[HN Gopher] Shipt's algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back
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Shipt's algorithm squeezed gig workers, who fought back
Author : cyberlimerence
Score : 219 points
Date : 2024-07-01 13:21 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| jval43 wrote:
| Looks like nothing happened after:
|
| > _They asked for a meeting with Shipt executives, but they never
| got a direct response from the company. Its statements to the
| media were maddeningly vague, saying only that the new payment
| algorithm compensated workers based on the effort required for a
| job, and implying that workers had the upper hand because they
| could "choose whether or not they want to accept an order."_
|
| > _Did the protests and news coverage have an effect on worker
| conditions? We don't know, and that's disheartening._
| londons_explore wrote:
| > choose whether or not they want to accept an order."
|
| If the app shows clearly what needs to be done (shop, order
| list, miles driven), and the pay the worker will earn, and asks
| if they want to accept, then IMO that's fine.
|
| The business can set those offers however they like, even using
| a random number generator if they want, and IMO it's morally
| fine.
| bayindirh wrote:
| > and IMO it's morally fine.
|
| When it becomes immoral from your perspective?
| londons_explore wrote:
| When they offer to pay you X for the job, but then pay you
| < X.
|
| Or if they get you to pay them money upfront (ie. for
| uniforms) on the basis of 'workers earn $Y per day', but
| then change the rules so some workers don't earn Y per day
| and don't offer a refund of the upfront payment to unhappy
| workers.
| rbetts wrote:
| Looks like shipt/target successfully converted gig work
| back from a percentage of revenue (percentage of cart
| value) to a task based rate. Workers lose when they can't
| capture value proportional to the revenue generation they
| support, only in proportion to their hours of labor.
| lupire wrote:
| It depends on the proportions.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > Workers lose when they can't capture value proportional
| to the revenue generation they support, only in
| proportion to their hours of labor.
|
| Time-based contracts are pretty normal. I imagine most
| people on the planet are on them. There are exceptions -
| e.g. sales commissions - but to say that workers lose on
| the thing that most people do requires at least some
| elaboration.
| astrange wrote:
| What if the revenue generation is negative? It's not
| worth it to profit share in every business, because some
| of them are unprofitable.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| If workers are low-skilled, easily replaceable and
| practically fungible then realistically speaking why
| would their employer pay them based on value-added?
| Ekaros wrote:
| I think reasonable thing here would also allow contractors
| send counter offer. Maybe 10x 100x or 1000x. Then it would be
| up to side ordering to accept or reject one of those.
| tux1968 wrote:
| And if the company makes it a policy to never accept any
| counteroffer (which is legal and fair), you're back to the
| same system, without that feature existing.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Why would company here care. They are just a platform.
| Does Ebay or Amazon care what prices their sellers set?
| vundercind wrote:
| Amazon cares. Steam cares. Dunno about eBay.
|
| Platforms sometimes care--by which I mean, achieve a
| market position that means sellers can't afford not to
| use them, then leverage that power to force lots and lots
| of weaker people and entities to do what they want,
| possibly causing higher lowest-prices in the overall
| market in the process, so, also hurting buyers.
| Marbling4581 wrote:
| What if there's discrimination built in to the system? Maybe
| a business is willing to pay white people more, or women
| less. They can do that while still following your framework.
| Is that moral?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Is morality relevant to the equation? If it is, whose
| morality? And who gets to be arbiter of those morals?
|
| At least with laws, there are clear adjudicators on the
| issues at hand.
| cryptonym wrote:
| They can set offers however they like and you are free to not
| accept.
|
| If the algorithm detects that you are likely to accept for
| little money and short you with lower offers compared to
| other users, is it still morally fine?
| lupire wrote:
| Unsure, but why would they do that? Why risk paying more by
| making a higher offer elsewhere before making a lower
| offer?
| error_logic wrote:
| Look to two-tailed tests when a flipside doesn't make
| sense.
|
| Consider what risk might exist if you fear overpaying so
| much that you make a lowball offer yet someone feels
| compelled to accept. The product or service might be
| "done" but in a way that screws you over in the long run
| as well.
|
| Trust is earned, and it flows both ways.
| error_logic wrote:
| This runs into both the ideals and the limitations of the
| Free Market.
|
| Ideally, there's incentive for people to collectively reach
| the most efficient solution through aggregated laziness and
| greed.
|
| In practice, people only have so much bandwidth and
| shortcuts will be taken, options will be overlooked, and
| people will exploit or be exploited due to the blinders
| either put on willingly or forced on them--on top of our
| natural capacity for observing reality no matter how much
| information is provided.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Other than the algorithmic aspect, isn't that basically
| exactly how the employment market works?
| smabie wrote:
| Sure, this is how negotiate and hiring have always worked.
| or_am_i wrote:
| I am not defending Shipt and there is no doubt gig workers are in
| a very vulnerable position. However, the data analysis results as
| presented in the article do not support the article's main point.
| "40% are getting paid at least 10% less" is not unnatural to
| expect whenever pay is redistributed, especially since some 30+%
| are getting at least 10% more. Imagine a _hypothetical_ situation
| where Shipt is 100% on point and driving a fairer version of the
| algorithm patch removing a way for workers to "optimize" for
| short, well paid trips, resulting in pay cuts to those who had
| learnt how to do it, while not changing/increasing pay for
| everyone else. We would see the same kind of result: some portion
| of workers would get paid 10% less, some 10% more. This does show
| that workers are paid differently for the same work they have
| been doing, but does not prove the change is unfair.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| You are looking for this in the article
|
| > It wasn't a clear case of wage theft, because 60 percent of
| workers were making about the same or slightly more under the
| new scheme.
|
| Your statement that "some 30+% are getting at least 10% more"
| assumes that there is no wage theft - which is not cut in
| stone.
| chgs wrote:
| Aren't gig workers contractors? Is it wage theft if I
| negotiate a lower price with my local timber yard?
| p_l wrote:
| Mostly gray area because gig corps don't like actually
| treating the workers as contractors, they just like the
| lowered costs.
|
| Sometimes that goes afoul when it's ruled that they put
| requirements that are only valid for employees on
| contractors.
| qeternity wrote:
| > Mostly gray area because gig corps don't like actually
| treating the workers as contractors, they just like the
| lowered costs.
|
| I don't follow this? Is this predicated on the fact that
| gig corps can choose not to work with contractors that
| don't meet their criteria? If so, how is this different
| from only using lumber yards that consistently meet your
| expectations?
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >I don't follow this?
|
| The implication of the parent poster seems to be that
| there are legal requirements regarding contractors and
| legal requirements regarding employees but gig corps
| would prefer to treat their workers as one or the other
| class depending on which is to their benefit - which
| would be against the law because of the aforementioned
| concept "legal requirements".
| p_l wrote:
| Exactly this - there are differences in what you can
| require from someone on employment contract and external
| contracting company (whether that company is single
| person or not) and effectively making one category into
| another without actually reclassifying (like employing as
| employee) is considered fraud in most places.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Can you give an example?
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Your favorite web search engine is your friend here.
| p_l wrote:
| There are possible frauds from both employer and employee
| side, but I will list some common "landmines" of miss-
| classification, though beware that they are picked across
| different jurisdictions and I do not remember which apply
| where. All examples are possible items that can be
| decided to be part of misclassification, usually from
| contractor to effective employee:
|
| - requiring specific dress code is non-enforceable on
| contractors in many places
|
| - contractor is not required to provide specific person
| to fulfill the job, only a person of appropriate
| qualifications (it's valid for there to be a check on
| those qualifications)
|
| - in UK case, contractor might be asked to prove that
| they have a substitute to work in their place!
|
| - [Poland, possibly other] having only one client is not
| illegal, but can be grounds for investigations and if
| it's your only client where you work for equivalent of
| full-time job, it will be evidence for tax fraud
|
| - You can not enforce working hours on contractors in
| most jurisdiction, only specific deliverables (taking
| part of work meetings is deliverable, requiring
| availability _in general_ of specific person at specific
| times can be grounds for reclassification)
|
| - above is often linked with "gig economy" - rules
| regarding "contractors" needing to pick up available jobs
| etc. are often considered illegal skirting of employment
| law.
|
| As sibling comment mentioned, more is available from your
| local (too) friendly search engine. And employment
| lawyers and HR specialists.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Everybody knows they aren't contractors.
| 2muchcoffeeman wrote:
| In this case would it matter if they were contractors or
| not?
|
| There is a way of calculating the pay for a job. It is
| predictable. Publish the algorithm. Want to change it?
| Great. Update the documentation and then publish that.
| The workers should be able to calculate exactly what they
| are owed. They can decide to leave or stay.
|
| Only in America are people deflecting by bringing up the
| employment status of people when the issue is a lack of
| transparency designed to allow wage theft.
| or_am_i wrote:
| To clarify, I was basing the "some 30%" on the wage change
| distribution histogram that comes somewhat further down in
| the article from the statement you quote.
| alwa wrote:
| Maybe not cut in stone, but if the data are derived from the
| workers' payout receipts, it would seem likely that this was
| the amount that was paid out by Shipt. Or do you mean that
| third parties might be skimming something off after the
| company pays out?
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| I mean, it wasn't "a clear case of wage theft" as these
| weren't wage workers; and in any case it's not like they
| weren't told ahead of time how much the order would pay.
| febeling wrote:
| I had similar thoughts. But let's not overlook the information
| asymmetry, which contributed to the dissatisfaction. I don't
| want to live in a world which is controlled unilaterally, and
| intransparently by a group of people who assume they have a
| full picture of the situation and assume they understand moral
| completely, and also don't think it necessary to explain how
| they think so highly of themselves.
| braza wrote:
| > I don't want to live in a world which is controlled
| unilaterally, and intransparently by a group of people who
| assume they have a full picture of the situation and assume
| they understand moral completely
|
| I have thought about this topic for a while at the time that
| I worked with Law data (e.g. Family Law and Military Law),
| and I just came to the conclusion that several societal
| institutions and it's agents are inherently intransparent,
| even in situations where some "illusionist transparency"
| (there's transparency, but the magician deviates your
| attention to another side) is given (e.g. judiciary system,
| under-the-table political agreements, etc.).
|
| That's one of the reasons I would like to have a more
| algorithmic society with human in the loop calling the final
| shots and placing the rationale on top. An algorithm will
| have human and institutional biases but in some sort, you can
| explain part of it and fine-tune it; a human making the final
| call on top of a given option would need to explain and
| rationally explain its decision. At best a human actor will
| use logic and make the right call, at worst it will
| transparently expose the biases of the individual.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << That's one of the reasons I would like to have a more
| algorithmic society with human in the loop calling the
| final shots and placing the rationale on top. An algorithm
| will have human and institutional biases but in some sort,
| you can explain part of it and fine-tune it; a human making
| the final call on top of a given option would need to
| explain and rationally explain its decision. At best a
| human actor will use logic and make the right call, at
| worst it will transparently expose the biases of the
| individual.
|
| I will admit that it is an interesting idea. I am not sure
| it would work well as a lot of the power ( and pressure to
| adjust as needed ) suddenly would move to the fine-tuning
| portion of the process to ensure human at the top can
| approve 'right' decisions. I am going to get my coffee now.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> a human making the final call on top of a given option
| would need to explain and rationally explain its decision._
|
| To who? What you describe does not seem much different than
| the representation governments most of us here are
| accustomed to, other than the algorithm eases some day-to-
| day work required of the constituents. Already nobody
| cares, and no doubt would care even less if they could let
| an algorithm let them be even less involved.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| _I would like to have a more algorithmic society with human
| in the loop calling the final shots and placing the
| rationale on top_
|
| Let's re-audit the algorithm regularly; say, perhaps, a
| central committee revisits and revises the plan every 5
| years?
| cess11 wrote:
| I'm not so sure the corporation will survive if humans
| do.
| mft_ wrote:
| It's an interesting question, as we have a spectrum from
| 'little to no transparency' through to 'full transparency'
| (which is pretty rare), and in the middle sits the usual
| approach of 'communications-team-led messaged quasi-
| transparency'. Difficult to know (without more info) where
| Shipt would have appeared on this spectrum, but given the
| issue, they're probably somewhere towards the 'insufficient
| transparency' end.
|
| What's silly in this case is that (as others have pointed
| out) the new algorithm _seems_ to have been reasonably
| equitable, with a genuine redistribution of payments, rather
| than just a cut overall. Shipt could have avoided this whole
| situation with a straightforward explanation of the changes,
| together with a few examples of the cases /jobs in which
| people would earn more or less.
| toss1 wrote:
| YES.
|
| If Shipt is actually trying to incentivize better
| performance, it seems the best way is to be completely
| transparent about the rewards algorithm. "Short high-value
| trips are now somewhat de-rated, and trips requiring more
| effort now have improved rewards, specifically ..." or
| whatever.
|
| This "communications team" approach did everyone a
| disservice if Shipt mgt were really trying to improve
| results.
|
| OTOH, if the actual goal was to screw workers harder, they
| accomplished that, as here ate arguments on HN about how
| this could be good for the workers, thus successfully
| obfuscating the goal of screw-the-workers.
| pxx wrote:
| even if total compensation was decreasing, the results
| for the company can be improved by being able to provide
| their services at a lower price point by cutting costs.
|
| cutting costs is not "screwing workers". cutting costs is
| key to acting in a competitive market.
| alwa wrote:
| Although as far as that graph reflects the the study's
| results, the new distribution looks almost perfectly
| balanced: even more people experienced a "10%+" bump than
| a 10%+ reduction post-update.
|
| By what mechanism do you suggest the worker-screwing is
| happening here?
| ddulaney wrote:
| I think the issue is that there was full transparency on
| pay (a fixed base rate plus a fixed percentage) and then it
| was changed without warning.
|
| I work for a salary, which is fully transparent in the
| sense that I know what my next paycheck will be to the
| penny. (It's not transparent in how it's set, but it is
| week-to-week.) If my employer started paying me based on
| effort, and didn't tell me what constituted effort, not
| only would I be pissed off but that would be completely
| illegal.
|
| I'm not suggesting that this change is or should be
| illegal. But if it happened to me I'd find it extremely
| unfair.
| theGnuMe wrote:
| >I don't want to live in a world which is controlled
| unilaterally, and intransparently by a group of people who
| assume they have a full picture of the situation and assume
| they understand moral completely, and also don't think it
| necessary to explain how they think so highly of themselves.
|
| We already do; uncertainty is fundamental at all levels.
| cbsmith wrote:
| I think that's a very fair point, but wouldn't that be true
| even if Shipt hadn't made any changes?
|
| It feels to me like the problem wasn't the change. For all we
| know, the change was a net good thing. The bad thing was the
| context in which the change occurred.
| kazinator wrote:
| "Only 68% of us are paid within one standard deviation of the
| mean salary. Don't tell me this is normal!"
| oefrha wrote:
| > 40% are getting paid at least 10% less
|
| That statement is wrong either way. Looking at the graph, ~22%
| got a >10% cut while ~36% got a >10% raise. Overall ~43% got a
| cut while ~57% got a raise. And if there's any doubt, later on
| they dropped the "at least 10% less" qualifier for the 40%
| figure in text:
|
| > But we felt that it was important to shine a light on those
| 40 percent of workers who had gotten an unannounced pay cut
| through a black box transition.
|
| Can't believe they (accidentally? intentionally?) screwed up
| the very first concrete figure given in the article. Guess
| what, discussion is now based on the wrong figure.
|
| Also, the y-axis of the plot is labeled "number of workers"
| when it should be "percentage of participating workers", unless
| they had exactly 100 participants (they say they had 200+).
| Lousy presentation.
|
| I'm all for transparency, obviously.
|
| Edit: In addition, since participation is entirely voluntary,
| common sense tells me that the data they gather should skew
| more negative, since people negatively affected are much more
| likely to participate.
| pxx wrote:
| it seems clear to me from first principles and from
| experience [0] that the result from voluntary compensation
| sharing skews low compared to the actual population. it's the
| people who want to complain about low wages who participate
| in such schemes.
|
| that's not to say sharing wages is bad. this can still
| provide upward pressure on said wages. but the people who
| participate in the beginning are likely from the lower end of
| the distribution.
|
| [0] websites like levels.fyi seem to consistently skew low
| when estimating higher percentiles
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Few things are more internet than people telling half truths
| and whole lies to try and get their way.
| moritonal wrote:
| Do the worker's even see how much they'll make up front? If not,
| how is this fair, or even legal? I'm doubtful anyone here would
| go and work for McDonald's with the agreement being that they pay
| you what they think you're worth, after the job's done. We all
| see the asymmetry at play, and how it'd be abused at a moments
| notice.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| IANAL, but I suspect that there's US law, specifying that there
| needs to be a clear, transparent formula for pay.
|
| Even convoluted ones, like commissions for sales, or shared
| tips, are covered by law. I do know this, as I know a number of
| salespeople and servers.
|
| I suspect that the government needs to know what to tax, and
| obfuscated pay, means obfuscated taxes.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > I suspect that the government needs to know what to tax,
| and obfuscated pay, means obfuscated taxes.
|
| You're taxed on what you're paid. The government doesn't do a
| parallel calculation and tax you on that.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| But what you don't get paid, the company keeps, and it may
| come under different tax rules.
|
| My experience is that governments are _quite_ interested in
| where the money goes.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What you don't get paid is not pay.
|
| That is money that leaves the employer's account and goes
| into the employee's account (or government's account for
| tax withholding).
|
| I don't see how this can be obfuscated.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Yes, but how is this relevant. That is also not
| calculated based on a pay formula. It's reported.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Eh. Not worth arguing about.
|
| Not my area of expertise. That's why I pay an accountant.
| woah wrote:
| Thank you for contributing your wisdom
| jt2190 wrote:
| Having never used Shipt, I also find that part unclear:
|
| > Target... offered same-day delivery from local stores. Those
| deliveries were made by Shipt workers, who shopped for the
| items and drove them to customers' doorsteps. Business was
| booming... and yet workers found that their paychecks had
| become... unpredictable. They were doing the same work they'd
| always done, yet their paychecks were often less than they
| expected.
|
| Edit:
|
| > On Facebook and Reddit, workers compared notes. Previously,
| they'd known what to expect from their pay because Shipt had a
| formula: It gave workers a base pay of $5 per delivery plus 7.5
| percent of the total amount of the customer's order through the
| app. That formula allowed workers to look at order amounts and
| choose jobs that were worth their time. But Shipt had changed
| the payment rules without alerting workers. When the company
| finally issued a press release about the change, it revealed
| only that the new pay algorithm paid workers based on "effort,"
| which included factors like the order amount, the estimated
| amount of time required for shopping, and the mileage driven.
| gabesullice wrote:
| This is the question. All the ethical concerns are almost
| superfluous if the provider knows how much they're gonna earn,
| at a minimum, before they accept the gig. It's either worth it
| to them or it isn't.
|
| If anything shoud be a regulation, this feels like the one to
| add: platform opportunities must estimate and prominently
| display the estimated time to complete the task and the minimum
| payout after platform fees.
| astrange wrote:
| Uber doesn't do that because the drivers wouldn't take ones
| they don't like.
|
| Remember, consumers are using platform apps like Uber because
| they don't trust the drivers on the other side.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _Remember, consumers are using platform apps like Uber
| because they don 't trust the drivers on the other side._
|
| Oh, I thought it was because "push button to summon car"
| is, like, _super_ convenient.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| That too, but taxi drivers are indeed among the most
| notorious for scams.
| astrange wrote:
| There were taxi apps before Uber and they didn't work
| because the taxi drivers wouldn't reliably come.
| imtringued wrote:
| People use platforms because it would be very silly to have
| an app on the play store for each driver.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| And yet, I almost wonder if that would not be a better
| system overall.
| astrange wrote:
| If there was a driver you trusted then you could text
| them or their taxi dispatcher. The problem is they won't
| come, will scam you, won't take you to a poor
| neighborhood, etc.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Uber solves one part of the equation. As I have recently
| learned, ride sharing apps just allow you to get in touch
| with the customer. In some countries, apparently, the drive
| will 'work with rider' outside app control. It is a weird
| cat and mouse game.
| gabesullice wrote:
| Hence the regulation would force Uber (and ultimately the
| customer) to make it worth their while.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > Remember, consumers are using platform apps like Uber
| because they don't trust the drivers on the other side.
|
| I don't understand where these complex theories about ride
| sharing apps come from.
|
| People use Uber because it's easy and it's an app. Taxis
| did not have a universal app at the time.
|
| If you talk to young Uber users, chances are they wouldn't
| actually know how to call a traditional taxi if you asked.
| It's either Uber or Lyft because those are the apps they've
| heard about.
|
| Also, it's common for drivers to work for both Uber and
| Lyft at different points, maybe the same time. There's no
| real element of trust difference between the two options.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I think they do.
|
| We use Shipt regularly and it's a bit different than the other
| delivery apps. I now have a collection of favorite shoppers.
| While jobs still go to the pool, these people have a first shot
| at my order. I've learned the general availability of my
| favorites and tend to place orders when I think there's a high
| chance they'll be available to shop the order.
|
| While it's still not me selecting an individual contractor,
| it's not the randomness of other apps.
| dsr_ wrote:
| So... they've turned it from "we provide a good quality
| service at a fair price" to "over time you will have a chance
| to pick favorites, but not consistently".
|
| That's enshittification for your use of the service, and
| enshittification for the workers, too.
| sweezyjeezy wrote:
| Not sure I understand your argument - from a customer
| perspective why is the service worse, and why do you
| believe that it has BECOME worse?
| dsr_ wrote:
| If it were as good or better than before, nobody would
| want to pay attention to when to schedule deliveries
| based on the deliverator. Since this person specifically
| wants some deliverators over others, that means that the
| quality of the service is less good. They need to spend
| time considering scheduling, where they did not before.
|
| I don't worry about which USPS mail carrier delivers my
| mail -- I know it will be consistent and good enough. I
| happen to know who my usual carrier is, because I work
| from home and she likes to say hi to cats if they are in
| the front window. I also know the face of the usual UPS
| driver and the usual FedEx driver; they aren't here 6
| days a week, but often enough that I recognize them.
|
| In none of those cases do I expect a quality change based
| on the driver. I expect competence, and I get it so often
| that the exceptions really stand out.
|
| From the Shipt workers' perspective, they now need to
| worry about customers discriminating among them rather
| than just getting the job done.
| alwa wrote:
| This "Shipt," though, involves an opportunity for some
| degree of relationship to make a difference, right? Your
| mail carrier must deliver your package, the package is
| the package, it's either delivered or not. Maybe there's
| a small margin around the edge where one carrier is nice
| to the cats and the other isn't.
|
| These Shipt people, though, have to interpret your
| preferences and essentially act as your agent as they
| decide what to pick from the store shelves on your
| behalf. Sometimes they make decisions that you probably
| would have made, sometimes less so; sometimes they're
| confident that you understand each other, sometimes
| they're nervous and want to hassle you about each of 10
| different little decision points. When you find somebody
| I work well with, isn't it a positive that you get to try
| to keep that relationship for future transactions? Isn't
| this the same dynamic underpinning virtually every in-
| person service, from your hair cutting human to the
| tradies who do work on your house to the dry cleaner?
|
| For that matter, doesn't it create a perverse incentive
| if worker doesn't believe that trying to understand my
| preferences will ever pay off? That it's a one-off game
| rather than an iterated series of games, and effort to
| excel and bring human judgment to bear is wasted because
| there's no way to reward it?
|
| Doesn't the enshittification tend to require as a
| prerequisite that a platform is successful at alienating
| service providers from service recipients (and from each
| other) like that?
| karaterobot wrote:
| It sounds like a nice feature for users and an advantage
| for workers.
| mhh__ wrote:
| This style of writing headlines really irks me
| usernamed7 wrote:
| I didn't have a problem with it. the style that really does irk
| me are ones that reveal nothing useful, like if this was titled
| just "fighting back"
| theptip wrote:
| A clear case of adverse selection in the old pricing model.
|
| From a game-theoretic perspective in a gig marketplace you don't
| want jobs that are strictly better, else sophisticated market
| participants (workers) will select the best ones leaving chaff -
| and a worse experience - for the less sophisticated participants.
|
| What you are looking for is preference optionality, eg one Uber
| driver might prefer not to do very long trips, another might
| prefer it, and you ideally get paid fairly for either.
|
| In this case as others have noted, it doesn't actually sound like
| an unfair change. Perhaps communications could have been better
| though.
| biftek wrote:
| No, you ideally want all the jobs to be good. With the old
| model it was clear what the floor for getting something
| delivered was. Target could have instead adjusted order
| minimums or shrunk delivery zones instead.
|
| Gamifying peoples livelihood is the problem.
| theptip wrote:
| > you ideally want all the jobs to be good
|
| That is... exactly the point I made, when I said:
|
| > you don't want jobs that are strictly better
|
| Preference optionality is widely stated to be one of the
| features that gig workers like about the arrangement.
|
| The options you suggest are also valid ways of homogenizing
| the jobs to reduce variance.
|
| > Gamifying peoples livelihood is the problem
|
| To be clear Game Theory applies to all economic interactions.
| Mechanism Design is the branch of Game Theory pertaining to
| market design to achieve desired outcomes, such as "avoid
| adverse selection in my gig work marketplace".
|
| Gamification is a specific application of video game design
| to economic interactions, it's unrelated to what I'm
| discussing. (Examples of Gamification would be gaining
| experience points and levels for delivery, daily checking
| rewards, achievement badges, etc. - the general goal in
| Gamification is setting up a dopamine loop to encourage
| repeat use of the app. Hopefully it's clear this is not what
| I was talking about.)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| applied Game Theory in real human history a.k.a. wealth-
| building, has shown that the biggest empires with the most
| wealth and the best armies are built with slavery. So
| slavery did win, again and again and again. I don't think
| most modern people have any idea how deep and wide the
| history of slavery is ..
|
| Game-theory is fun when you get good at it for designing
| markets and products, but let us not lose sight of the
| crucial discussion.. human beings with real lives are not
| equal to economic parts.
| russdill wrote:
| We are entering an era where corporations have perfect data.
| They can charge each customer exactly the maximum amount
| possible, and pay each worker the exact minimum amount possible
| brokenmachine wrote:
| This is very insightful. I knew there was something wrong
| with the whole thing but that explains it exactly.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Is it really a marketplace if some central authority is
| controlling which customers get matched to which vendors?
| Sounds like central planning.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Its a marketplace with strict rate fixing. This is ironic
| since the libertarians who start these companies are
| hysterical reactionaries any time the government tries to do
| the same thing to make prices more fair for the public.
|
| Central planning would be if a committee decided how many
| rides there would be each year, regardless of demand.
| demondemidi wrote:
| I used to fly into Pittsburg and take an Uber to my
| grandparents house 40 miles away. For years I could always get
| an Uber but then after the pandemic my trip was rejected so
| frequently that I had to start renting a car. So basically no
| one wanted the gig and Uber never told me my ride was
| unreasonable. Something changed in the algorithm to benefit
| drivers, Uber, or both, at the expense of the customer, and
| that info wasn't made clear to the users.
| alwa wrote:
| I'm curious: would you have felt better if Uber had just
| rejected your ride request upfront ("Sorry, we can't offer
| rides that far" or something)?
|
| Or is this attitude of "hey, it's a long shot, but let's give
| it a try and see if anybody takes the job" closer to the
| attitude you'd like to see? If the latter, how would you
| communicate that to the users?
|
| I had an occasion a long time ago where I needed to request
| an Uber for a ride similar to what you're describing. At that
| time, apparently the driver didn't find out the route until
| they'd committed to the ride. The guy swiped to say he'd
| picked me up, and more or less broke down in tears when he
| found out where I was needing to go. He lived 40 miles in the
| other direction, was going off shift, and would be driving
| the whole 90 miles home without any prayer of a passenger to
| cover the time or cost. In that case I ended up giving the
| guy a generous amount of cash to cover the imposition, but I
| couldn't bring myself to use Uber for that route in the
| future.
|
| Until recently, when I had to use Uber for that route again.
| This time it seemed like they'd gotten much better at
| accommodating drivers' preference optionality: the guy who
| picked me up drove over 110mph all the way to the airport.
| Apparently when you drive like that, especially in an EV, the
| more miles the better...
|
| He explained that he could dial into the app that he
| preferred longer trips and trips between areas that happened
| to be connected by this lawless highway.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Driving an EV at 110mph is going to sap the range
| horrendously. The power needed to overcome air
| resistance/drag is proportional to the cube of the speed.
| lmm wrote:
| It'll sap the range of any kind of vehicle, but refilling
| an EV is a whole lot cheaper, so higher speeds are more
| economic for an EV than a petrol car. (Assuming you don't
| reach the point of running out in the middle of a shift
| of course)
| fallingfrog wrote:
| "There's no technical reason why these algorithms need to be
| black boxes; the real reason is to maintain the power structure."
|
| I'm kind of amazed that the article has the courage to say this
| out loud. The New York Times or any mainstream publication would
| never have been so honest.
|
| If anything they would have said some weasel words like "some ex-
| associates of shipt have complained that the app's compensation
| system is unfair." Rather than just blurt out the truth, which is
| that it's unfair by design because the owners of the app want to
| maintain a certain power relationship. It's the kind of thing
| that everyone knows but is not allowed to say in printed form.
| alias_neo wrote:
| > I'm kind of amazed that the article has the courage to say
| this out loud. The New York Times or any mainstream publication
| would never have been so honest.
|
| It's the IEEE, (we) Engineers are known for having an aversion
| to bullshit, and just for straight-up having no filter. I wish
| more of the world worked that way.
| bithead wrote:
| >Those deliveries were made by Shipt workers, who shopped for the
| items and drove them to customers' doorsteps.
|
| I've seen Shipt's operations internally, and they don't go
| shopping for stuff at stores and then deliver them, unless that's
| a different part of the business.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| Wow, gig or not, workers should be paid transparently.
|
| Which should be obvious but this is kind of the problem with
| enshittification where once a business feels they have a bit of a
| moat (like with a two sided marketplace) they will erode the
| service to take every advantage unless stopped by regulation. No
| one likes regulation because it's effectively crufty technical
| debt and our political system is far too slow, corrupt, or
| incompetent to effectively refactor it so the best we can do is
| either nothing and endure the enshittification or layer on more
| cruft, usually far after the fact multiple years and court fights
| later.
| jtriangle wrote:
| >60 percent of workers were making about the same or slightly
| more under the new scheme. But we felt that it was important to
| shine a light on those 40 percent of workers
|
| Absolutely pathetic investigative journalism on display. This is
| a hit piece thinly veiled under the guise of being pro worker
| that fails to support the main point of algorithmic management of
| gig workers is worse for everyone but the corporation employing
| it.
|
| If anything, they proved that shipt's algo did exactly what it
| was designed and reported to do, make payments more fair.
| cbsmith wrote:
| > If anything, they proved that shipt's algo did exactly what
| it was designed and reported to do, make payments more fair.
|
| They didn't prove that. It's entirely possible the algo was
| skimming something off the top. It's entirely possible the algo
| was disproportionately rewarding some people to the detriment
| of others. A lot of it depends on what one thinks is "fair"...
| and without transparency, we can't even judge whether it is or
| not... which itself could be argued is unfair.
| alwa wrote:
| If the whole point of the algo change is to correct an unfairness
| by which a strict fee+cart value approach doesn't reliably
| reflect the amount of work somebody's being asked to do, isn't
| this exactly the outcome we expect? That the people who were
| putting more work in now get more money, while the people who
| were benefiting from sniffing out the "easy" jobs now make
| something more in line with everybody else's compensation?
|
| It does seem unsporting on the company's part to play coy about
| the details. I wonder what the imperative was there: to avoid
| squabbling with workers about what "effort" means? To reduce the
| chances of legal scrutiny in one of the thousands of
| jurisdictions they operate in? To preserve the flexibility to
| quietly turn the dial in their own favor in the future?
|
| I'm reminded of how Uber caught flak over surge pricing, and
| ultimately dealt with that by making pricing completely opaque.
| Now they still might say "prices are a little higher because of
| the weather" if they decide to, but normally you don't even
| _expect_ to know whether your price for a given ride is based on
| their estimate of your desperation, their having sized you up as
| price-insensitive, driver supply, or what...
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Apart from the workers and the company there is another
| important actor here - the clients. I think the point of the
| algo change was to better serve clients with smaller orders.
| croemer wrote:
| > The system used optical character recognition--the same
| technology that lets you search for a word in a PDF file
|
| That's not correct, at least for "digitally-born PDFs" that were
| made on a computer and haven't been scanned. In that case, the
| PDF can be parsed directly, without OCR, to get text. That's what
| a tool like PyPDF2 does, for example.
| alwa wrote:
| It sounds like they were parsing screenshots that workers
| submitted by SMS
| croemer wrote:
| I'm not disputing that they used OCR. What's wrong is that
| searching text in PDFs doesn't usually involve OCR.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| There is an inherent flaw in those algos - they can be played by
| bots that scan for the best orders, while workers without bots
| and customers with smaller orders are left hanging. Better to
| just pay by the hour - you agree to deliver any order thrown at
| you during your shift.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| But then you'd be an employee, rather than an independent
| contractor; and that would break the business model. No value
| judgment there, just facts.
| sweeter wrote:
| The "Gig Economy" is a literal cancer to society and I genuinely
| hope the upper management get everything that they deserve and
| then some.
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