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I'm a developer for a major food delivery app

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Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app

#121

Post by pfannkuchen »

> we didn't speed up the priority orders, we just purposefully delayed non-priority orders by 5 to 10 minutes to make the Priority ones "feel" faster by comparison

This in particular sounds very fake to me.

If they are delaying the regular orders, then they are either a) having drivers sit idle or b) freeing up resources for the priority orders.

In the (b) case this would just deliver the promised prioritization behavior, not evil and not what OP is claiming.

In the (a) case where they are actually having drivers sit idle, then they are reducing the throughput of their system significantly. Which might be fine for a quick A/B test on a subset of customers, but as framed this is basically a psy op to trick customers en masse into thinking the priority order is faster when it really isn’t. To have that effect, you would need to deploy this to all customers long enough for them to organically switch back and forth between priority and regular enough times to notice the difference. That seems like it couldn’t possibly be better than the much simpler option of just implementing the priority behavior and reducing its effect down to zero slowly over time (which would be evil but isn’t the claim).

Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app

#123

Post by adrianwaj »

sodafountan wrote: post #115
adrianwaj wrote: post #49

Blockchain and split payments would work here. The transparency would be useful. Maybe even using x402? So buyers should be able to see where and how their money is going to be distributed after payment. How much does the driver get? How much is he/she earning? Comparable drivers can compare metrics. Perhaps unions could build some type of payment app and have gig workers use it as part of their employment contract?…

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted. This is actually a really good solution that I hadn't thought of. I'm eager for the web3 economy to truly take off. There are so many little improvements to the way things work with blockchain compared to the black hole that is fiat currency; it's astounding. But yes, in essence, if the post is true, then this is a misrepresentation of what the service is actually doing. Bei…

Yep, digital goods are the big one for a "transparency disruption" in my view.

For me at least, if I am to buy some music I should be able to know how much an artist is going to get along with all their "tag-alongs." Payments should be fast, reliable, useful, easy; and even variable, biased, delayed and aggregated.

Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app

#124

Post by anonzzzies »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #111
anonzzzies wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know plenty of Uber (and normal taxis) drivers around the airport here who pick up a someone, then ask if they mind taking someone else. Because it is usually vans and business customers, they don't care and actually kind of like talking with other business guys who probably went or are going to the same seminar/conference etc. The driver will then load up whatever fits who are waiting for taxis or drivers and only…

How do people pay the driver? I guess cash isn't really a thing anymore in a lot of places. Are those drivers driving for multiple services (uber, lyft, whatever) at the same time?

Many normal taxis drive also for Uber or Lyft as you need the license anyway over here. Not sure if you can be Uber AND Lyft at the same time.

Payment is preferably cash (I started wearing cash again with how the lovely cashless stuff is ramping up here in the EU), but I had all drivers so far who simply had this Square like device on their phone to take payments. So the driver runs around to let out the 'main' passenger, let's them walk off, runs around to open the van door and tell what the price is cash or tap your card. That is the most common. I see sometimes they charge similar to what the 'main passenger' pays and sometimes less.

Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app

#126

Post by tsimionescu »

sandeepkd wrote: post #65
cedws wrote: post #9

Without evidence this is just fiction, I don’t trust some random Reddit post.

Not sure its justified to put it in any bucket right away for couple reasons - Terminology is realistic - Everything mentioned is feasible and more or less thats how a business works on the idea of extracting maximum profit - Caveat is, whatever has been called out is most likely legal so the company is legally playing by the rules, its just some ones moral compass that does not wants to accept it

The biggest red flag to me is the confident claims about where the money is going. I really don't think it's plausible to any extent that a backend developer for a major app would have any idea whatsoever to what account any particular fee is being deposited (they might know the account number if they worked on that area, but knowing that the account represents a legal fund or whatever is extremely unlikely).

Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app

#127

Post by [deleted] »

rich_sasha wrote: post #120
whatever1 wrote: post #88

Lyft is also a scam for the drivers. In a ride from the airport to home during rush hour (1h and 15 minutes drive) I got charged ~$140. The company was paying, so whatever. During the ride I was chatting with the driver, and I was curious how much he was making from the ride. At the end of the ride he showed me. $48 (before my tip). WTF. From that he had to pay gas, maintenance and taxes. How is this legal? What is t…

How does this compare to typical taxi corporations? In Europe at least, taxis are often organised into companies, with centralised bookings, and taxi drivers paying a cut to the corporation. Here the cut is, based on your numbers, 65%, which does seem very high, but then what do I know.

[deleted]

Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app

#128

Post by michaelt »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #121

> we didn't speed up the priority orders, we just purposefully delayed non-priority orders by 5 to 10 minutes to make the Priority ones "feel" faster by comparison This in particular sounds very fake to me. If they are delaying the regular orders, then they are either a) having drivers sit idle or b) freeing up resources for the priority orders. In the (b) case this would just deliver the promised prioritization beha…

> In the (a) case where they are actually having drivers sit idle, then they are reducing the throughput of their system significantly.

If there are 50 deliveries per driver per shift and I want do deliver everything 5 minutes later, I don't need the driver to idle for 50 × 5 minutes.

The driver only needs to start the first delivery 5 minutes later, at a time cost of 1 × 5 minutes. Then they finish it 5 minutes later, and hence start the second delivery 5 minutes later, without standing idle between deliveries.

And if I pay the workers per delivery, that 1 × 5 minutes of initial delay doesn't cost me anything except worker morale.

Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app

#129

Post by femto »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #121

> we didn't speed up the priority orders, we just purposefully delayed non-priority orders by 5 to 10 minutes to make the Priority ones "feel" faster by comparison This in particular sounds very fake to me. If they are delaying the regular orders, then they are either a) having drivers sit idle or b) freeing up resources for the priority orders. In the (b) case this would just deliver the promised prioritization beha…

Beyond an initial effect when the delay is first implemented, adding a delay would increase the latency (waiting time) but not the throughput (utilisation of the system). It's queuing theory.

A way to think of it is that the drivers that are made idle by adding a delay will be kept busy delivering previously delayed orders.

Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app

#130

Post by renewiltord »

another_twist wrote: post #81
symbogra wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the biggest clue that it's typical reddit brained fanfic.

What about the claims though ? I dont see the point of getting hung up on just this and discrediting the rest of the story. Tbf this proves nothing without more confirmations however it might be possible to design client side A/B tests to catch this type of behaviour. Might be something NYT or some group with a well resourced investigative arm could pull off.

I know the OP. He's actually a compulsive liar. We had to fire him from our team at Big Food Delivery because he'd keep saying he was done with his tickets but then he'd be blocked on someone, and when the code showed up it would be crap and very verbose. Finally, one day someone said "Dude, can you at least review your own code?" and he flipped out and said he was suffering from trauma and needed time off, and that our company policy allowed Claude Code. It does, but you can't just post the output like that.

Then he went online and posted this and told us that we were screwed. Internally we're following the process to get him fired, but because he's technically hired out of Italy we can't do it without 3 months notice.

Anyway, I made that whole thing up but don't let that one small phrase discredit the rest of the claims.

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