What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips • Hacker News Board

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#371

Post by csharptwdec19 » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #335

smt88 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Americans can't manage daily necessities (groceries, childcare, doctor's visits, etc.) without a car. Then maybe you ask why they don't have a cheaper car. Generally, a cheaper car costs far more to maintain. The total annual cost of ownership of a 2-year-old Camry is far lower than a 10-year-old Camry. But to get that lower cost, you have to temporarily convert more of your money into that car asset. End result…

> The total annual cost of ownership of a 2-year-old Camry is far lower than a 10-year-old Camry. Really? Maybe 10 years ago but cars have become remarkably good recently. I wouldn’t expect a 10 year old car to give you many problems beyond maybe the difficulty of sourcing parts.

A lot of the push towards fuel efficiency led to tech that was in some ways or another half baked.

Examples:

- Direct Injection : Good for Emissions and Fuel economy, but many first generation systems have carbon build-up issues (Toyota D4S and -newer- Ford Ecoboosts don't have this problem because they have 2 sets of injectors)

- All the transmissions: Ford's DCT is notorious at this point for reliability issues, Hyundai's DCT is not looking so hot so far, Nissan's CVT is a joke, Subaru's CVT is a bit of a diceroll as to whether it blows up at 100k or not, the ZF 9 speed that many manufacturers uses has issues...

I'll note that SOME of these are newer problems, but most of them started happening around 10 years ago and are only finally getting smoothed out.

As a counterpoint, however, the costs of all of these newer safety systems is driving up repair costs in accidents, as well as the insurance premiums for newer cars.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#372

Post by Balvarez » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #339

Aozi wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that those countries don't have a government mandated minimum wage. That doesn't mean there is no minimum wage in practice though. Scandinavian countries have massive powerful trade unions that work to negotiate standards and wages for everyone. Even if you're not actively part of a union, your employer will almost certainly use Collective Labor Agreement negotiated by the trade union. This CLA guarantee…

Even with unions this probably wouldn’t happen in America. People just don’t organize, strike, or care about their civic duties or expressing their opinion. I don’t know what happened to us. Maybe we’re all just lazy now?

I suspect that US laws have made unions mostly toothless. I know this has happened to teachers unions. It's illegal for teachers unions in TN to strike(I don't know about other states). What power does a union have if they can't strike? Also Unions have been demonized in the US media and now public perception of unions is extremely low. Which is sad because they're one of the few tools workers have to bargain for their own rights.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#373

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

dmode wrote: post #160

Why can’t we have normal businesses where you employ your workers and charge your customers the real cost of the transaction ? If that is not viable, don’t start the business to begin with. Let’s just go back to first principles, can we ?

But what about "move fast and break things"? What about early employee's equity? What about the billion dollar valuations? What about justifying 500k/year engineers' salaries to over-engineer things you can do with a boring web framework and a handful of servers?

Why would you ever consider running a legitimate, profitable, down-to-earth business when you can do the above instead?

This is also why I quit the startup scene and despise most of them (including some that I used to work at). I try my best to focus on local, real businesses. They might be legacy, you might find "uncool" technologies but most of them at least have a real product they sell at a profit without screwing anybody and the work-life balance is often better.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#374

Post by uptown » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:01 PM UTC

Almost none of these DoorDash / Uber / Lyft drivers are doing the math with consideration of the wear-and-tear on their vehicles, nor the increased likelihood of accidents given they're out on the road more than they otherwise would have been. These are net negative "jobs".

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#375

Post by aquaticsunset » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

marketingfool wrote: post #354

2rsf wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes we can, that's how it works in Sweden and AFAIK in many other European countries. Tips are not expected, and are meant only for extraordinary service. The base pay is decent and so are the benefits like vacation, pension etc.

Have you been to Europe? The standard of living is below what is expected in the states. It's nice to say removing tips and adding vacation is what workers want, but how will United States workers afford premium phones and buy larger houses?

I get why this is being downvoted, because treating an entire group of people as having one mindset and expectations isn't great, but it's a valid call out.

Expectations are different. It's an entirely different set of cultures. More space, more premium goods, more modern conveniences seem to be common goals more Americans share than not. We like new cars and big televisions. So it's not surprising that employment compensation is oriented toward that, and less toward things Europeans tend to value like healthcare, social services, etc.

This all breaks down, of course, when wages are low _and_ you don't have a social safety net.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#376

Post by adamsea » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:03 PM UTC

fxtentacle wrote: post #253

franga2000 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any other country other than the US where paying service workers below minimum wage is legal or acceptable? I've been around a fair bit of Europe and surroundings and I've never encountered the US system.

There's also no other developed country that has drug problems like the US. If you stop treating people with respect, they need some way to cope. First painkillers, then the opioid crisis, now alcohol-related deaths are on the rise. And I recently read that the new hip thing are LSD nose spray trips timed to your lunch break.

While like any other substance LSD can be abused it doesn’t make sense to mention it in the same breath as the opioid crisis or alcoholism.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#377

Post by squiggleblaz » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:04 PM UTC

eru wrote: post #265

franga2000 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any other country other than the US where paying service workers below minimum wage is legal or acceptable? I've been around a fair bit of Europe and surroundings and I've never encountered the US system.

Germany didn't even have a minimum wage until fairly recently. The Scandinavian countries don't have a minimum wage either, see eg https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/12/nordic-countri... Neither does Switzerland. What's with the American obsession with outlawing poor people's jobs? (My adopted home country, one of the richest places in the world and one of the best places to live, doesn't have a minimum wage…

Minimum wages don't outlaw poor people's jobs. They just cause poor people to be paid more since the more money that moves from rich to poor, the richer the whole society gets. You need to keep the money moving.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#378

Post by ganeshkrishnan » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:04 PM UTC

TAForObvReasons wrote: post #211

Sevrene wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just a natural outcome of the way venture capital funding works at the moment. When you care more about speculation than what's actually fundamentally occuring, you're going to get businesses funded that are not even able to survive on those basic fundamentals. If it weren't backed by large capital, it couldn't exist. This isn't always a bad thing, but on a whole, it does distort the market. At some point you…

I thought the plan was Dumping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy) Step 1) Use VC money to subsidize the price so that the market price is below cost Step 2) Continue to use VC money to subsidize while competitors, who don't have the same cash, lose customers and eventually contract or die off Step 3) Once you are the only real player, use your dominant position to raise prices

Step 3 is to IPO and sell the shares back to public.

Most of these pump and dump startups just IPO and their shares are brought via funds and such.

I bet income inequality gradually rising due to these VC funded startups

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#379

Post by lotsofpulp » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:04 PM UTC

fouc wrote: post #368

sschueller wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can, stop using and supporting these predatory companies. Never use Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Uber Eats, AirBnB etc. No exception irregardless how easy or cheap it may be. It's a small sacrifice but can and will make a difference. Using these services to me is like asking a waiter to pay for part of my meal. When it comes around to paying the bill are you able to face someone and ask them to pay for part of what they…

OYO hotels seems like another one based on this model. Heck maybe avoid most or all of the SoftBank funded startups?

Oyo is worse than the others. They think they can offer the same type of hotel quality without employing all the quality inspectors of Marriott/Hilton/IHG/Hyatt/etc. I don’t think any educated adult could be dumb enough to fall for that.

I have to assume any VC taking part in a business that needs additional human labor to scale and hence has significant marginal costs is simply betting on being able to dump the company in the public markets.

Re: What DoorDash pays, after expenses, and what’s happening with tips

#380

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, Jan 17, 2020, 2:05 PM UTC

sschueller wrote: post #207

dmode wrote: post #160

Why can’t we have normal businesses where you employ your workers and charge your customers the real cost of the transaction ? If that is not viable, don’t start the business to begin with. Let’s just go back to first principles, can we ?

We can, stop using and supporting these predatory companies. Never use Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Uber Eats, AirBnB etc. No exception irregardless how easy or cheap it may be. It's a small sacrifice but can and will make a difference. Using these services to me is like asking a waiter to pay for part of my meal. When it comes around to paying the bill are you able to face someone and ask them to pay for part of what they…

I've stopped using the "move fast and break things" garbage but for an additional reason: customer service is outsourced to monkeys and respect isn't a thing. Some of these companies would argue and bullshit me about a 10£ refund on a 2 year old account which has been used daily and netted them over a thousand in revenue. Eventually did a chargeback (it isn't about the money even, but being treated like shit meant I was out for revenge) and switched to the local companies that big tech was supposed to "disrupt".