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

#561

Post by o-__-o » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

csharptwdec19 wrote: post #371

taneq wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, Hy…

Re the direct injection comment.. one small trick can save you $300 on engine flushes from carbon buildup: you can get an oil catch can installed for under $100 that solves this problem.

But you can’t argue direct injection is worse than older fuel injection. You save more gas, get better performance (even though you don’t get as many valves), and have a cooler running engine with direct injection. That’s a net positive for the environment and your wallet over the life of your car

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

#562

Post by swiley » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

pergadad wrote: post #543

swiley wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll agree you absolutely have to watch what you're doing and count miles and whatnot, but having the option is a powerful thing (even when you're making negative money) and I wonder if regulating it too aggressively might take that away.

Imagine all the alternative ways this valuable human time could be used. Do you really think the majority of people feel empowered and freely do this, or is it rather that they are stuck in a negative loop and can't get out. Also to highlight that currently the government is subsidising these companies by paying food stamps and Medicaid (in the case of the US), and the workers are subsidising them by taking any and a…

I agree human time is undervalued in the modern economy and it’s often waisted, but I think door dash because of its flexibility might actually be part of a change that results in it being more valued rather than less.

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

#563

Post by swiley » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

kaonashi wrote: post #535

swiley wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

in the meantime, they've driven competitors out of business with predatory pricing, and are the only game in town

This was not the case where I live, when door dash didn’t pay me what I wanted I’d deliver with Postmates instead and vice versa.

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

#564

Post by brianwawok » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

xyzzyz wrote: post #548

Seenso wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> It turns out, that number is very low, so low that most people aren't rationally taking those jobs. Factoring in depreciation, I often hear that they loose money to work (not always, but damn close). > This is simply hard to believe. There are over a million driving for Uber. An overwhelming majority of them must be making money, because the idea that any significant fraction of a million of people is in the red a…

Million of people are not rational and naive? I doubt that. Look, the costs with Uber are pretty straightforward: you have car payments, insurance, periodic maintenance and finally gas. People really aren’t too stupid to realize that their Uber income doesn’t cover their car payment. IRS has a nice estimate of average cost of driving, it’s 58 cents per mile. If you are doing more than that, you are making money, and…

The cost to run and maintain a car is not uniform however. The per mile cost of a 2019 Escalade is not the same as a 2016 Prius.

There is room for profit I am sure, but also lots of ways to wear out your car many years earlier than you had expected to.

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

#565

Post by Data_Junkie » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 6:05 PM UTC

Another system of mass stupidity. Our "leaders" should be absolutely ashamed of this disgusting "advancement" they have allowed to perpetuate uncontrolled. It's pathetic, and everyone knows it. Yet once again nothing will happen to improve things, they will "tweak" the algorithm and call it a day.

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

#566

Post by birdyrooster » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

I recently ordered food from a Bay Area Mexican restaurant. I was floored by the $63 total from Door Dash, so I decided to pick up the order myself. Upon arriving to the restaurant, the price came to $60. I found that the prices at their restaurant were higher than the DoorDash menu prices by about 15%. This means that the restaurant is forgoing 15% for their food just to be affordable enough to get orders.

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

#567

Post by BelleOfTheBall » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:06 PM UTC

malandrew wrote: post #544

BelleOfTheBall wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, are there any more ethical alternatives to AirBnB? My partner travels a lot for work and doesn't like staying in hotels. He's fine with staying in rooms vs. whole apartments (which seems to be the biggest strike on AirBnB's model) but it's pretty tough to dig up credible renters for each place he visits. Is there a Craigslist-like option or are hotels the best bet if we decide to drop AirBnB?

I can't think of a tech company with more ethical well-meaning employees than AirBnB. Have you actually ever interacted with someone who works there? They even have a pretty strong ethics/value interview to weed out unethical people. If you don't believe me, go apply for yourself.

This isn't about the moral qualities of people there, it's about the impact the company has on the housing market and how it treats AirBnB owners. There are links in the comments here to studies on the harm AirBnB does, nobody said a thing about the employees being unethical.

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

#568

Post by chii » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 2:18 AM UTC

beatgammit wrote: post #464

Dylan16807 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is how to turn car-value into cash. You have a car worth $10003 and your current needs can be filled by converting $3 per hour. chii is suggesting you sell the car. That converts the entire car at once. Then you don't have to spend any hours! As an optimization on top of that, they suggest you store the value in a bond, and pull $3 per hour out of the bond instead. The real problem with this idea is that…

What do you need a car for? If it's just to go shopping, consider paying for delivery services instead of being the delivery service. If it's to get to a day job, compare car ownership to mass transit or bike committing. All of these cases can be estimated fairly easily (IRS allows deducting ~$0.50/mile, which is a good first estimate for total cost of ownership per mile). Unless a car is a certain model, it's a liab…

> assume that owning a car is better

it is better, since you cannot do a spur of the moment trip without a car.

It's just that some people over-pay for a car, so you're right about most people not doing the maths.

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

#569

Post by frobozz » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 4:12 PM UTC

ramraj07 wrote: post #362

frobozz wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember life before Uber and I'd never heard of Seamless, until your comment. These businesses genuinely just used VC funding and exploitative contracts to undercut perfectly viable existing services. Before Uber, I'd take public transport, phone for a minicab or walk to their office to get one. (and I still do) Before Deliveroo, I'd call the local takeaway and get them to deliver, or walk there and collect it mys…

Looks like you haven't lived in a city like Dallas. Public transport is a joke (which I did resort to when I finally run out of food; will take me half a day to do groceries and I need to come back home and shower). Cabs will take thirty minutes to come to your home and will charge outrageous amounts (4x what Uber used to charge initially). When I say I'd just sit at home I wasn't joking. I and many friends (mostly w…

That's true. I have only lived in walkable areas. This is because I have not owned a car until recently.

I understand that public transport and minicabs are poor in tiny villages where the only amenities are a pub and a church, but I assume that when something is a city, it is a large built-up area with all the normal amenities that I expect of a city (shops, offices, entertainment, bus routes, possibly a light railway etc.). Is Dallas really not like that? What is it? Just miles and miles of big houses?

Out of curiosity, what caused you to live in a car-dependent area without a car?

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

#570

Post by Sevrene » Tue, Jan 21, 2020, 8:46 AM UTC

beatgammit wrote: post #417

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 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…

Sorry for the late reply. I think you're probably right about it being in a bubble, but I'm not sure we'll see it having a large crash that we typically associate with bubbles (some people would even say there is no bubble, if it does not pop).

VCs are backed by large amounts of capital because most government policy has been to stimulate growth and the only way they know how is by giving away large loans at insanely cheap (in many cases even negative in real terms) interest. This means that VCs can actually lose out on money by not taking those loans and investing it, and that in turn drives a lot of speculatory investment, as well as inflates asset and stock prices which the government then uses to show how good it is.

This is why you correctly spotted that step 4 is not a requirement for start ups anymore, because so long as you are big enough to be speculated on, you're good for funding. Whether that means it's broken really depends upon your definition of working, as a lot of people believe it's fine because all seems to be going great. This is the gambler's fallacy. It's all fine, until it isn't.