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Sibyl – Prediction Service at DoorDash (2020)

doordash.engineering

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Re: Sibyl – Prediction Service at DoorDash (2020)

#11

Post by Forge36 »

I just cancelled my membership (was free with a credit card i already had).

They offered a "free membership" for 10 months "at a $120 value" (which used to be $60 a year), however I couldn't figure out how to activate it.

I can't figure out what the value is over other services/direct from restaurant. Like another poster, most of the suggestions were bad. "Do you want dairy queen?" Or "quick you can order free from Kwik Trip in the next 10 minutes".

The post makes the suggestions look good. My top recommendation is the cheesecake factory. Followed by McDonalds. Who are they targeting? Who is getting McDonalds delivered?

Re: Sibyl – Prediction Service at DoorDash (2020)

#12

Post by sepiasaucer »

People are commenting on the quality of Door Dash predictions, but that isn’t what the article is about. The article is just about the architecture for high speed/throughput of prediction requests.

I would be interested in knowing how much improvement they saw by using C++ or Kotlin. Also, I don’t really understand what compute service is actually used to run the model predictions in this framework.

Re: Sibyl – Prediction Service at DoorDash (2020)

#13

Post by decremental »

Forge36 wrote: post #11

I just cancelled my membership (was free with a credit card i already had). They offered a "free membership" for 10 months "at a $120 value" (which used to be $60 a year), however I couldn't figure out how to activate it. I can't figure out what the value is over other services/direct from restaurant. Like another poster, most of the suggestions were bad. "Do you want dairy queen?" Or "quick you can order free from K…

I get McDonald's delivered all the time. Can't beat 13 minute delivery for coffee in the morning.

Re: Sibyl – Prediction Service at DoorDash (2020)

#14

Post by dangrossman »

Forge36 wrote: post #11

I just cancelled my membership (was free with a credit card i already had). They offered a "free membership" for 10 months "at a $120 value" (which used to be $60 a year), however I couldn't figure out how to activate it. I can't figure out what the value is over other services/direct from restaurant. Like another poster, most of the suggestions were bad. "Do you want dairy queen?" Or "quick you can order free from K…

I get McDonalds delivered. Why not?

Re: Sibyl – Prediction Service at DoorDash (2020)

#15

Post by Hokusai »

monkeydust wrote: post #4

I'm yet to have the 'wow' moment from any recommendation service.... Netflix, Amazon, Deliveroo... At best I get the 'meh why not'. It's obviously a hard problem to solve.

> It's obviously a hard problem to solve.

Or maybe that is not the problem they are trying to solve. They optimize to sell as much as possible, not to get you the best experience.

It's like asking for the most shopped articles that are the ones farther away. Is it difficult to design better supermarkets? Or are they just optimizing for you to spend more time and money inside?

Re: Sibyl – Prediction Service at DoorDash (2020)

#16

Post by ec109685 »

o_____________o wrote: post #10
monkeydust wrote: post #4

I'm yet to have the 'wow' moment from any recommendation service.... Netflix, Amazon, Deliveroo... At best I get the 'meh why not'. It's obviously a hard problem to solve.

Try TikTok for a few weeks, genuinely

TikTok is optimized to get as much signal as possible from users, as well as they were smart about getting some signal from the videos themselves: https://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2020/9/18/seeing-like-an-algo...

Something like Amazon gets very little signal after you bought something whether you really liked it or not.

Re: Sibyl – Prediction Service at DoorDash (2020)

#17

Post by withinboredom »

Forge36 wrote: post #11

I just cancelled my membership (was free with a credit card i already had). They offered a "free membership" for 10 months "at a $120 value" (which used to be $60 a year), however I couldn't figure out how to activate it. I can't figure out what the value is over other services/direct from restaurant. Like another poster, most of the suggestions were bad. "Do you want dairy queen?" Or "quick you can order free from K…

We get McDonalds delivered all the time. We don’t have a car.

Re: Sibyl – Prediction Service at DoorDash (2020)

#19

Post by loceng »

postexitus wrote: post #8
loceng wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they had the full catalogue of all movies and series ever made then it'd easily be much easier to actually make more relevant recommendations, but their catalogue is actually shrinking as they have less old content they've been able to renew since those content owners have been starting their own streaming services.

Amazon, the book store has everything published under the sun and still cannot recommend something better than "oh, here you go, this is sci-fi as well!".

They arguably don't have your view history though, though their relatively new streaming service will be likely changing that slowly.

Re: Sibyl – Prediction Service at DoorDash (2020)

#20

Post by woodruffw »

hobs wrote: post #2

I see posts like this and just think that as far as I can tell DD's recommendations are: Ads Ads Ads Shitty place nobody would want to eat Shitty place nobody would want to eat Shitty place nobody would want to eat Shitty place nobody would want to eat Oh look something interesting

I have the same experience as you, and it's one of the main reasons why I try to call places for takeout instead (or use a local app).

I (idly) wonder whether they're optimizing for the wrong(?) things: throwing a bunch of garbage up front maximizes the amount of time that I spend in-app, which is probably one of their key metrics. What they don't(?) realize is that I'm spending all that time filtering through the dreck, and so the metric is really measuring my frustration and not my engagement.

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