally generated delivery instructions that never make sense. Contact support, have a real voice chat with a LLM that leads nowhere. Don’t make quota? Get hunted and eaten by The Manager. All for tips that don’t pay your crippling medical bills nor allow you transition into better jobs. The horror writes itself.
- fatbird 2y agoThe real challenge would be how you soften the game enough that players don't immediately lose all hope and go outside to touch grass.
- abracadaniel 2y agoMake that the victory condition. Secret ending after N hours of inactivity. You lose when you sign in next, though.
- kurthr 2y agoIn game crypto currency betting! What could go wrong?
- randysalami 2y agoGreat idea! The PC has a phone which they interact with to use the food delivery app, accept orders, get directions, etc. we can also add some other apps like a crypto stock exchange. Here’s where it gets good, we can add a mock of TikTok and X with infinite scrolling. The content is AI generated as well. Makes the game more immersive and more horrific. Imagine getting chased by a monster, carrying someone’s burger and fries, while doomscrolling IckTok. Time to download Godot!!
- fatbird 2y agoOnce you unlock payment in crypto, you get to accept various coins for delivery payment, and then try to arbitrage better compensation for deliveries. At higher levels, you'be been working the cypto side long enough to get invited to ICOs, but watch out for rug pulls!
- Tossrock 2y agoI found this firsthand account of a gig worker trapped by the algorithm pretty compelling: https://zerohplovecraft.substack.com/p/the-gig-economy https://zerohplovecraft.substack.com/p/the-gig-economy
- kridsdale1 2y agoI didn’t open that, but I love the domain name.
- do_not_redeem 2y agoThis is fascinating writing, but there's no way it isn't fiction.
- Tossrock 2y agoSpoiler!
- titanomachy 2y ago> we’re pointless argument vegetables growing in walled gardens, harvested for the benefit of robots that serve us ads. That line hooked me
- ashoeafoot 2y agoSearching for deeper meaning in some javascript gluecode bug made by an intern, now thats whathehackernews worthy.
- largest_lad 2y agoIt is not complicated why this is happening. Even very low wage jobs in wealthy countries pay 10x what people can make in poor countries. The gig economy advances a race to the bottom for wages, in particular because there is zero identity verification or language skills needed for most of these guys. Of course the number of deliveries that must be completed in an hour increases. Of course the pay per delivery decreases. Of course the delivery bikers are constantly running red lights and getting killed. Of course the shoddy ebikes are burning down the tenements. That is the logic of the market: more, cheaper, all the time.
- Yeul 2y agoI don't consider myself a xenophobe but it feels somewhat strange the first thing I ask when interacting with the new servant class is "do you speak Dutch". It's already considered normal that the delivery guy or Uber driver is an immigrant. Very few locals want to do these jobs and maybe there is something wrong with that I don't know.
- skulk 2y agoUnfortunately, multi-tiered societies ("those people do THAT work") have been a thing ever since people got the idea to settle down. Maybe for a brief period of time, these tiers could be in entirely separate hemispheres, but things tend to diffuse over time.
- casey2 2y agoThe one lesson companies refuse to learn from Apple and Nvidia is that a race to the bottom isn't the optimal strategy in the short, medium, or long term. It only hold both in the super long term in which you assume that innovation is dead or that innovation can be done at no extra cost. If people had a slightly different perspective on this we would already have drones delivering food, but because of this mistaken belief drones won't be economically viable for the foreseeable future.
- chii 2y ago> because of this mistaken belief drones won't be economically viable for the foreseeable future. i dont think it's mistaken. A crashed drone is a capital loss for the delivery app company. A crashed driver is not.
- metalman 2y agoI worked as a courier, running anything, sometimes it was this crazy route, picking and dropping envelopes, businuses and banks, in a set order, othertimes some little box, or a 10000gallon water tank, hot asphalt anyone? Had an ancient 1 ton dully, with hoist, built 390 that would set off car alarms, if I dropped it back a gear and made it jump. Never did meet the people doing dispatch, payed cash, wierd rules on getting paid.Liked my truck, didnt like doing courier so much. It was very strange before someone tried to automate it, what I am saying.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoThis is a feature, not a bug. The goal of the algorithm is to reduce the labor cost of delivery. Welcome to our shiny AI future, folks.
- zackmorris 2y agoThe behavior of service work employers only makes sense when we consider that it's all geared towards the profits of owners and shareholders. There are few or no worker-owned companies, nonprofits or even corporate charters that make workers a priority. So without viable competition, profit-driven (as opposed to wage-driven) companies will continue to dominate. We need a new mental framework for organizing companies to be worker-owned: https://www.noemamag.com/overthrowing-our-tech-overlords/ https://www.noemamag.com/overthrowing-our-tech-overlords/ Worker-owned companies would receive a seal of approval from employees so they know where to apply, and companies that exploit workers would risk losing their seal and having their employees jump ship. To use courier apps as an example: since there is little complexity in matching vendors with delivery workers, then a worker-first app should be able to compete. After all, it's pretty easy to save millions of dollars when employees vote on who gets bonuses and their sizes, rather than just paying the board (CEO, CFO, etc) whatever it skims for itself. There's still the chicken-and-egg problem of needing users in order to scale. But I think we've been looking at it as a tough sell for too long, instead of offering a product (consistent employment and income with low constraints and commitments) that workers are eagerly looking for already.
- chii 2y ago> Worker-owned companies what or how would such a company form in the first place? The initial capital would essentially be from the workers themselves. Then, what about the newly hired workers - do they have to pay to get in? or do they get a share of the equity once they're hired? What about the initial workers who have paid capital - do they get it back if they choose to leave? or do they now own equity, regardless of being an employee there?
- zackmorris 2y agoYou make a good point, that raising capital is the central problem. It's particularly difficult today when wealth inequality is so high. When so many corporations have vacuumed up trillions of dollars of market cap, and billionaires sit on dynastic wealth that only gets spent through the lens of their ego, slowing innovation in sectors of the economy that aren't traditionally profitable like education, healthcare and the environment. It seems odd that workers don't have much capital these days, while company owners and investors have millions or billions of dollars. It's reminiscent of the Gilded Age and robber barons collecting businesses into monopolies before regulation, or selling off their parts like private equity firms do today with companies like Toys "R" Us. It leads to feelings that the most likely future is one of megacorps and striking workers, with widespread suffering and violence while productivity is at an all-time high. Case in point: https://apnews.com/article/amazon-warehouses-quebec-union-jobs-66da72506ca52a9e6e99bcd634bba781 https://apnews.com/article/amazon-warehouses-quebec-union-jo... In other words, we live in a rigged economy that hasn't catered to workers since 1980s trickle-down economics and austerity brought neoliberal policies that aren't recommended by macroeconomic principles into widespread adoption. I believe that's a result of former colonies gaining their independence, so colonizer countries like the US and UK began colonizing themselves. Rather than investing in shared prosperity by nationalizing their means of production, or at the very least incentivizing the creation of worker-owned cooperatives, they chose to privatize them to maintain existing power structures. Just like in the game of Monopoly, eventually a lucky few end up owning everything if they get an early win. When traditionally 90% of businesses failed in their first year, today we might have 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 startups dominating sectors of the economy due to above-the-fold and long-tail effects. Multiplied wasted effort under rugged individualist culture eventually grows to consume the entirety of workers' time as they scrape to make rent. Potential tires into wasted talent and widespread underemployment over lost decades as capitalism consumes itself in the end. Eventually driving populist movements that could shift the US's capitalist democratic republic and even Europe's social democracies into authoritarianism or even fascism. Books like Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty go into great depth exploring the inevitabilities of this late-stage capitalism. Wow am I such a bright-eyed optimist this morning! - Continues ->
- constantcrying 2y agoGig workers are a genuine and serious regression in workers rights and employer vs. employee power balance. These "jobs" should not be allowed to exist, at all. Tech companies have figured out a way to subvert the protections all other employees are subject to. I see absolutely no reason why they should be allowed to do this. I really do not understand why governments aren't working hard to make this kind of gig-economy illegal.
- yuvalr1 2y agoThis is true. it also hurts the public, as the drivers are dependent on the number of deliveries the succeed making, thus hurrying up and constantly stressed. This hurts not only their health and quality of delivery, but also increases the risk for traffic accidents. It is in the best of interest of everyone that these people would get a normal salary.
- Aloisius 2y agoAs long as they get tips, they will continue to speed. See: pizza delivery people for decades.
- Terr_ 2y agoThat makes it sound like too much of the responsibility is on drivers. The history of pizza-delivery itself provides a sharp contrast: Domino's Pizza had a "30 minutes or less" guarantee during the 1980s and grew enormously from it, until a 1993 lawsuit over the accidents/deaths forced them to stop. That systemic issue didn't come from delivery drivers, it was a top-down policy from the employer.
- alextingle 2y agoI don't think there's anything fundamentally wrong with the gig economy model - it's a way of working that suits some workers and clients. But the balance of power needs to be shifted towards the workers (and clients) and away from the platforms. I think this article is spot on. Platforms obfuscate their algorithms, and use that secrecy to play workers off against each other, and against their clients. Regulation would really help. There ought to be a right to... 1. An official explanation for each decision the algorithm makes. That could then be used as the basis for mandatory arbitration, if a party believes it's unfair. 2. Effective, and timely support from a human being, if that's required. Together those would force the platforms to make their systems fairer (else be swamped by dealing with arbitration decisions), and easy to navigate (else be swamped by costly support calls).
- p3rls 2y agoEh, I feel the same way about google search
- mayd 2y ago"Hundreds of delivery riders injured as food app boom creates 'deadly cocktail'" https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/hundreds-of-delivery-riders-injured-as-food-app-boom-creates-deadly-cocktail-20231215-p5erus.html https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/hundreds-of-deli...
- duxup 2y ago> A few hours later he received an email explaining that the app company had “taken the decision to revoke access” to his account because he had been elongating his journey to the pickup point, taking longer than reasonable. It didn’t add up, but there was no straightforward way to find out more. >It wasn’t until weeks later, when he exercised his legal right to request data held about himself, that he was told something completely different: the app company believed he had tried to manipulate the system to undeservedly earn extra fees for waiting at restaurants to pick up orders. >This had been spotted by team members, the app company claimed. An apparent algorithmic intervention was now being described as a human one. But when Myron looked back at his pay records, he could see none of the fees he was accused of taking. It was discombobulating. On top of putting the risk of demand for the business changing onto employees… it seems these companies can pass on the risk of even being accurate or honest with those employees.