101–110 of 124 posts
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Not employees but contractors. If they are employees they can be forced to sign non-competes.
NYC made non competes illegal a few weeks ago.
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There’s a competitor in India called BluSmart right now that’s running all electric, fully owned fleets. The drivers are paid fair hourly wages and thus have no incentive to refuse rides or not wait. The cars are simply parked at earmarked charging spots in the city. Their own vetted drivers can unlock the cars at any point and start picking up passengers before dropping it off at a charging station. The rides are so…
> ...fully owned fleets. The drivers are paid fair hourly wages... > The rides are somehow cheaper, have no surge pricing, and from some insider reports, has profitable unit economics. So a fleet of depreciating assets with a major infrastructure dependency, lower implied gross margins, and word from insiders of a positive bottom line without publicly disclosed financials to sanity check claims against. Curious to se…
Tax deducting depreciating assets ;)
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Yeah but you can’t leave the warehouse without being fired. Gig workers can choose to only work when it’s peak hours then stay home. That said, no one is forcing DoorDash to allow people to log in. I think they should have to pay for any part of an hour in which they allow a worker to login. And additionally if they refuse a login, they must continue refusing it for a minimum of 1 hour. This way they will be incentiv…
I mostly see them take the train in to the city with their ebike to deliver. Between deliveries they aren’t able to just sit at home for 10 minutes.
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So? The employer can refuse to contract with them if they can't fulfill their obligations
How will they stay in business? Of course they would have to raise prices significantly, but people just wouldn’t order takeout anymore and would rather pick up themselves. Other than the obvious authoritarianism, that would also harm the environment with people driving a lot more.
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> ...fully owned fleets. The drivers are paid fair hourly wages... > The rides are somehow cheaper, have no surge pricing, and from some insider reports, has profitable unit economics. So a fleet of depreciating assets with a major infrastructure dependency, lower implied gross margins, and word from insiders of a positive bottom line without publicly disclosed financials to sanity check claims against. Curious to se…
>So a fleet of depreciating assets Tax deducting depreciating assets ;)
What a crap business model these companies have if they rely on haggling over legal loopholes to operate. The business case, at best, is the status quo remains with material threats to their operations if these laws change. This is a lose-lose for everyone. Ignore the morality arguments, why risk your money on something with almost zero upside and all this downside? Suing the government is not a sign of strength
That said I don't think a win here would help the current workers. Like all minimum wage laws this will reduce demand (obviously people don't want to pay a 12$ delivery fee for an order of $20), push business towards even shadier employment practices and medium term towards automation / "self-service".
As much as I would want it not to be true, the low-skill end of the employment market will always be easily replaceable and consumers won't be willing to pay unlimited amounts for something they could easily do themselves. As such it would help people a lot more if there was an easy path towards acquiring skills, guaranteeing that these bottom-rung jobs will be only temporary.
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There’s a competitor in India called BluSmart right now that’s running all electric, fully owned fleets. The drivers are paid fair hourly wages and thus have no incentive to refuse rides or not wait. The cars are simply parked at earmarked charging spots in the city. Their own vetted drivers can unlock the cars at any point and start picking up passengers before dropping it off at a charging station. The rides are so…
They just raised $42 million[1]. Where are you getting the info that they are profitable? [1]: https://www.livemint.com/companies/start-ups/blusmart-mobili...
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> The city is just being stupid on this one. Why? Don't hire delivery drivers of you don't need them.
These companies don’t provide a service. They provide a marketplace and collect fees. It’s no different than a brokerage.
It is not a marketplace from the drivers perspective.
What a crap business model these companies have if they rely on haggling over legal loopholes to operate. The business case, at best, is the status quo remains with material threats to their operations if these laws change. This is a lose-lose for everyone. Ignore the morality arguments, why risk your money on something with almost zero upside and all this downside? Suing the government is not a sign of strength
I fully agree that these "blitzscale" business have a horrible business model that is not sound, both economically (depends on free funding) and morally (the goal is to corner the market or at least get an oligopoly and then exploit your position). That said I don't think a win here would help the current workers. Like all minimum wage laws this will reduce demand (obviously people don't want to pay a 12$ delivery fe…
I realize there's psychology at play here but to an extent aren't we already doing that through essentially obligatory tips?
> As such it would help people a lot more if there was an easy path towards acquiring skills, guaranteeing that these bottom-rung jobs will be only temporary
When the service industry worker has to spend all their time working in order to make even a marginally livable wage the path is to pay them more money, directly or indirectly. The problem is exacerbated in high COL areas, and sure you can say "ok well just move", but broadly speaking you still need someone to do these tasks and that pool is dwindling.
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We had ubiquitous fast and free local restaurant delivery in NYC for decades before these apps showed up. Before cell phones even. Every hallway had a pile of menus. It’s not really better now and killing these apps wouldn’t make it worse.
That's nice, but the suburbs never had that unless you're ordering pizza or maybe Chinese food. A single restaurant needs a lot of volume to hire its own full-time driver. Amortizing a driver sitting on his couch to come to any restaurant in the area was a big change.