11 ms·

Transitioning Shyp couriers to W2 employees

89 points by dylanpyle 11y ago

kanamekun 11y ago
The key quote: << After careful consideration, we've decided to transition Shyp couriers, the individuals who complete pickups at our customers' homes and offices, to W2 employees. This move is an investment in a longer-term relationship with our couriers, which we believe will ultimately create the best experience for our customers. Here at Shyp, we have three different roles that make up the workforce that creates the awesome Shyp experience that we’ve become known for. We have couriers (handle pickups), satellite van drivers (take items to warehouse) and those in the warehouse (handle packing and shipping, etc.). This move does not impact our satellite drivers or warehouse employees, who have been classified as W2 since Shyp launched in March of 2014, due to the specific responsibilities of their role. >>
danpalmer 11y ago
This is pretty interesting, especially when you compare the reasons to other companies who are using contractors over employees, such as Uber. I would be interested to know more about the financial implications of this. Not living in the US, and never having directly employed someone, I don't know what sort of taxes are involved, and what happens to the labour costs overall.
- jeffasinger 11y ago
  The tax differences aren't huge. There is a 7.65% tax that would switch from being paid by the contractor to paid by the employer, and likely some kind of state unemployment tax, which is often industry dependent. The biggest difference is in benefits (mostly healthcare) costs.
- numlocked 11y ago
  IANALL (labor lawyer): This is a very rough estimate, but I think of a W2 employee as about 20% more expensive than a 1099 contractor: +7% Social Security +2% Medicare +1% Unemployment +5% Works comp (this varies though) +5% Medical benefits (varies a LOT) If someone is better informed than I, please let me know :)
  - jeffasinger 11y ago
    Social Security is 6.2% and Medicare is 1.45%. However, these taxes are currently being paid for by the contractors in the form of self employment tax, so it's not really a huge change there though. Worker's comp is going to range depending on the industry, I doubt the courier's would have especially high workers comp numbers
  - joshjkim 11y ago
    That's right - one thing I would add that is actually very non-negligible for on-demand logistics are (1) reimbursement for mileage (2) more robust insurance policies. IRS calls for $0.56/mile - if you assume an average delivery in SF is around 2 miles, that throws an additional $1+ per delivery cost to the business. For insurance, I know that Lyft currently charges about $1.50 for a "safety fee" which I would assume covers their insurances. However, those insurance policies are still built on the gray contractor status and probably depend to a certain extent on driver's having personal insurance (which is a fraught relationship - most personal insurance has a commercial use exception, which means driving for work is not covered). I would assume that when they re-classify, the insurance providers will use it as an excuse to push premiums up. There's also a chance that the clarify will bring premiums down (volatility = risk, and the current classification is highly volatile), so that may be a possibility as well. Most likely though, you give an insurance company a reason to charge more and they'll take it =)
    - dublinben 11y ago
      The IRS safe harbor rate ($0.575/mile for 2015) is just the maximum that can be reimbursed tax free. It isn't meant to be a recommended amount to reimburse drivers, and it does not take a driver's actual costs into account.
  - joshjkim 11y ago
    I would also add administration and execution cost - this is a LOT of paperwork to file. There are businesses the help you do this, but for now it's pretty expensive.
  - pbreit 11y ago
ericabiz 11y ago
This is one time when having the actual headline on the article can be misleading. The first thing I think when I see "A note from [company]'s CEO" is that the company is going out of business. My second guess would be announcing a funding round. How about something like "Shyp Transitions Couriers to W2 Employees"? This also encourages people to submit paywalled articles because they have better headlines, when (I assume) most of us would prefer to read it from the source.
- why-el 11y ago
  Yep, even from an SEO standpoint this is not a very good title to have indexed by robots.
- madez 11y ago
  Maybe your notion of what "A note from [company]'s CEO" can mean is too specific. It is the original title, it is a note and it's from the CEO. I think speaking and taking things literally should be the default.
  - smacktoward 11y ago
    This is like arguing that every brand of cereal should be labeled "Box of Cereal" because it is a box that contains cereal. It's possible for a label to be completely true and completely uninformative at the same time.
  - mikeash 11y ago
    I tried taking things literally, but the store called the police and they put me in jail. When a particular pattern is constantly used for only a small number of circumstances, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that an instance of that phrase indicates one of those circumstances.
numlocked 11y ago
W2 employees are considerably more expensive than 1099 contractors, which is why so many companies ride the edge of 1099 vs. W2. In this case though, using the IRS' 20-factor test[0], I'm sure Shyp could have kept their couriers as 1099 from a legal standpoint. I buy that they are genuinely doing this for the reasons stated. So that's great and very feel-good (don't we all want to give our employees additional training and benefits?), but I'm surprised to see it happen in what I presume is a pretty low-margin business. Benefits are expensive! [0] http://www.twc.state.tx.us/files/businesses/form-c-8-employment-status-comparative-approach-twc.pdf http://www.twc.state.tx.us/files/businesses/form-c-8-employm...
- wpietri 11y ago
  You're only accounting for one kind of expense here: short-term, visible payroll costs. But Shyp's whole goal here is to create a brand built on amazing customer service. That's determined by things that are much harder to measure. Making decisions based only on the most visible numbers is a business version of the Streetlight Effect[1]. If we want to do this right, we also have to ask things like: What's the expense of increased turnover? Of lower morale? Of poorly trained employees? Of decreased service quality? Of worse word-of-mouth advertising? Of increased advertising budgets needed to compensate? That's not to say that cheap is never the way to go. But if we're going to use numbers, we should use them well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
  - michaelt 11y ago
    What's the expense of [...] decreased service quality? This is particularly important for Shyp. If I order a parcel from Amazon and my delivery driver's bad, it's unlikely I could get Amazon to change couriers. But if I request a pickup from Shyp and the pick up driver's bad, I can change couriers tomorrow.
- tzier 11y ago
  Keep in mind, being an employee doesn't automatically entail the "benefits" people think of (e.g. health insurance). Instacart is only allowing their in-store employees to work up to 30hrs/week, since that's the cutoff for having to provide health insurance. The real costs are (1) employer's share of FICA taxes (7.5%) and (2) workers compensation (which can get expensive in certain industries, though likely not outrageous for delivery).
narrowrail 11y ago
I always find these discussions around contractor or employee rather lacking in context of other businesses that have operated similarly (i.e. using contractors) for decades. The obvious example to me is Landstar Systems [0], which uses the term owner operator and emphasizes the fact that drivers do not operate on 'forced dispatch.' Of course, they usually neglect to mention that Landstar handles the insurance for their owner operators (the company self-insures), and the drivers can't drive for any other company on that insurance policy. So, in effect, these drivers don't work for any other freight provider. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landstar_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landstar_System
- pbreit 11y ago
  I think people are mostly hoping that Uber gets nailed somehow.
- incongruity 11y ago
  Perhaps the fact that Landstar is B2B vs. most/all of these startups in the spotlight are primarily B2C has something to do with it? We're more mindful of it because we're more exposed to it?
- shawn-butler 11y ago
  IRS guidance on worker classification in the limousine industry: [pdf] http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/limo.pdf http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/limo.pdf I think the Ninth Circuit laid the smack down on FedEx for them classifying their drivers as contractors in a decision last year. Classifying people and their labor gets complex.
joshjkim 11y ago
On-demands who are classifying drivers as employees: Instacart, Shyp, Munchery. On-demands who are not: Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Doordash (not exhaustive, just the big ones that come to mind). One thing I noticed - 2/3 of the big YC companies have gone the way of employee. If Doordash makes the switch in the coming weeks, I'll assume that YC companies are (1) getting legal advice from similar sources and (2) are more inclined to "do the right thing" (at least the right thing according to pro-labor folks...).
- debacle 11y ago
  Lyft probably has much more backing for "our drivers are contractors" than Uber does. The relationship seems to be different in a few critical ways.
  - mahyarm 11y ago
    How are they different?
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- tzier 11y ago
  Just to clarify: only Instacart's in-store shoppers are employees (and only in a few cities right now), since most of those are shift based roles ('shifts' screams employees under the law). I wouldn't be surprised if they shifted delivers to employees too though, since: 1. It's going to be incredibly difficult to maintain two worker systems (I imagine this played into Shyp's decision as well). 2. They probably have enough volume/data to figure out their busy times, so can get close enough to matching supply/demand. Vs. ridesharing, where demand is too sporadic (e.g. weather, events, etc) and surge pricing is better at finding market equilibrium.
wpietri 11y ago
Excellent. The Lean (as in Lean Manufacturing) perspective is that you should think of people as assets, not costs. With that perspective, you start thinking: How can I invest further in these valuable assets? How can I protect that investment? A good software example is training. One common objection to spending money on learning and training is, "What if people get better and then leave?" Not recognizing that the alternative is, "What if people stagnate and stay?" I understand why some companies want to treat workers (programmers, customer service people, anybody) as fungible, by-the-hour machines that can be hired and fired as demand shifts. But I think that traps a lot of companies in a local maximum: there's only so far you can go without continually helping your people up their games.
- joshjkim 11y ago
  I agree here - this puts pressure on the company to make sure their drivers are (1) more efficient (2) make more $$ and (3) stick around for a while which then goes back to (1) more efficient, and generates a cycle of improvement that benefits everyone. Of course this requires the company to make an upfront investment, but exactly as you said human capital is an asset, not a cost, so IMO it's a solid investment to make. The alternative is the current uber-model which is: (1) Focus on bringing as many people in as quickly as possible (2) try to pay them as little as possible as soon as you can which results in (3) high churn (probably disproportionately churns out the higher-quality folks who won't work for so little) and then leads you back to (1). This results in low quality and high recruitment costs and depletion of the labor pool. Uber did reach a solid state in most markets, but I would argue that they could have spent less on recruiting and retained a higher quality fleet for similar long-term costs, with the added benefit of not looking like a-holes for the past couple years.
  - prostoalex 11y ago
    > this puts pressure on the company to make sure their drivers are (1) more efficient (2) make more $$ Switching to W-2 doesn't necessarily imply full-time employment. In fact, it's in their interest to cap the hours at 30 to avoid the healthcare benefits. Having someone work 10 hours a week on company's schedule and then issuing a W-2 is how a bunch of part-time employers operate.
Animats 11y ago
"This is an operational decision based on our interest in owning the entire, end-to-end Shyp experience; it is not in response to recent lawsuits against other technology companies. " Yeah, right.
aresant 11y ago
This story obviously becomes a proxy for "what to do with uber / sharing economy employees" given the recent labor commission ruling in the favor of a plantiff (1) I think that the current "one size fits all" thinking is wrong here. If you look at the actual hour distribution of drivers, self published by Uber (2), you'll see data emerge that is backed up by my personal interactions with uber / lyft / etc drivers: Category One - Probably Contractors - In my experience a large percentage of drivers are using uber as a stop-gap for other income. Or they are retired. Or are small biz owners etc. They are happy to use uber to pay for weekend gas, insurance, whatever. They work when they want, how they want. Category Two - Probably Part Time Employees - Drivers that have another part-time job, and use uber as the other "half" of their income. The measure for a "part time employee" is quantified as 1 - 34 hours. But I'd say the more fair measure is 20 hrs. Category Three - Probably Full Time Employees - Drivers that are working in excess of 40 hours and provide HUGE benefit to uber by being always on, more "professional", and are the backbone to their service model. It also seems like just a sound biz strategy to wrap up your MVPs as employees When I compare these observations to the data they released last Dec it seems to support those general categories. And probably each of those levels needs different protections and categorizations in the sharing-economy. -= (1) http://recode.net/2015/06/17/uber-drivers-are-employees-not-contractors-california-labor-commission/ http://recode.net/2015/06/17/uber-drivers-are-employees-not-... (2) http://newsroom.uber.com/nyc/2014/12/what-does-a-typical-new-york-uberx-partner-earn-in-a-week/ http://newsroom.uber.com/nyc/2014/12/what-does-a-typical-new... (3) http://www.paychex.com/articles/employee-benefits/5-things-about-offering-benefits-for-part-time-employees http://www.paychex.com/articles/employee-benefits/5-things-a...
- Domenic_S 11y ago
  Agree; I've had a driver dressed in a suit driving a brand-new blacked-out Tahoe (obviously a professional driver), and a college kid in a sweatshirt driving a Corolla talking about spring break. One-size-fits-all doesn't make sense.
- HaloZero 11y ago
  Interesting, I've had the opposite experience. Most of the Lyft / Uber drivers I've met work MORE than 40 hours a week and are utilizing it for their full time employment. I found out though that I believe for Lyft, if you work more than x hours, they take a smaller cut of your earnings.
Enthouan 11y ago
So now what's the difference between Shyp and any other delivery company?
- prostoalex 11y ago
  Shyp picks up and packages the stuff for you, not delivers to you. In cities that they've launched they're also able to sometimes offer cheaper rate for shipping (including the $5 pickup fee) than you'd get by driving to a UPS Store / FedEx Office, because they enjoy a heavy discount due to volume.
rip747 11y ago
A company blog with no link back to the company's main site? Why do I see this mistake on so many of these?
mrmch 11y ago
Awesome, props to Kevin and the Shyp team for making this happen.
metaphorm 11y ago
this is encouraging and I hope the trend continues in this direction. employees are a company's operational lifeblood. neglect them at your own peril.
danpalmer 11y ago
Now I'm waiting for Shyp to fail as they run out of money, and then pivot to HR software designed to make it easy for companies to manage thousands of employees.

89 points by dylanpyle 11y ago

The key quote: << After careful consideration, we've decided to transition Shyp couriers, the individuals who complete pickups at our customers' homes and offices, to W2 employees. This move is an investment in a longer-term relationship with our couriers, which we believe will ultimately create the best experience for our customers. Here at Shyp, we have three different roles that make up the workforce that creates the awesome Shyp experience that we’ve become known for. We have couriers (handle pickups), satellite van drivers (take items to warehouse) and those in the warehouse (handle packing and shipping, etc.). This move does not impact our satellite drivers or warehouse employees, who have been classified as W2 since Shyp launched in March of 2014, due to the specific responsibilities of their role. >>

danpalmer 11y ago

This is pretty interesting, especially when you compare the reasons to other companies who are using contractors over employees, such as Uber. I would be interested to know more about the financial implications of this. Not living in the US, and never having directly employed someone, I don't know what sort of taxes are involved, and what happens to the labour costs overall.

jeffasinger 11y ago
The tax differences aren't huge. There is a 7.65% tax that would switch from being paid by the contractor to paid by the employer, and likely some kind of state unemployment tax, which is often industry dependent. The biggest difference is in benefits (mostly healthcare) costs.
numlocked 11y ago
IANALL (labor lawyer): This is a very rough estimate, but I think of a W2 employee as about 20% more expensive than a 1099 contractor: +7% Social Security +2% Medicare +1% Unemployment +5% Works comp (this varies though) +5% Medical benefits (varies a LOT) If someone is better informed than I, please let me know :)
- jeffasinger 11y ago
  Social Security is 6.2% and Medicare is 1.45%. However, these taxes are currently being paid for by the contractors in the form of self employment tax, so it's not really a huge change there though. Worker's comp is going to range depending on the industry, I doubt the courier's would have especially high workers comp numbers
- joshjkim 11y ago
  That's right - one thing I would add that is actually very non-negligible for on-demand logistics are (1) reimbursement for mileage (2) more robust insurance policies. IRS calls for $0.56/mile - if you assume an average delivery in SF is around 2 miles, that throws an additional $1+ per delivery cost to the business. For insurance, I know that Lyft currently charges about $1.50 for a "safety fee" which I would assume covers their insurances. However, those insurance policies are still built on the gray contractor status and probably depend to a certain extent on driver's having personal insurance (which is a fraught relationship - most personal insurance has a commercial use exception, which means driving for work is not covered). I would assume that when they re-classify, the insurance providers will use it as an excuse to push premiums up. There's also a chance that the clarify will bring premiums down (volatility = risk, and the current classification is highly volatile), so that may be a possibility as well. Most likely though, you give an insurance company a reason to charge more and they'll take it =)
  - dublinben 11y ago
    The IRS safe harbor rate ($0.575/mile for 2015) is just the maximum that can be reimbursed tax free. It isn't meant to be a recommended amount to reimburse drivers, and it does not take a driver's actual costs into account.
- joshjkim 11y ago
  I would also add administration and execution cost - this is a LOT of paperwork to file. There are businesses the help you do this, but for now it's pretty expensive.
- pbreit 11y ago

ericabiz 11y ago

This is one time when having the actual headline on the article can be misleading. The first thing I think when I see "A note from [company]'s CEO" is that the company is going out of business. My second guess would be announcing a funding round. How about something like "Shyp Transitions Couriers to W2 Employees"? This also encourages people to submit paywalled articles because they have better headlines, when (I assume) most of us would prefer to read it from the source.

why-el 11y ago
Yep, even from an SEO standpoint this is not a very good title to have indexed by robots.
madez 11y ago
Maybe your notion of what "A note from [company]'s CEO" can mean is too specific. It is the original title, it is a note and it's from the CEO. I think speaking and taking things literally should be the default.
- smacktoward 11y ago
  This is like arguing that every brand of cereal should be labeled "Box of Cereal" because it is a box that contains cereal. It's possible for a label to be completely true and completely uninformative at the same time.
- mikeash 11y ago
  I tried taking things literally, but the store called the police and they put me in jail. When a particular pattern is constantly used for only a small number of circumstances, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that an instance of that phrase indicates one of those circumstances.

numlocked 11y ago

W2 employees are considerably more expensive than 1099 contractors, which is why so many companies ride the edge of 1099 vs. W2. In this case though, using the IRS' 20-factor test[0], I'm sure Shyp could have kept their couriers as 1099 from a legal standpoint. I buy that they are genuinely doing this for the reasons stated. So that's great and very feel-good (don't we all want to give our employees additional training and benefits?), but I'm surprised to see it happen in what I presume is a pretty low-margin business. Benefits are expensive! [0] http://www.twc.state.tx.us/files/businesses/form-c-8-employment-status-comparative-approach-twc.pdf http://www.twc.state.tx.us/files/businesses/form-c-8-employm...

wpietri 11y ago
You're only accounting for one kind of expense here: short-term, visible payroll costs. But Shyp's whole goal here is to create a brand built on amazing customer service. That's determined by things that are much harder to measure. Making decisions based only on the most visible numbers is a business version of the Streetlight Effect[1]. If we want to do this right, we also have to ask things like: What's the expense of increased turnover? Of lower morale? Of poorly trained employees? Of decreased service quality? Of worse word-of-mouth advertising? Of increased advertising budgets needed to compensate? That's not to say that cheap is never the way to go. But if we're going to use numbers, we should use them well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
- michaelt 11y ago
  What's the expense of [...] decreased service quality? This is particularly important for Shyp. If I order a parcel from Amazon and my delivery driver's bad, it's unlikely I could get Amazon to change couriers. But if I request a pickup from Shyp and the pick up driver's bad, I can change couriers tomorrow.
tzier 11y ago
Keep in mind, being an employee doesn't automatically entail the "benefits" people think of (e.g. health insurance). Instacart is only allowing their in-store employees to work up to 30hrs/week, since that's the cutoff for having to provide health insurance. The real costs are (1) employer's share of FICA taxes (7.5%) and (2) workers compensation (which can get expensive in certain industries, though likely not outrageous for delivery).

narrowrail 11y ago

I always find these discussions around contractor or employee rather lacking in context of other businesses that have operated similarly (i.e. using contractors) for decades. The obvious example to me is Landstar Systems [0], which uses the term owner operator and emphasizes the fact that drivers do not operate on 'forced dispatch.' Of course, they usually neglect to mention that Landstar handles the insurance for their owner operators (the company self-insures), and the drivers can't drive for any other company on that insurance policy. So, in effect, these drivers don't work for any other freight provider. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landstar_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landstar_System

pbreit 11y ago
I think people are mostly hoping that Uber gets nailed somehow.
incongruity 11y ago
Perhaps the fact that Landstar is B2B vs. most/all of these startups in the spotlight are primarily B2C has something to do with it? We're more mindful of it because we're more exposed to it?
shawn-butler 11y ago
IRS guidance on worker classification in the limousine industry: [pdf] http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/limo.pdf http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/limo.pdf I think the Ninth Circuit laid the smack down on FedEx for them classifying their drivers as contractors in a decision last year. Classifying people and their labor gets complex.

joshjkim 11y ago

On-demands who are classifying drivers as employees: Instacart, Shyp, Munchery. On-demands who are not: Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Doordash (not exhaustive, just the big ones that come to mind). One thing I noticed - 2/3 of the big YC companies have gone the way of employee. If Doordash makes the switch in the coming weeks, I'll assume that YC companies are (1) getting legal advice from similar sources and (2) are more inclined to "do the right thing" (at least the right thing according to pro-labor folks...).

debacle 11y ago
Lyft probably has much more backing for "our drivers are contractors" than Uber does. The relationship seems to be different in a few critical ways.
- mahyarm 11y ago
  How are they different?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
tzier 11y ago
Just to clarify: only Instacart's in-store shoppers are employees (and only in a few cities right now), since most of those are shift based roles ('shifts' screams employees under the law). I wouldn't be surprised if they shifted delivers to employees too though, since: 1. It's going to be incredibly difficult to maintain two worker systems (I imagine this played into Shyp's decision as well). 2. They probably have enough volume/data to figure out their busy times, so can get close enough to matching supply/demand. Vs. ridesharing, where demand is too sporadic (e.g. weather, events, etc) and surge pricing is better at finding market equilibrium.

wpietri 11y ago

Excellent. The Lean (as in Lean Manufacturing) perspective is that you should think of people as assets, not costs. With that perspective, you start thinking: How can I invest further in these valuable assets? How can I protect that investment? A good software example is training. One common objection to spending money on learning and training is, "What if people get better and then leave?" Not recognizing that the alternative is, "What if people stagnate and stay?" I understand why some companies want to treat workers (programmers, customer service people, anybody) as fungible, by-the-hour machines that can be hired and fired as demand shifts. But I think that traps a lot of companies in a local maximum: there's only so far you can go without continually helping your people up their games.

joshjkim 11y ago
I agree here - this puts pressure on the company to make sure their drivers are (1) more efficient (2) make more $$ and (3) stick around for a while which then goes back to (1) more efficient, and generates a cycle of improvement that benefits everyone. Of course this requires the company to make an upfront investment, but exactly as you said human capital is an asset, not a cost, so IMO it's a solid investment to make. The alternative is the current uber-model which is: (1) Focus on bringing as many people in as quickly as possible (2) try to pay them as little as possible as soon as you can which results in (3) high churn (probably disproportionately churns out the higher-quality folks who won't work for so little) and then leads you back to (1). This results in low quality and high recruitment costs and depletion of the labor pool. Uber did reach a solid state in most markets, but I would argue that they could have spent less on recruiting and retained a higher quality fleet for similar long-term costs, with the added benefit of not looking like a-holes for the past couple years.
- prostoalex 11y ago
  > this puts pressure on the company to make sure their drivers are (1) more efficient (2) make more $$ Switching to W-2 doesn't necessarily imply full-time employment. In fact, it's in their interest to cap the hours at 30 to avoid the healthcare benefits. Having someone work 10 hours a week on company's schedule and then issuing a W-2 is how a bunch of part-time employers operate.

Animats 11y ago

"This is an operational decision based on our interest in owning the entire, end-to-end Shyp experience; it is not in response to recent lawsuits against other technology companies. " Yeah, right.

aresant 11y ago

This story obviously becomes a proxy for "what to do with uber / sharing economy employees" given the recent labor commission ruling in the favor of a plantiff (1) I think that the current "one size fits all" thinking is wrong here. If you look at the actual hour distribution of drivers, self published by Uber (2), you'll see data emerge that is backed up by my personal interactions with uber / lyft / etc drivers: Category One - Probably Contractors - In my experience a large percentage of drivers are using uber as a stop-gap for other income. Or they are retired. Or are small biz owners etc. They are happy to use uber to pay for weekend gas, insurance, whatever. They work when they want, how they want. Category Two - Probably Part Time Employees - Drivers that have another part-time job, and use uber as the other "half" of their income. The measure for a "part time employee" is quantified as 1 - 34 hours. But I'd say the more fair measure is 20 hrs. Category Three - Probably Full Time Employees - Drivers that are working in excess of 40 hours and provide HUGE benefit to uber by being always on, more "professional", and are the backbone to their service model. It also seems like just a sound biz strategy to wrap up your MVPs as employees When I compare these observations to the data they released last Dec it seems to support those general categories. And probably each of those levels needs different protections and categorizations in the sharing-economy. -= (1) http://recode.net/2015/06/17/uber-drivers-are-employees-not-contractors-california-labor-commission/ http://recode.net/2015/06/17/uber-drivers-are-employees-not-... (2) http://newsroom.uber.com/nyc/2014/12/what-does-a-typical-new-york-uberx-partner-earn-in-a-week/ http://newsroom.uber.com/nyc/2014/12/what-does-a-typical-new... (3) http://www.paychex.com/articles/employee-benefits/5-things-about-offering-benefits-for-part-time-employees http://www.paychex.com/articles/employee-benefits/5-things-a...

Domenic_S 11y ago
Agree; I've had a driver dressed in a suit driving a brand-new blacked-out Tahoe (obviously a professional driver), and a college kid in a sweatshirt driving a Corolla talking about spring break. One-size-fits-all doesn't make sense.
HaloZero 11y ago
Interesting, I've had the opposite experience. Most of the Lyft / Uber drivers I've met work MORE than 40 hours a week and are utilizing it for their full time employment. I found out though that I believe for Lyft, if you work more than x hours, they take a smaller cut of your earnings.

Enthouan 11y ago

So now what's the difference between Shyp and any other delivery company?

prostoalex 11y ago
Shyp picks up and packages the stuff for you, not delivers to you. In cities that they've launched they're also able to sometimes offer cheaper rate for shipping (including the $5 pickup fee) than you'd get by driving to a UPS Store / FedEx Office, because they enjoy a heavy discount due to volume.

rip747 11y ago

A company blog with no link back to the company's main site? Why do I see this mistake on so many of these?

mrmch 11y ago

Awesome, props to Kevin and the Shyp team for making this happen.

metaphorm 11y ago

this is encouraging and I hope the trend continues in this direction. employees are a company's operational lifeblood. neglect them at your own peril.

danpalmer 11y ago

Now I'm waiting for Shyp to fail as they run out of money, and then pivot to HR software designed to make it easy for companies to manage thousands of employees.