[HN Gopher] Couriers mystified by the algorithms that control th...
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Couriers mystified by the algorithms that control their jobs
Author : pseudolus
Score : 160 points
Date : 2025-01-21 12:51 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| oldjim69 wrote:
| Unionize. Collective action is the only way to stand up to Uber
| and co.
| flerchin wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| McD's has doubled prices with rising profits
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| And 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 wrote:
| They 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 wrote:
| "final assembly of food"?
|
| I haven't eaten McDonald's in a while, but from what I
| remember the food arrived fully assembled.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| McDonald'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 wrote:
| That'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 wrote:
| McD's is a franchise in the US. Franchisees set prices.
| edbrown23 wrote:
| I 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....
| Aloisius wrote:
| If 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.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| How?
|
| 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| Typically 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 wrote:
| That'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.
| parpfish wrote:
| yeah, i think that the value proposition for a platform
| like this over just setting up some sort of
| discord/message board would be based having a central
| trusted entity that's able to provide user accounts that
| are verified AND anonymous.
|
| you'd want to know that the people you're talking to are
| _actually_ your coworkers and not corporate plants, but
| you also want to be sufficiently anonymous to avoid
| workplace retaliation OR weird stalkers.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| > No VC would want it and there's not a wealthy user base
| to bootstrap it.
|
| More to the point, VCs invented these apps specifically to
| disenfranchise workers and vaccuum up the lost cost as a
| bullshit "service fee".
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > I'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".
|
| What would that mean, to be a workplace?
| parpfish wrote:
| it could be anything that just allows social connection
| between people that are doing the same job in the same
| geographic region but are largely invisible to one
| another.
|
| i'd try not to be prescriptive about it, but it could
| cover anything from a light 'random chat' channel to vent
| about petty workplace annoyances, 'tips and tricks' for
| success, or more serious channels to talk about workplace
| safety/conditions/unionization
| robertlagrant wrote:
| But if it's a gig, where's the workplace? E.g. if all the
| domestic builders in my town got together, who would they
| unionise against? They're not employed; that's not a gig.
| parpfish wrote:
| Domestic builders aren't really what come to mind for
| "gig workers".
|
| This would be for folks who have some app controlling
| their work- uber drivers, door dashers, etc.
| jordiburgos wrote:
| Well, those companies have a CEO, Director of Something,
| etc...
| prepend wrote:
| I'm guessing there a discord server somewhere with 90%
| management agents just waiting to honeypot potential union
| workers.
|
| Seems like digital workplace should be easier to organize
| with all the community tools we have.
| varjag wrote:
| _"It's not unusual, except that Manna is telling you exactly
| what to do every second of every day. If it asks you to go to
| the back and get merchandise, it tells you exactly where to
| walk to go get it. And here is the weirdest part -- I never
| see another employee the entire day. The way it makes me
| walk, I never run into anyone else. I can go for a full shift
| and never see another employee. Even our breaks are
| staggered. Everyone takes their breaks alone. We all arrive
| at staggered times. It's like Manna is trying to totally
| eliminate human interaction on the job."_
|
| All described in prescient classic:
| https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
| gunian wrote:
| this sounds like my personal nirvana no human contact but
| able to exist maybe the buddhists were right nirvana
| exists...
| Tostino wrote:
| It wasn't "no human contact", it was "no contact with
| other employees/coworkers". Big difference.
| gunian wrote:
| restaurants/pickup you can just walk in with headphones
| wave and show phone customers usually want stuff left at
| door
|
| no workplace cliques, meetings a win is a win. when I
| pray to the poofy guy in the sky I thank him for creating
| the humans that created this
| xnorswap wrote:
| In the UK you can (and usually do) unionize without a
| workplace.
|
| Many are industry-specific such as the "Communications
| wokers' union", but there are also general workers' unions
| such as GMB [1] or Unite.
|
| It would be possible, indeed probably preferable, to form a
| "Delivery workers' union". It would be a union of delivery
| drivers who would pool resources to fight for common rights.
|
| [1] https://www.gmb.org.uk/campaigns/deliveroo/
| jdietrich wrote:
| The ADCU has been representing app drivers and couriers in
| the UK for years, but they're probably not the best model.
|
| https://www.adcu.org.uk/
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/adcu-gig-economy-union-toxic-
| rep...
|
| The reality is that a large proportion of app workers are
| undocumented. Worker accounts are rented or sold to people
| who do not have the legal right to work. We can't reasonably
| address the issue of working conditions on these platforms if
| we don't acknowledge that fact.
|
| https://inews.co.uk/news/deliveroo-uber-eats-just-eat-
| illega...
| telesilla wrote:
| Exactly - anywhere you have undocumented or unregistered or
| undereducated workers you have exploitation. I don't know
| why this isn't discussed more widely as being a core
| element of the gig economy.
|
| There isn't a technology or unionization fix for this as
| it's a social and polite problem. I've looked into
| cooperative worker-owned solutions but for certain strata
| of society there are more gaping problems than the
| algorithm.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _There 's no workplace to speak in hushed tones._
|
| _There 's no way to know when you've reached a quorum of
| local drivers._
|
| SMS. When I drove for Uber, there were massive group chats
| amongst the drivers. They even organized planned shortages in
| certain parts of the city when rates got too low.
| constantcrying wrote:
| The much greater problem is that they are not employed. They
| are just self employed people, who take on gigs from various
| platforms.
|
| They can, by definition, not unionize. Even striking is
| basically out of the question, as organization is near
| impossible and most of these people could not sustain months
| with zero pay.
|
| This needs to be just made illegal, it is just a subversion
| of labor laws.
| Peroni wrote:
| They already have: https://www.gmb.org.uk/campaigns/deliveroo/
| pluc wrote:
| That's AI working as intended. Your labor isn't considered, only
| efficiency and profitability. We all better get used to it.
| voidhorse wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| That 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 wrote:
| The true paperclip problem is done with human hands, enslaved
| by the efficiency algorithm holding Damocles.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The "paperclip maximizer" thing is funny. Change
| "paperclips" to "money" and you have inscrutable superhuman
| entities doing it _right now_.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| My assumption would be that the orgs aren't quite sure how they
| work either.
| donatj wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Also 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.
| LegionMammal978 wrote:
| In 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.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| P2P app could display (orders taken ever), (orders
| successfully delivered) for every courier. That would be good
| enough for 90% of costumers, but wouldn't cover the cost of
| actual fraud for the client.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Is there something stopping a malicious peer client from
| lying about those numbers?
|
| Genuinely curious; I've been wondering about how to make a
| zero-knowledge P2P protocol for turn-based imperfect
| knowledge games and this sounds directly applicable to
| that.
| klodolph wrote:
| I disagree with that--I don't think it would be good enough
| for 90% of customers. I think it would be about the
| reverse. Maybe it would be good enough for 10% of
| customers.
| EGreg wrote:
| I have been posting about cutting out the middleman for all
| sorts of ecosystems. Drivers and Passengers for instance.
|
| For that we need an open decentralized source platform with no
| profit motive.
|
| That's what I built: https://intercoin.org/applications
|
| https://qbix.com/communities
|
| But it takes time to make actually compelling alternatives to
| platforms that have BILLIONS of dollars behind them, a huge
| network effect already, and if needed, monopoly lock-in where
| they can say "it's either us or them" to market participants.
| diggan wrote:
| > Applications of Intercoin: Making Crypto Mainstream
|
| > Combining Web 2.0 (social) with Web 3.0 (transactional) we
| call it Web 5.0
|
| I'm sure you mean well, but things like this will never speak
| to the working class performing the gigs/work itself. You
| already alienate them by naming the project *Coin
| ("cryptocurrency is only for the rich to get richer"), and
| the more flowery language about technology you use, you
| alienate them further.
|
| If you're aiming to get those folks onboard you need to 1)
| skip any details about the technical internals, the
| organization-side internals are much more important to non-
| tech people and 2) target a specific audience and write
| specifically addressing their specific needs/problems.
| EGreg wrote:
| And what do you think of this messaging to celebrities,
| comics etc: https://intercoin.org/community.pdf
| loa_in_ wrote:
| QBix link returns response in a format not for humans
| bluedino wrote:
| In my area we have FB marketplace. People have been doing
| grocery shopping, delivery, etc for a long time. Heck there's a
| whole underground restaurant system as well.
| prepend wrote:
| As a customer, I need a middleman/market maker to select
| participants and provide quality control.
|
| There's not a good reputation system so I would not use p2p
| cabs or food delivery because I don't trust the drivers. At
| least with Uber, they will give me a refund, etc etc
| meiraleal wrote:
| That's a job for the government, it already has a lot of
| reputation data about everyone.
| prepend wrote:
| It would be nice if the government ran an identity server
| and you could check for arrests and convictions and such.
|
| But I wouldn't really want a government to onboard
| restaurants, or process refund requests. That seems like a
| nightmare.
| meiraleal wrote:
| sure not, just the reputation API
| caymanjim wrote:
| Slice is a delivery platform that focuses on mom-and-pop pizza
| places. At least when I was involved years ago, they only
| charged a flat $1/order fee. They helped stores get their menus
| into the system, and then stores did their own deliveries. This
| model worked well because a lot of pizza places already had
| their own delivery drivers--probably more so than any other
| restaurant type.
|
| I used to use Slice to order because the extra cost was
| nominal, and the drivers were local and worked directly for the
| pizza place. Issue with your order? Tell the driver, or tell
| the store, and it'd be addressed immediately, by real humans.
| Need to make last-minute changes to your order? Call the place
| directly and talk to a human. Get to know your driver because
| it's the same person most nights. Lots of upside.
|
| Except everyone used DoorDash and GrubHub, even though Slice
| was both a better user experience and a far better experience
| for the restaurant owner. Slice cost restaurants less, cost
| consumers far less, and was a better solution in every way. But
| because the vast majority of the restaurant's deliver business
| came through DoorDash and other large delivery companies, most
| small restaurants have gotten rid of their own delivery
| drivers.
|
| Slice still exists, but I expect it won't experience much
| growth. The big guys are dominant.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| The competitors might have had better profit margin and
| therefore more ad spending, and more opportunity to expand
| area. Still, it's better to be akin Slice than to succumb to
| inevitable enshittification.
| axpvms wrote:
| Why are they all indian?
| parpfish wrote:
| i'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 wrote:
| These 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 wrote:
| most 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 wrote:
| most tech employees in SF
| ryandrake wrote:
| most very high staff or director+ level tech employees of
| a handful of top FAANG companies in SF
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| L7 is where you get servants?
|
| Ill keep that in mind.
| filoleg wrote:
| I mean, really?
|
| An L5 at FAANG is making close to $450-500k/yr in total
| comp. Let's assume the minimum wage is $15/hr, and the
| people doing the tasks get paid $25/hr (on the higher
| end). With 15 hours of simple errands a week, it comes
| out to $375/week or $1500/mo.
|
| Maybe it is a bit of a stretch for an L5 to spend that
| much in a month on helping with chores (gotta consider
| taxes, after all), but it doesn't seem that wild at all
| to have $1500 in spending on getting chores taken care
| of. And it is definitely very doable for an L6. No need
| to be at L7 to be able to comfortably afford that at all.
|
| No need to live in SF for that either. Seattle pays
| pretty much comparably, no state income tax, a bit
| cheaper cost of living, and all big FAANG companies have
| a major presence there. At director level, you would be
| able to afford much more (been to a director's house once
| for a team bbq, and yeah, the gap between director level
| and L5/L6 is rather large; and it wasn't a director of
| one of the higher-paying FAANG-tier companies either).
| jwagenet wrote:
| For food delivery, I imagine going back to pre-apps and have
| restaurant employed couriers for local takeout could be
| beneficial for both parties.
| rob74 wrote:
| Well, you _can_ also - shock horror - drive (or bike, if
| possible) over to the restaurant and pick up your order
| yourself! That 's of course assuming that the restaurant
| has another means of placing orders than through the
| delivery apps (e.g. a phone number)...
| ebiester wrote:
| While I personally make 95% of my food, I order delivery
| when I am so busy that if I don't, I will not eat.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _While I personally make 95% of my food, I order delivery
| when I am so busy that if I don 't, I will not eat._
|
| Sounds like a problem that solves itself.
|
| Or at least a wake-up call that you're doing something
| wrong. Unless you're safeguarding nuclear launch codes,
| there's no such thing as "too busy to eat." It's just
| people trying to make themselves and others think they're
| important. Guess what? You're not. The actually important
| people do eat. It's their lackies who pretend they're too
| busy to do the same.
|
| Yes, I've owned my own company. Yes, it required
| extensive complicated international travel. It's still
| true. If you can't plan meal breaks, you can't plan.
|
| And even the nuclear launch people get lunch.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| "Important people" eat because they can afford to pay
| people to make eating convenient for them. "Unimportant
| people" are busy because they have to actually work to
| pay their bills and do their laundry and dishes and clean
| their homes and take out the trash and do all the stuff
| that "important people" magically don't have to do,
| because "unimportant people" do it for them.
| Yeul wrote:
| I like food delivered to me but I am willing to pay for
| it. The minimum wag applies to gig workers too- and with
| an aging society and shrinking workforce the pay is
| usually a lot better than that.
|
| Ofcourse in the US with tens of millions of illegal
| immigrants who will do anything to survive the situation
| must be very different.
| florbo wrote:
| This is what I do. Dealing with the uncertainty of the
| delivery apps as a customer in my area is approaching the
| levels of nightmare it is as a driver in others. I didn't
| keep track when I was using them but let's just say it
| was a pleasant surprise when I received everything I
| ordered. Usually something was "forgotten".
| chongli wrote:
| The problem for restaurant-employed delivery staff is
| nearly the same as the customer-employed delivery staff
| mentioned above. The driver sits around in the restaurant
| parking lot twiddling his thumbs and then 10 lunch orders
| come in over the course of an hour, most of which while the
| driver's out delivering the first order. The last order
| ends up taking 2 hours to get to the customer who is not at
| all pleased with cold, soggy food long after the lunch
| break ended.
|
| The food delivery app business works like the insurance
| business: the aggregate drivers form a risk pool [1] to
| protect restaurants from the variability of demand. This
| allows a single restaurant to be able to accept 10 food
| delivery orders in a matter of minutes just as easily as
| they would for orders coming in from the tables in their
| dining room. The app would dispatch up to 10 drivers to
| handle those orders and even automatically batch them
| according to proximity of destination.
|
| Of course the app can also handle multiple restaurants in a
| similar area in the same way so that drivers can be
| dispatched most efficiently to handle all the demand for an
| entire city. The more drivers, restaurants, and customers
| centralize on a single delivery app, the more efficient the
| system can be (assuming the app developers know how to
| optimize the transshipment problem [2]).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_pool
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transshipment_problem
| eecc wrote:
| Lovely, it's really a useful tool.
|
| Unfortunately it's management is opaque and manipulative,
| in the hands of a one self-interested actor.
|
| If anything, this sort of market would be well served by
| a publicly funded (not necessarily by a Government, let's
| throw blockchains into the mix) neutral and transparent
| platform
| jvanderbot wrote:
| What businesses need is delivery drivers.
|
| If the business has a delivery driver, that driver should
| get priority on the app. But that'll never happen,
| because that's a slippery slope to just being an ordering
| platform - a much smaller moat.
|
| I was a driver. When not delivering, we waited, checked
| out, cooked food, got ahead on end-of-night cleaning,
| etc.
|
| If the orders piled in, we made them ourselves then
| delivered them. If it was a slow night, they let a line
| cook go and we took over, while the manager filled in
| while we were out on delivery.
|
| We were the ones who stayed late to clean the kitchen,
| because we delivered right up until close. On slow
| nights, we got out the door right at close. On busy
| nights, it might be two hours later as we handled the
| backlog of cleanup / closeout.
|
| Delivery drivers are efficient flexible resources with
| less overhead than the apps.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I thank the lord I got to have a driver job as you
| describe in the 2000s before the gig economy. I would
| have ground myself to dust for an extra dollar under the
| current conditions.
| wil421 wrote:
| This is how it worked for me catering breakfast and
| sandwiches. There's not much down time unless it was in
| between lunch and dinner shifts.
|
| We handled all the breakfast and fruit trays until the
| kitchen staff came it at 7am. We got there at 5:30.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _The problem for restaurant-employed delivery staff is
| nearly the same as the customer-employed delivery staff
| mentioned above._
|
| And yet somehow we had restaurant delivery for 50 years
| before the invention of the cell phone. And grocery
| delivery for a hundred years before that.
|
| Both pizza joints, and the Chinese place I order from
| employ their own people.
|
| The only thing that's changed is that a certain cohort of
| people are terrified to pick up a phone and speak to
| another human being, and so delegate that most basic of
| human functions to a computer program.
|
| The only actual utility of these apps is the ability to
| track and obsess over the precise location of my food, as
| if I'm going to die of starvation if I don't know exactly
| where it is.
| chongli wrote:
| _Both pizza joints, and the Chinese place I order from
| employ their own people._
|
| This is the crux of the matter. We're not living in the
| "2 pizza joints and a Chinese place" world anymore. In my
| city there are hundreds of restaurants serving cuisines
| from half the countries on the planet. Portuguese,
| Spanish, Italian, French, British, Nigerian, Ethiopian,
| Eritrean, Mexican, Salvadoran, Peruvian, Brazilian,
| Korean, Japanese, Chinese (including Cantonese,
| Sichuanese, Shanghainese, Taiwanese, and Hakka), Indian
| (too many to count, likely from every province in the
| country), Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Thai,
| Vietnamese, ...
|
| We also have movie theatres selling popcorn, Dairy Queen
| selling Blizzards, StarBucks selling frappuccinos, and
| McDonald's selling McFlurries, doughnut shops selling
| Boston creams, dessert shops selling matcha roll cakes,
| ... I didn't even mention pizza joints!
|
| In other words, the delivery apps bring customers an
| explosion of options they never had before. That is their
| highest utility for customers (while offering the risk
| pool solution to restaurants).
| reaperducer wrote:
| _In my city there are hundreds of restaurants serving
| cuisines from half the countries on the planet.
| Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, British, Nigerian,
| Ethiopian, Eritrean, Mexican, Salvadoran, Peruvian,
| Brazilian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese (including
| Cantonese, Sichuanese, Shanghainese, Taiwanese, and
| Hakka), Indian (too many to count, likely from every
| province in the country), Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri
| Lankan, Thai, Vietnamese, ..._
|
| In my city, too. But I don't presume that I have the
| right to have every single cuisine that exists delivered
| to me at near-zero cost. Sometimes you have to make an
| effort in life.
| chongli wrote:
| What do rights have to do with it? We're talking about
| supply and demand. There is supply, there is demand, and
| the delivery apps provide the logistics to connect the
| two.
|
| If we go back to the way things were 30 years ago then we
| have fewer restaurants, less economic activity, less
| diversity, and a less interesting life for everyone!
| reaperducer wrote:
| _then we have fewer restaurants_
|
| No, we don't. People still have to eat. If anything, we
| have fewer restaurants today because of consolidation in
| the industry and the way massive-scale delivery enables
| ghost kitchens that take customers away from actual
| restaurants.
|
| _less economic activity_
|
| Uber Eats barely generates any "economic activity." It
| doesn't rate against the economic activity generated when
| people go outside.
|
| _less diversity_
|
| Now you're just making things up. People don't become
| Ethiopian because they sat on their couch to eat at
| Ethiopian delivery compared with actually going to an
| Ethiopian restaurant.
|
| _a less interesting life for everyone!_
|
| Leaving your house is more interesting than being inside.
| It's pretty much the definition of "living."
| chongli wrote:
| It's -15 C outside here and the snow is blowing sideways.
| NO ONE is going outside to grab lunch. They're all
| ordering Uber Eats. If Uber Eats didn't exist they'd be
| eating egg salad sandwiches for lunch, not ordering a
| pizza from a place that pays a full time driver.
| Ekaros wrote:
| And for that I am happy with simple web site. List of
| options I can have, basic modifications like remove or
| add. Some extras, and option to pay there and then.
|
| It is sadly too small market nowadays...
| freejazz wrote:
| Not only do a few of my local restaurants employ their
| own drivers, but they also use websites to allow for
| online ordering so I do not have to pick up the phone
| anyway.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| You can't really fix the problem that everyone tends to
| order during lunch and dinner hours. No matter how you
| arrange the delivery staff, there will be too much demand
| during those times, and too little the rest of the day.
|
| There's arguably been some efficiency lost, as some
| restaurants had the drivers cross trained to help with
| making the food.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| But that's true of staffing across the whole restaurant,
| and yet, it seems to work.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Yes. You can not fix every problem, and still make money.
| dacryn wrote:
| big companies care more about how easy it is to automate the
| labels, the accounting, the scheduling, ... Saving 2 euro per
| delivery but requiring a few hour of human effort is typically
| not worth it
| darreninthenet wrote:
| My (wealthy) father in law does this, he has a handful of
| people he can call upon day or night to do whatever he needs,
| anything from pick something up two hours away to put some
| additional overnight security on one of his sites/properties...
| most of them are ex-military Eastern European. I've no idea how
| he compensates them but they seem happy with him and stick
| around, and the couple I've spoken to over the years seem nice
| enough.
|
| To be honest I wouldn't want to know more details, he's a dodgy
| fuck
| ruined wrote:
| this sounds like the kind of thing you shouldn't post on the
| internet :)
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Some years ago, I met a guy at a bar in New York who said
| that he was Donald Trump's personal courier. He rode a bike
| around the city, and he'd deliver things to Trump in person,
| who would always give him at least $100 cash on the spot. I
| didn't believe the guy's story, and it offended him. Maybe he
| was telling the truth.
| korse wrote:
| This is not unbelievable. I don't even live in a coastal
| city and I still know a handful of active couriers. They're
| faster than drivers in congested areas and pretty much get
| a pass on all traffic control/regulation if they don't
| truly endanger pedestrians. Not to mention that they don't
| need parking, can carry their vehicles up stairs and into
| buildings etc.
|
| Plenty of people know these guys exist and having someone
| known to you and reliable on speed dial is worthwhile. The
| $100 also makes sense because it isn't just a tip, it is
| the 'retainer' to make sure the calls get maximum priority.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Trump paying the courier is what makes the story
| unbelievable, tbh.
|
| Further, if we take this story at face value, a
| "personal" courier, by definition, has no other clients
| to prioritize.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| IIRC the climax of the merger deal described in /Barbarians
| at the Gate/ essentially comes down to a bike courier race
| between various offices in Manhattan as last-minute bid
| adjustments got ferried about. Makes me wonder what the
| value of the truly fastest bike courier in New York would
| be to some large investment bank/PE firm/whatever. I
| imagine they are massively underpaid compared to the value
| they provide.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| SpiderMan should have got in to this business.
| wil421 wrote:
| My father in law worked as a project manager for a
| locally big construction firm. Back in the 90s/00s they
| were basically sitting in a room with as many phones and
| fax machines as they could handle, with binders and
| Rolodexes of subcontractors spread around the tables.
|
| Bid adjustments were a huge thing they had to optimize
| for and it created Seinfeld worthy situations.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _My (wealthy) father in law_
|
| > _I 've no idea how he compensates them_
|
| I'm going to guess with a lot of money. That likely doesn't
| get reported to relevant tax authorities.
| world2vec wrote:
| I think those kind of assistants are called henchmen ;-)
| titanomachy wrote:
| Don't even _think_ about cheating on your wife
| wil421 wrote:
| My father in law (not so wealthy), has a few people near his
| beach rental that will do various different things. Including
| one handyman who will help with whatever.
|
| There are whole management companies who do this type of
| stuff for vacation rentals. I'd bet there are similar ones
| for rich people's primary and secondary homes.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Estate/house managers are a very real thing, especially at
| the high end.
|
| It can vary from basically part time concierge work (get
| the beds made, and make sure that the fridge is full when I
| arrive), all the way to full-time management of a property
| including managing additional full-time staff (maids,
| chefs, gardeners, etc).
|
| I only brushed against it in being part of the yachting
| world, but it is fascinating how much money people like
| this absolutely blow away on making their lives slightly
| more convenient.
| panarky wrote:
| Startup idea: TaskRabbit but for ex-military Eastern
| Europeans who will do whatever a dodgy fuck wants.
| patrickmay wrote:
| HenchRabbit?
| c-linkage wrote:
| Executive Outcomes?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Outcomes
| dylan604 wrote:
| That's such a better movie title than name of a company
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| "Execute like a billionaire"
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Could even make an app for that.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _i '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._
|
| I think you might be over-estimating how much of a personal
| connection gig work delivery drivers have with the people they
| deliver to.
|
| How many do you recognize? How many do you even know the names
| of? I'm not even sure if I've ever had a repeat delivery
| person, except from one restaurant that does delivery in-house
| instead of farming it out to one of the services.
| parpfish wrote:
| they don't have connections to them because they're still gig
| workers going through the app.
|
| but all they need to do to _start_ those relationships would
| be to drop off a business card if doordash /ubereats/etc sent
| them to somebody that seemed pleasant/tipped well/etc. then
| network effects from their as they recommend among their
| (presumably wealth) friends
| robertlagrant wrote:
| UpWork would let people do this today.
| btilly wrote:
| It depends on the gig. Attempts to farm out housecleaning as a
| gig fail in exactly that way - people find the cleaner they
| want, and they arrange to make it permanent. Making the gig app
| as a discovery mechanism.
|
| That's why none of the attempts at making housecleaning part of
| the gig economy have succeeded.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _It depends on the gig. Attempts to farm out housecleaning as
| a gig fail in exactly that way - people find the cleaner they
| want, and they arrange to make it permanent._
|
| That used to be considered a success, not a failure.
|
| When agencies like Kelly place someone in a position like
| that, the person is required to work for Kelly for x number
| of months/years. Once that obligation is complete, they are
| free to jump to working directly with the Kelly client. Been
| there. Done that.
|
| This is a solved problem. And solved a hundred years ago.
| btilly wrote:
| Part of that solution is to either sell a cleaning service
| that people only use occasionally, like deep cleaning of
| your floors, or to lock the client in to a contract that
| allows you to detect those private deals.
|
| But the basic, "I'd like someone to clean my house once a
| week" doesn't work so well. People sometimes stop the
| cleaning after a bad experience. And sometimes hire the
| cleaner after a good one. And from the company's point of
| view, those look exactly the same. Customers will refuse 6
| month contracts, and so there is no real recourse.
| emchammer wrote:
| Don't get on Uncle Enzo's bad side though.
| freejazz wrote:
| > select a handful of good clients
|
| Probably because the gig worker's client is Doordash, not the
| individuals ordering delivery, to which they have little to no
| contact and most likely wont ever see them again. As a
| delivery-orderer in NYC, I cannot recall ever having the same
| delivery person more than once, let alone so often that we
| developed a client-relationship.
| kirykl wrote:
| As long as they have a deep bench of zero barrier to entry
| replacements this likely wont change
| gosub100 wrote:
| > 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_ wrote:
| Currently 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.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Food 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 wrote:
| Yes. 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 wrote:
| Re: 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 wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| When I think about what a reasonable hourly wage is, I don't
| see it working in my country at all. My understanding is that
| the main portion of drivers in Copenhagen is made up of
| exchange students, who have to work some hours per week to
| qualify for student aid, so it makes sense for them because the
| state basically tops up their wages.
| meiraleal wrote:
| That actually sounds like an ideal system for providing
| opportunities to low-wage workers without locking them into
| low wages indefinitely
| rvense wrote:
| I think it sounds like a misplaced subsidy. If we're going
| to use students as state-sponsored labour, surely we can
| think of a better job for them to do than prop up some
| foreign enterprise with an unworkable business model...
| imzadi wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| If 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 wrote:
| It'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.
| imzadi wrote:
| Lots 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Why should the restaurant cover any of the cost of delivery?
| Reubachi wrote:
| Because as a matter of fact, restuarants have been
| employing (paying wages) to emplyees who's role is to
| deliver food. They charge a delivery fee which they have
| rationalized will cover this "cost", and then have
| historically fell on the consumer to _actually_ pay the
| driver.
|
| if delivery where NOT offered by these traditional
| restaurants, they would have gone out of business. Typical
| market force at work here, nothing new; needing to modify
| service to increasee value proposition.
|
| Now, Food delivery apps came in and promised restuaranteurs
| that they could remove the pesky delivery drivers, but
| still keep those sweet seeet delivery-meal profits. That is
| of course, until all these apps just sucked money from both
| the restaurants AND the drivers.
|
| So, Why should the restautant cover the cost of delivery?
| Because, they provide a historical good and service, which
| they outsourced, and now everyone loses. They would make
| more money if they went back to handling employment of
| drivers. It's way easier for me to pay a 2 dollar deliveyr
| fee and 5 dollar tip when I know that there isn't another
| an arbitraty app in the middle collecting my money.
|
| edit: to explain my ramble, I haven't had food delivered
| since like college because it's so confusing/a money grab.
| To order delivery from the pizza place I've gone to since I
| was a kid, I need to download an app and pay twice as much?
| And they make less? Why?
| wat10000 wrote:
| Won't happen. It's the perfect way to underpay people. You can
| overpromise and underdeliver without breaking the law. When
| your workers get upset about poor pay, they'll mostly direct
| their ire at your customers rather than at you.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Once 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 wrote:
| That and the use of black box models whose predictions are not
| explainable.
| godelski wrote:
| What'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 wrote:
| low trust economy is basically techno fascism. This is what a
| pre-cyberpunk distopia looks like, and while the first impacts
| appear towards progress, it's unlikely going to be about
| progress but cementing the technocrats and oligarchs.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I don't think we need to use the pre prefix anymore. This is
| legit with all hallmarks.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Don't let them take the work cyberpunk, they dont deserve
| it, we can just call it technocratic dystopia and be fine.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Well, there arnt yet the cyber punks so ill keep the pre.
| Yeul wrote:
| There is an old Charlie Chaplin movie about turning factory
| workers into an extension of machines.
|
| If an app pretty much tells you how to do your job there's no
| place for personal expression and you become a zombie.
| spacemanspiff01 wrote:
| With regards to bank demobilization here is an interesting
| article.
|
| https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...
| _trampeltier wrote:
| About Fetlife from 2017, 8 years ago.
|
| https://pastebin.com/FFSQUML9
|
| With the movement to a cashless world .. many people will
| loose there whole life because banks will close there
| accounts.
| CaliforniaKarl wrote:
| I disagree with using "debanking" as an example. At least in
| the US, banks are required by law (the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA),
| et al) to not divulge certain information. As far as I'm aware,
| YouTube et al are not under such a legal requirement.
| pjc50 wrote:
| The effect is the same, though.
| dylan604 wrote:
| While we did not divulge your certain information, we regret
| to tell you that your certain information was access in a
| hack that was discovered (9 months later).
|
| if they intentionally or unintentionally were the source of
| that certain information, there's little recourse for you
| after the fact
| gsk22 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Exactly. And a large dose of gaming the system (or trying to),
| which reduces trust even further. Why play fair with an
| unaccountable algorithm?
| bogzz wrote:
| I am currently in a nightmare scenario at a new job. I just
| finished building their website, and it got flagged as a
| phishing website by Google Safebrowsing because Google seems to
| think that our analytics subdomain which is a self-hosted
| instance of Umami Analytics is a phishing attempt.
|
| I requested a review once, they removed the flag. It came back
| a couple of days ago. I then had to move Umami to its own
| domain because I couldn't risk this ever happening again
| (visitors to our root domain were also getting the huge red
| warning, and our business was coming off as a scam).
|
| Then they flagged the new domain as well. They've removed it
| again at my request, but I am just counting down the days until
| it happens again.
|
| There is no way for me to get through to a human to talk about
| why this is happening.
| noja wrote:
| Clearly you should move to google's analytics product.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Almost certainly the correct inference about why this is
| happening.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| Have legal send Google a C&D and shoot an email to the FTC
| about anticompetitive behavior. That's how you get a human
| involved.
| godelski wrote:
| Even if this works, it represents a failure in the system
| that needs to be fixed.
|
| (I assume you're just trying to help the parent solve their
| problem so I'm not trying to be dismissive of your comment)
| bdangubic wrote:
| I am not sure this aphorism is helping in any way though?
| of course system needs to be fixed, there are about 829
| things google/bigtech-wise that needs to be fixed but of
| course they won't be fixed. the only course of action in
| vast majority of cases like this is legal action
| altairprime wrote:
| California's labor board could state that anyone impacted
| by algorithmic decisions has the right to review the
| algorithm used, and that all algorithms used must be
| deterministic and diagrammable. If clearly stated, "flip
| a coin" or "choose one at random" is fine, but "trained
| AI network" is not.
|
| This would shine light on algorithms used at Uber,
| DoorDash, Amazon, Microsoft, Workday (based in Oakland).
| Anyone with a worker in California whose work is subject
| to algorithmic intervention would have the right to
| request the source code to all algorithms impacting their
| gig, temporary, or permanent employment.
|
| I cannot imagine a more frightening regulatory path for
| California tech. They would spend a billion dollars
| trying to stop it.
| godelski wrote:
| > all algorithms used must be deterministic
|
| Be careful with your choice of wording here. There are
| many non-{AI,ML} algorithms that are not deterministic.
| Hell, we don't even have to go to Turing or talk about
| Busy Beaver. What about encryption? We want to inject
| noise here and want that noise to be as random and
| indeterminable as possible.
|
| There are also many optimization algorithms that require
| random processes. This can even include things like
| finding the area under a curve because it may be faster
| to use Monte Carlo Integration. You might not even be
| able to do it otherwise. > and
| diagrammable
|
| An ANN is certainly diagrammable.
|
| I understand the intent of your words and even agree with
| it. I think openness and transparency are critical. But
| because I care and agree I want to make sure we recognize
| how difficult that the wording is. Because it is often
| easy to implement a solution that creates a bigger
| problem than the thing we sought to solve.
|
| Personally, I'd love to see that things become "Software
| Available." I mean if it was a requirement for everyone,
| then it is much easier to "prove" when code is cloned. Of
| course, this is easier said than done since there's many
| "many ways to skin a cat" but in essence, this is not too
| dissimilar from physical manufacturing. It's really hard
| to keep secrets in hardware. Plus, there's benefits like
| you can fix your fucking tractor when it breaks down. Or
| fix a car even if it is half a century old. I do expect
| if this would become reality that it'd need a lot more
| nuance and my own critique applies, but I just wanted to
| put it out there (in part, to get that critique).
| godelski wrote:
| I disagree, but mainly because we're here on HN. We're in
| a location where many engineers and engineering managers
| of these things exist. Many of these problems can be
| solved WITHOUT legal. In fact, arguably this MUCH
| cheaper.
|
| For developers:
|
| This means to stop rushing, to do things the "right" way.
| To not just write code to pass the unit tests, but to
| write code that is more robust than that. To write code
| that is modifiable and modular (that whole monad thing
| that the PL people keep yelling at us about). To not just
| be someone who glues code together (be that from stack
| overflow or GPT), but _writes_ code. To actually know the
| entire codebase and beyond just what you're in charge of.
| To push back against your managers and write better code.
| To fix problems without being asked. To fix issues
| __before__ they're asked. Sure, writing fast and dirty
| code will get you done quicker but it is just putting off
| more work later. Because why do today what will be twice
| as much work tomorrow?
|
| For managers:
|
| Recognize that good and efficient code are important and
| make your business better and more profitable. To stop
| this "don't let perfection get in the way of good"
| nonsense, because perfect code doesn't exist. If an
| developer is writing "perfect code" then either there's a
| miscommunication between dev and manager about what is
| "good enough" or the dev is dumb (junior) and thinks
| perfect code exists. Give time for devs to go back and
| clean up the messes. Realize it is _cheaper_ and easier
| to clean a mess today than it is tomorrow since messes
| compound. Don't wait for something to break to fix it,
| fix it before it breaks. Maintenance is FAR cheaper than
| replacement. To be careful how you evaluate your devs
| because things like lines of code written, number of
| commits, or tickets resolved are all extremely noisy
| measurements[2]. All can actually be indicative of a bad
| developer as much as it can be of a good developer.
| Because when you have a true 10x developer 10x fewer
| tickets will be created in the first place. It's very
| hard to evaluate a future that didn't happen. Look for
| your developers who are foreseeing problems. Hire a few
| "grumpy devs", people who are pointing out problems AND
| trying to solve them. A good developer is good at
| recognizing and finding problems (see example below: stop
| testing if your devs can fizzbuzz or leetcode and instead
| see if they can anticipate problems and think about
| solving them. The more you believe LLMs will do the
| coding in the future the more important this skill is!).
|
| (I've often been told that a difference between "academic
| code" and "business code" is that the business cares
| about if something "works". That what matters is the
| product in the customer's hands. My experience has been
| that business do not in fact care. This experience
| involves working in production and even demonstrating how
| to fix problems that more than double the performance of
| the product. Not like "made a 10ms process a 5ms process"
| but "customers can make 1 widget per hour, now customers
| can make 2 widgets per hour at half the cost")
|
| For both:
|
| To recognize that things compound and thus the little
| things add up. To stop being dismissive of small
| improvements, especially if they are quick to resolve.
| Small issues compound, but so do small improvements.
| Stick your neck out a little. If there's never enough
| time to do it right but there's always enough time to do
| it twice, then something is wrong (there is time to do it
| right).
|
| Here's a simple example of how a small thing can compound
| while requiring almost no extra dev time (5 minutes? 30
| max?): If you have a forum that people
| need to fill out and it has values you can know or
| reasonably guess (e.g. country and timezone can be
| reasonably guessed even if not logged in), provide those
| as defaults. Better, add a copy -- don't remove
| from the alphabetical list! -- of the most
| frequent/likely to the top. (Seriously, as a US
| person why am I always scrolling to the bottom of a list
| to enter country of origin on a page that is expecting me
| to be a US citizen... We're writing software. Software
| automates. Fucking automate this shit for me).
|
| Sure, this saves the user 1-30 seconds[0], but that too
| scales. The magic of software is scale! Even half a
| second for a user is extremely valuable as that's almost
| 3 months if you have a million people doing this each
| year (or one person doing it a million times ;).
| Especially since this is very little in dev work, you can
| find stack overflow posts for the javascript for this
| quite easily.
|
| I'm not just speaking out of my ass here. I write tons of
| small scripts and programs to take care of little things
| for me. They add up in surprising ways. Honestly, I'd get
| much more utility if other developers made this process
| more accessible to me. But the reason to write accessible
| code is not for others, but for yourself[1].
|
| [0] Might seem like a nothing burger but this can be
| quite timely. My partner is Korean, so she never knows if
| her country is "Republic of Korea", "ROK", "Korea",
| "South Korea", or even some others. She has to guess and
| check, and it isn't like these things are near one
| another.
|
| [1] I write a lot of research code. Many of my peers
| write just quick and dirty code. This is fine, I do this
| on my first pass too. But once something gets going it is
| incredibly important to have flexible code, even at the
| cost of optimization! (obviously depends on need and
| stage of code) because you have to constantly modify
| things. They may often be faster to first result but I'm
| faster to "completion" and often can be more thorough. If
| things are hardcoded then it is hard to modify and easy
| to make mistakes (did you check all the places?). If
| things are hard to change, then you're discouraged to
| answer questions as they arise. But I also worked as a
| mechanical engineer and an experimental physicist
| previously doing R&D. So I saw that development has
| various stages and it requires rebuilds along the way
| with the new build being aimed at the stage of
| development not the final goal. A beautiful thing about
| software is that the performance costs of "repairability"
| or "modifiability" are extremely low and often non-
| existent. So it is almost always advantageous to write
| that way. First dirty, then modifiable, then optimize
| what and only what needs to be optimized.
|
| [2] There's an important concept here: Randomness/Noise
| is the measurement of uncertainty. You can't know
| something to infinite precision, so you have to include
| some uncertainty. Meaning, if you want to be more
| accurate, you have to account for "randomness" or
| "noise". If you just take numbers at face value then you
| are evaluating incorrectly. Numbers aren't enough, in any
| situation. Ignoring them will make you less precise and
| often bit you in the ass. It always does this at the
| worst possible time and worse, it is often hard to
| recognize where the ass biting came from.
| andrepd wrote:
| Nice blogpost (genuinely, not ironic), but entirely
| unrelated to the issue being discussed.
| snailmailstare wrote:
| They've clearly implemented prejustice, but not correctly.
| Find that class action lawyer and go fishing!
| godelski wrote:
| There's more egregious cases though that I think illustrate the
| problem at large: no one wants accountability.
|
| A very famous and egregious example is the XBox user who got
| banned for listing "Fort Gay" as their place of residence[0].
| This is a problem that was caused by automation and honestly,
| could have entirely been resolved with automation too[1]. But
| it was also a problem that could have been resolved in under a
| minute were a human given real power to do anything (or
| recognize that the cheapest labor usually isn't the cheapest
| labor).
|
| Another is how there's a family suing Google for directing a
| man to drive off a bridge[2]. Hold your reservations because
| this is kinda like the McDonald's Coffee lawsuit[3]. The bridge
| had collapsed in 2013 and the man drove off in 2022. There's
| multiple parties that share some fault here (like city for not
| marking and barricading the bridge[4]), but the issue was
| reported many times and what kind of live map system isn't
| updating their maps within a decade?
|
| I frequently report spam, phishing attacks, and all sorts of
| stuff. Nothing gets through. Same with Google maps. Same with
| literally any app. I can even send to dev channels with patches
| and things often do not go through. I can sit on a PR for
| months while others are asking for a merge and then a dev comes
| back and says "oh, change color to colour" or something, I'll
| repatch that night, and then the dev goes radio silent
| (seriously, it is more work to ask me to make that change than
| it is to do it yourself...).
|
| I have so many frustrations, but the root of it all is that I
| can't fix problems I find. Even if I can create the fix myself,
| I can't get them upstream so I don't have to patch every
| fucking patch that comes down. I think a lot comes down to our
| mentality of "move fast and break things." This is fine for
| learning but not fine for production. Who cleans up all the
| mess left behind? The debt just grows and compounds. I know
| mitigating future costs is "invisible" but often we're talking
| about 15 minutes of work. If you don't have that kind of slack
| in your system then you're doomed. It's like having exactly the
| number of lifeboats on a ship such that you can accommodate
| every passenger. That's dumb. You have to over accommodate. Or
| else you get the Titanic (which underaccommodated, despite
| being capable of overaccomodating).
|
| [0] https://kotaku.com/xbox-live-gamer-suspended-for-living-
| in-f...
|
| [1] Step 1: Check user's location. If they aren't masking it,
| you'll find that they are located in "Fort Gay". Step 2: If it
| is masked, plug the fucking location into Google Maps or some
| database with a list of cities and check for a match. Done.
| Yay. 30 minutes of programming and you saved the company
| hundreds of dollars in customer service fees and millions of
| dollars in reputation rebuilding "fees".
|
| [2] https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/21/us/father-death-google-gps-
| dr...
|
| [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restau...
|
| [4] I highly advocate citizen action here. If you live near
| there, put a pile of rocks or anything in the way to make a
| barricade. Law comes after you? Fuck the law. Besides, I'm sure
| it'll make a great news story. We have those for people filling
| in potholes, this seems much more sensational.
| ithkuil wrote:
| The Scunthorpe effect
| gopher_space wrote:
| XBox Fort Gay was a classic example of the Scunthorpe
| Problem[0]. I suppose we need a formal Scunthorpe Test, but
| this seems like you could solve the Problem with a popup
| checkbox and text field whenever your filter flags an
| account.
|
| The seminal Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names[1]
| looks at similar territory from a different perspective.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scunthorpe_problem
|
| [1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-
| programmers-...
| godelski wrote:
| I agree. But also at the root of it is that a problem can't
| be escalated such that a thinking human that has actionable
| power can be involved.
|
| The fallacy here is a belief that the filter is perfect. Or
| really, that any process can be perfect. Even if one could
| be perfect at a specific moment in time, well time marches
| on and things change.
|
| I'm all for automation but it has to be recognized that the
| thing will always break and likely in a way you don't
| expect. Even in ways you __couldn't__ expect. So you have
| to design with that failure in mind. A lot of these
| "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About <X>" could summarized
| as "Programmers Believe They Can Accurately Predict All
| Reasonable Situations". I added "reasonable" on purpose.
| The world is just complex and we can only see a very
| limited amount. The best way to be accurate is to know that
| you're biased, even if you can't tell in which way you're
| biased.
| gopher_space wrote:
| Yeah, I don't really get the idea behind automatic
| filtration without an edge case basket. Hubris or lack of
| resources?
| bigs wrote:
| Sounds pretty close to the dystopian predictions.......
| miohtama wrote:
| It's called criminalisation of compliance and pre-crime. It
| exists because there is a compliance-industrial complex selling
| software to create compliance. More compliance, more revenue.
| Social discussion does not matter, because what's good and
| what's bad is determined by software and compliance companies.
|
| Here is a book about it:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Compliance-Industrial-Complex-Operati...
| randysalami wrote:
| There 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 wrote:
| The real challenge would be how you soften the game enough that
| players don't immediately lose all hope and go outside to touch
| grass.
| kurthr wrote:
| In game crypto currency betting!
|
| What could go wrong?
| randysalami wrote:
| Great 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 wrote:
| Once 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 wrote:
| I found this firsthand account of a gig worker trapped by the
| algorithm pretty compelling:
| https://zerohplovecraft.substack.com/p/the-gig-economy
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I didn't open that, but I love the domain name.
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| This is fascinating writing, but there's no way it isn't
| fiction.
| Tossrock wrote:
| Spoiler!
| titanomachy wrote:
| > we're pointless argument vegetables growing in walled
| gardens, harvested for the benefit of robots that serve us ads.
|
| That line hooked me
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Searching for deeper meaning in some javascript gluecode bug made
| by an intern, now thats whathehackernews worthy.
| largest_lad wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| I 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.
| casey2 wrote:
| The 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.
| metalman wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| The 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/
|
| 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.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Gig 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 wrote:
| This 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.
| nateglims wrote:
| > I really do not understand why governments aren't working
| hard to make this kind of gig-economy illegal.
|
| It makes money and the current governing/legal doctrine says
| the government should give a lot of leeway to that. Biden has
| been touted as the most pro-labor president since about LBJ,
| but a lot of this is just letting the NLRB mediate every
| individual starbucks that unionized.
| zkid18 wrote:
| I recently learned that a courier in Panama can earn around
| $1,400 a month. Yes, you likely have to work six days a week,
| but that's well above the average salary in the country.
|
| I'm not sure how the sentiment is in developed countries like
| the US and the UK. Still, here in Latin America, this presents
| an opportunity for poorer communities to provide dinner for a
| family.
| constantcrying wrote:
| In most of the western world the sentiment is that basic
| worker rights are a necessary element of social stability.
| And that just because a job "presents an opportunity for
| poorer communities to provide dinner for a family" it should
| not be excluded from receiving basic labor protections.
| conception wrote:
| In CA at least, Uber effectively bought the protection through
| an effective ad campaign to pass by popular vote an effectively
| unrecoverable law to protect themselves.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > I really do not understand why governments aren't working
| hard to make this kind of gig-economy illegal.
|
| Because there's a large number of people who take the writings
| of Ayan Rand and the policies of Ronald Regan as the best way
| to run government.
|
| Workers' rights are being eroded because we've slowly
| dismantled and privatized as much of the government as
| possible.
|
| Workers' rights are incompatible with small government and or
| libertarian ideals. Much like other rights such as civil
| rights. Or rights to clean water, air, and food.
|
| Big government isn't perfect, but for its flaws the social
| benefits of having a large organization with a bigger stick to
| beat in line robber barons whose entire goal is to undermine
| rights as much as possible to leach maximum profit from
| society.
| constantcrying wrote:
| >Because there's a large number of people who take the
| writings of Ayan Rand and the policies of Ronald Regan as the
| best way to run government.
|
| Are these people currently running e.g. the UK?
| ge96 wrote:
| Not sure if Uber Eats falls under gig work (think so) but I'm
| glad to have it, I can just turn it on and go. Granted in my
| case it's not my only job. I usually get $20/hr I know I'm
| destroying my own car in the process, get in a car crash I'm on
| my own. But again it's extra money on demand.
| benced wrote:
| Because it provides an extremely convenient service that has
| made life better for most people? People seem to forgot that
| this class of job used to not exist in our lifetimes. Was it
| better to be a low-skill worker on the job market in 2010 when
| these apps didn't exist?
|
| If there are specific labor violations you think are taking
| place, the appropriate remedy is regulation, not banning.
| p3rls wrote:
| Eh, I feel the same way about google search
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