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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

#151

Post by delusional »

nxtfari wrote: post #135

Believability aside (I do think it’s believable personally) this is pretty much how “evil” (from outsider perspective) is done at every company, including mine. Inside it’s all sprint meetings, KPIs and terminology that are either intentionally or unintentionally designed to keep engineers far from thinking about impact on real people. It’s easy to convince a 25 year old whiz kid to optimize human assets, it’s just l…

Hannah Arendt wrote the fantastic "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" about exactly this observation. That one of the principal enablers of the Holocaust seemed obsessed, not with the effects or outcomes of murdering Jews, but simply the expediency of doing it.

If you're interested in the subject I can very much recommend reading it. I can also recommend "The Ethic of Expediency" which deals with the same subject, but attempts to indict all technical writing instead. I personally changed my writing style after reading it to inject more humanity into it.

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

#152

Post by neilv »

Nextgrid wrote: post #29
neilv wrote: post #22

If the allegations are true, then I think the writer needs to call up a good state Attorney General's office, and ask who to talk to. Though I'd guess that the alleged scummy company has seen this, and is already preparing their response, trying to purge any incriminating emails and PowerPoints, etc.

Why would an AG care? This is a huge company stealing from poor people. The system is working as designed. They would not be so brazen in doing this (in relative openness with every developer being in on it) if they thought an AG would actually care. They do this because they correctly calculated that they have enough connections and/or bribes to preempt such an action.

All the time, I'm reading about companies brazenly doing illegal things.

We often see reports of state AGs taking actions against companies.

My guess is that bribes of state AG offices would be unusual. (Do you have better information about that?)

The questions on my mind would be how much resources an AG's office has to deal with corporate crime, and how a given crime would get triaged.

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

#153

Post by samiv »

mgraczyk wrote: post #144
samiv wrote: post #141

Lots of people are sceptical of the reddit post. Yes sure the post can be fake but if you consider any gig economy business what incentives would they have for not doing this? Exactly. Not screwing everyone over is seeing as leaving money on the table.

The incentives are that a lot of the specific claims would be bad for long term retention and would be embarrassing if made public. That doesn't imply it's fake but it's not obvious any company would be incentivized to behave this way

Long term?

If there was some future backlash and the company would suffer, that is someone else's future problem. The execs today don't care about it as long as they reap their financial benefit today.

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

#154

Post by Dansvidania »

huhkerrf wrote: post #147
nxtfari wrote: post #135

Believability aside (I do think it’s believable personally) this is pretty much how “evil” (from outsider perspective) is done at every company, including mine. Inside it’s all sprint meetings, KPIs and terminology that are either intentionally or unintentionally designed to keep engineers far from thinking about impact on real people. It’s easy to convince a 25 year old whiz kid to optimize human assets, it’s just l…

> designed to keep engineers far from thinking about impact on real people Why do we think engineers are some special class of people who can't do bad things?

IMO: historically engineers have had a little bit more leverage to negotiate, so IF they did not think something was right to do, they MIGHT have pushed back. So the likelyhood of wanting to do bad things might be the same, but the agency was a bit higher in terms of the Employer/Employee relationship.

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

#155

Post by zmgsabst »

anonzzzies wrote: post #98
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…

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…

In Vietnam, if you see a parked driver waiting for a call, you can show him your Grab (ie, Asian copy of Uber) price to go somewhere, then get the same ride for 80%.

Why would they mind more cash in their pocket?

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

#156

Post by d1sxeyes »

chrisfosterelli wrote: post #75
galkk wrote: post #66

I can believe in each fact individually, but altogether (and that the author has exposure to all of that) it feels like just a rage bait. Here are red flags for me: 1. Priority delivery. Thanks to zepbound I order delivery much less, but when I did (doordash/uber eats/grubhub) the priority delivery proposition was not about dispatch but about routing: driver going straight to your house, without any intermediate stop…

> 3. With all the modern corporate doublespeak trainings, there is 0 chance that something would be called “desperation score” in us business. This is a good point. It'd almost certainly be called something like 'payrate sensitivity factor'

Something like this can be reworded to make it sound like a “good” thing: “mission-centricity” or “dedication” or some other label that spins this as being committed to the company (leaving out that this is at their own expense).

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

#157

Post by saagarjha »

indigodaddy wrote: post #137
renewiltord wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oh man you had me right til the end

I’m just upset he didn’t plummet sixteen feet through the announcer’s table

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

#158

Post by system2 »

0x1ceb00da wrote: post #61
hussachai wrote: post #32

> I’m posting this from a library Wi-Fi on a burner laptop because I am technically under a massive NDA. I don’t care anymore. I put in my two weeks yesterday and honestly, I hope they sue me. Why bother using library Wi-Fi on a burner laptop if he doesn't care anymore? Why give out the biggest clue, which is the time of his resignation letter? If the story is real, this company is a straight-up scammer waiting for t…

2 weeks notice and maybe even being backend developer is a lie. He's trying to midlead them

It would be a good curve ball if he is that smart.

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

#159

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#160

Post by zmgsabst »

BrenBarn wrote: post #145

Big if true. But actually maybe not that big since people suspect it anyway. This is the "innovation" that defenders of the "free market" are always touting. How to be sure? Transparency requirements. I think we need way more transparency requirements. All sorts of financial and operational data should be publicly available.

I think we should be much more strict with what constitutes “fraud”:

If you sell me better service, but don’t treat me any better, you should owe me triple damages for defrauding me. And your executives should be prosecuted for directing fraudulent behavior.

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