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

payup.wtf

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

#411

Post by mabbo »

Is anyone else starting to get the feeling that "gig economy" is this generation's "multi-level marketing"?

People who don't know any better get sold on the "be your own boss, earn what you put in" concept. Reality doesn't match expectations. The people work their asses off and wind up with a lot less money than they expected because costs and actual spent time aren't taken into account. The people they're working for continue to make lots of money. People quit, but are soon replaced by the next sucker.

MLMs still exist and are going strong, but culturally we're more aware of what they are. But maybe we're becoming more aware of what "gigs" are.

Perhaps, and I both love and hate myself for saying this, 'the gig is up'?

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

#412

Post by dsr_ »

swiley wrote: post #395
boh wrote: post #341

It's becoming abundantly clear the real innovation from on-demand services (including ride-sharing companies), is their ability to transfer more money from labor to capital with complex pay structures. For many if not most of these companies, its their only means towards profitability. For instance, any rise in revenue Uber experienced in the last 3 years was exclusively due to cuts in pay for drivers. Tech has long…

I expected to see something like this here. I had a period where I wasn't doing any class work but didn't have my degree and couldn't get a job because of that. The ability to trade time and tires for some of the extra VC money was kind of awesome honestly and I'd imagine it gives people who are in worse situations options they really need (essentially borrowing against car components.) I know in a few years it will…

The article points out that for many DoorDash workers, they aren't getting paid a positive sum, even if they count their time as worth zero.

Look, we have the technical ability to handle millions of people as hourly workers on timescale granularities of seconds. Require these companies to treat their "contractors" as part-time employees being paid minimum wage: start paying them when they accept their first job on day, pay them for periods of up to ten minutes between jobs, and stop being reviled by everyone who hates slave labor.

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

#413

Post by throwaway2048 »

throwaway55554 wrote: post #386
mschuetz wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not going to happen, the majority will always be drawn towards the cheaper choices. Work conditions and minimum pay are things that need to be regulated, because people won't chose their burger place based on how much their staff earns.

Increasingly, it is getting harder for most people to not focus on the cheaper choices.

the two are related deeply.

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

#414

Post by squiggleblaz »

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…

Is AirBnb as bad as the rest? I had understood the problem was that it was so lucrative it hurt people looking for a place to live. This is very different from the problem with Uber, Doordash etc. In Uber and Doordash, the person being hurt is a member of the transaction; in the case of Airbnb, I had thought they're a third party who couldn't get in.

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

#415

Post by devmunchies »

dangus wrote: post #403
devmunchies wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's just too many drivers I think. interesting, I'm desperate for more drivers. I run a side business that delivers cookies, drivers do just under 30 deliveries a day (about 3-4 every hour) and make minimum wage plus 100% of tips are split at the end of pay period. it ends up being about $3/delivery in tips, which is an extra $9/hr for a total of $21/hr (minimum wage is $12). A driver could theoretically make ov…

.

We only have one location so our overhead is too high. Once we add a couple more locations then we could afford that. We're profitable but not enough to raise wages. I'm not even getting paid from my own startup yet.

>poverty wages

This is the California minumum wage, but our location is in fresno which is a lower cost of living than the bay or LA.

>Gee, I wonder why nobody wants to work for you?

chill. Starting a company is hard.

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

#416

Post by hombre_fatal »

PanosJee wrote: post #235
arcticbull wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean the idea is that you operate at a loss until the economies of scale catch up and you begin being profitable. Starting with the low price let’s you maximize growth, and you make it up on the back end. That’s not a problematic system. What is problematic is if there are no economies of scale.

Economy of scale applies to production think chips & screens. What economy of scale can DoorDash achieve? Persuade everyone to be paid below fair wage? Push the margin of restaurants down?

Most restaurants in my city use UberEats. A fraction of them have bothered to setup with the 2nd most popular competitor. Fewer yet with the 3rd. And you never see the 4th or 5th. UberEats becomes an obvious money-on-the-table might-as-well for everyone with its incumbency.

Same with the user perspective. I use UberEats because it has all the restaurants. I'm not going to download the 2nd most popular app.

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

#417

Post by beatgammit »

Sevrene wrote: post #175
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 ?

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 feel like the VC game is a massive bubble, similar to what happened in 2000. There are a ton of high profile startups with tons of VC capital that (from the outside) don't seem to have a clear path to profitability, yet they continue to grow regardless. Sometimes they find a niche before going bankrupt, sometimes they don't. It's a huge house of cards, and I'm worried what will happen in the next recession.

I have business ideas, but I'm completely avoiding the VC game for now because I don't want to play the "build now, figure out profitability later" game where I'll likely be be forced into a profit model I don't agree with. My current approach is:

1. brainstorm solutions to problems I see 2. brainstorm a few profit models for the best ideas 3. Build an MVP, waiving the profit model initially (free trial and whatnot) to validate the idea 4. Implement profit model 5. Seek funding for growth 6. Exit

The VC game seems to go 1, 5, 3, 2, 6 (step 4 comes when?), which seems super broken. It seems like VC funding -> IPO is the profit model for many projects, and the board (after IPO) is left to figure out how to sustain that.

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

#418

Post by scarface74 »

Lavery wrote: post #399
scarface74 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could cutting drivers pay without cutting prices to increase demand raise revenue ? It would raise profit possibly or in Uber’s case reduce losses.

The cost to Uber users is not the same as revenue to Uber corporate. Uber corporate revenue is net of driver pay.

You pay Uber and Uber pays drivers. Revenue by definition is money that Uber gets before expenses.

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

#419

Post by Balanceinfinity »

It's a free country - the drivers can choose to take the assignments or choose not to. What they (and customers) are entitled to are accurate information so they can make choices about whether this is in their interest. It's easy to say "Door dash should pay more," (and they probably should), but that might cut customer usage by 40%, which means half of the people driving wouldn't be able to drive. The one thing that Door Dash shouldn't be able to do is duck payroll taxes, so that these people have social security benefits.

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

#420

Post by nsxwolf »

throwaway55554 wrote: post #385
asah wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can, but.. - incumbent taxis are also predatory services that abuse drivers, arguably worse than Uber/Lyft - and they're a shitty rider experience in many many ways. - hotels are OK but rarely provide kitchens, let alone friendly hosts who bake you killer banana bread (yesterday's stay) - delivery from individual restaurants is rarely available at all, and thus you're going to call a Postmates/etc to help pickup.…

One has to decide, do I give up some comforts to make things better for others or not? I'm sure it's usually pretty easy to convince oneself that others won't give up the comforts so nothing will change and just continue using the services.

How does it make things better for those people? By taking away their opportunity? So they go home, and rethink their life, and come up with a better way to make money?

Great, but is taking away bad jobs really the best way to do that?

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