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I'll need to dig up a source but I recently heard about this company and, apparently, before offering gigs they do a credit report to determine how much debt th
by ethagnawl 2y ago
I'll need to dig up a source but I recently heard about this company and, apparently, before offering gigs they do a credit report to determine how much debt the person is carrying (i.e. how desperate they are) and they use that information to _round down_ the hourly rate they offer them.
In the unlikely event that there are any negative consequences for this breach, they deserve every bit of them and more.
- wewtyflakes 2y agoThis is abhorrent if true; truly evil behavior.
- timewizard 2y agoIt's amazing that, on a cursory look, only 11 states make this practice illegal. The "AI scriptown" is growing.
- inetknght 2y agoYou might be surprised to learn that they're not the only company to do so.
- speed_spread 2y agoNames. We need names.
- zorpner 2y agoNot of companies. Of the people who choose to work for them (or, rather, choose not to stop working for them after they build these "features").
- vkou 2y agoWe don't need names, we need legislature, and we need to vote for people who will write it, as opposed to grifters who only seek to pad the pockets of billionaires. These predators aren't scared of name and shame. Any publicity is good publicity (And if it actually gets bad, they'll sue the pants off you.). They are scared shitless of laws censuring their behavior. It's why they fight like mad to ensure that they aren't subject to them.
- ethagnawl 2y ago> These predators aren't scared of name and shame. There are exceptions. See the ongoing kerfuffle over "DOGE" employee lists.
- Graziano_M 2y agoIt's definitely shady, but it's par for the course. Uber charges you more if you have more gift cards loaded, or just spend more on average in general. You charge what the market will bear.
- bqmjjx0kac 2y agoYou charge what the market will bear, not the individual.
- paulcole 2y agoAren’t they just creating a market of 1?
- steve_adams_86 2y ago"just" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here
- paulcole 2y agoAren’t they creating a market of 1?
- steve_adams_86 2y agoPerfect!
- edoceo 2y agoThe market ensure (mostly) there is another individual.
- satvikpendem 2y agoThe market is an agglomeration of many individuals, meaning that there is no hard and fast rule that you must charge only one price for the entire market; indeed, many custom-priced products exist, enterprise SaaS being one example.
- sudoshred 2y agoGame theory transcends basic humanity.
- B4CKlash 2y agoWhat's interesting is that broadly speaking, people acknowledge that negotiating with asymmetric information is immortal or wrong. Take the stock market for example, insider trading is illegal and you don't often hear calls to reverse these laws. But when it comes to private markets and semi-private negotiations that same sentiment doesn't easily transfer. Does society benefit in some unique way for allowing asymmetries in labor negotiations, private markets like Uber, or B2C relations like Robinhood (1,2)? 1. https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020-321 https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2020-321 2. Note, Robinhood was fined not for front-runniny customers, just for falsely claiming customers received quality orders. I suspect theyve only stopped the latter behavior.
- potato3732842 2y agoIncentive wise you're probably a lot better off if your own broker is front running you than if a HFT desk at a liquidity provider firm is doing it since the broker is at least in a position to kick some of that back to you in the form of reduced fees or whatever.
- collingreen 2y agoMight as well get a pat on the head with your punch in the face if you're going to definitely get punched in the face either way. I don't disagree with you, but wow that requires a bleak outlook.
- robertlagrant 2y ago> broadly speaking, people acknowledge that negotiating with asymmetric information is immortal or wrong I don't think that's true at all. Companies and individuals negotiate all the time with information the other party doesn't have. Insider trading is about fairness on public markets so every negotiating party of the same type has the same information, and is quite specific to that.
- quickthrowman 2y ago> What's interesting is that broadly speaking, people acknowledge that negotiating with asymmetric information is immortal or wrong. They do? I’m quite happy when I have more information than the party I am negotiating with. Do you tell your customers all of the input costs of the product or service you sell? I doubt it. Also, certain parties that trade in public markets have way more information than any retail investor could ever hope to have, hedge funds buy satellite imagery of parking lots, track oil tankers at sea, etc to gain an edge. Insider trading rules are meant to prevent the public bagholding stocks from the management team having insider information that no other market participant could or should have, there are no rules against legally gathering or purchasing information on your own to gain an edge over other market participants.
- linsomniac 2y agoI don't remember the source, but I believe I listened to a podcast on an "uber for nurses" (not sure if it was this place), but they do all sorts of nasty things that really shaft the nurses. ISTR that the nurses when they get called in, have to be running a phone app that tracks them, and if they get stuck in traffic or lose cell signal, they get demerits. They pretty much do anything they can to give the nurses a demerit, and demerits cause your pay to go down. So they're pretty much taking the existing terrible nursing environment in healthcare, and weaponizing it. Nurses already have too many patients and not enough CNAs, on top of 12 hour shifts, needing to do charting after those 12 hours. Healthcare squeezes nurses to the breaking point. Data point: my wife is a nurse.
- implements 2y agoI think I heard the same Podcast - not only do the Apps try and discover the minimum rate a Nurse might take, they’ll actively attempt to manipulate the circumstances of Nurses who were in a strong position so they too end up more dependent and exploitable.
- rvense 2y agoIsn't this exactly what you'd expect from an Uber for (somethign)? Garbage company, garbage culture, garbage business model.
- potato3732842 2y agoWell yes, but more so it's how I expect a shitty and perversely structured industry that makes boatloads of money perpetuating a variety of huge barriers to entry to treat the employees who have the least barriers to entry protecting them.
- TheNewsIsHere 2y agoSeveral of my family members were or have been nurses for decades and your wife’s experience mirrors the experiences I’ve seen from that distance. And I’ve heard “it used to be so much worse”. The American healthcare system is fairly well broken from virtually every angle.
- refurb 2y agoThat seems like a terrible way to estimate nurse wages. People have spouses. People’s parents pay credit cards. People with bad credit sometimes don’t care. People have family money. People with low debt can be desperate for work. Does it even work?
- DavidPeiffer 2y agoAt scale, the corner cases don't really matter. In aggregate, if it's decently well correlated and readily available, it's probably going to be used. I can't find it now, but I believe LexisNexis or another large similar reporting/data agency had a product catalog of dozens of products that spit out values for ability to pay, disposable income monthly, annual income, etc. It makes you feel awful thinking about the direction things are headed. Corporations approaching omniscient regarding all facts of our lives that are reasonably of value to them.
- refurb 2y agoBut I’d argue they aren’t corner cases. Most people I know with bad credit aren’t desperate for money. At least not educated, highly paid ones like nurses. Most just ignore their financial problems in the hope they go away. Not to mention nurse demand outstrips supply, so they have options and can certainly turn down bad offers.
- codedokode 2y ago> Corporations approaching omniscient regarding all facts of our lives People happily give away lot of info voluntarily, for example by paying with a card instead of cash.
- crazygringo 2y agoAgreed. And it's not just those -- if you need to pay off debt, you're extra-incentivized to take the highest-paying job, as opposed to one that pays less but is e.g. closer to home, or has a more predictable schedule, or whatever. The idea that you'd offer less seems... counterproductive to say the least.
- jmye 2y agoI’m interested, given the massive nursing shortages, why any nurses were using this service at all? Especially for higher levels, there’s no reason to mess with a shitty app that underpays you, when you should be able to walk into any provider’s office or facility and get hired almost immediately (and for Runs, you even have wide-ranging telehealth options).
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoThis was my thought exactly. There is a giant nursing shortage. I know some nurses who are traveling nurses and they may bank, and they don't need any BS app. (Just want to emphasize, nursing is an incredibly difficult job at the moment, but there are also currently weird dynamics where traveling nurses can actually make a lot more than "stationary" nurses). Thus, I'm led to believe that nurses using this app have to have some sort of difficulty finding jobs for other reasons, or they're just not informed about their options.
- ethagnawl 2y agoI imagine many of them are people who can't commit to full or even part-time jobs because of responsibilities like childcare or eldercare; their own physical or mental health issues; etc.
- Scoundreller 2y agoOr they have full time jobs already and aren’t generally interested in extra shifts, unless the price is right.
- Scoundreller 2y agoYou can get paid more as a contractor than an employee. Some may just want to pick up casual shifts without any obligation on top of their full-time work. This is kinda double dipping because your full time work is paying your benefits, so why work overtime at time and a half for them when you can get 2x+ somewhere else with + pay in lieu of benefits? Big orgs don’t want to deal with 1000 different individual contractors (especially if it means taking potential misclassification of employee as a contractor) risk. I think the bigger issue is the myth of nurse fungibility. A rando nurse unfamiliar with your setup/org is unlikely to be very productive.
- vincnetas 2y agothis is the presentation that discusses this wage suppression for nurses. https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/ https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ethagnawl 2y agoThanks. This is definitely the source I was referring to. However, as it applies to my parent comment, the companies mentioned were: Shiftkey, Shiftmed and Carerev. I do not see ENSHYFT mentioned, so I stand corrected.
- user99999999 2y agoProper data privacy laws would make this sort of thing nearly impossible
- codedokode 2y agoIn America you can get (buy) someone's credit report without their permission?