Without evidence this is just fiction, I don’t trust some random Reddit post.
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I'm a developer for a major food delivery app
171–180 of 316 posts
Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app
#172Believability 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 wit…
Big fan of Arendt. I will check this out, thanks!
Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app
#173If true (I'm not sure), this is kind of economics in action. There's a monopolistic market maker, screwing every last cent out of providers, with enormous power imbalances. The market maker is semi monopolistic, the labour is low-skilled, with little bargaining power and few better options. The "winners" are shareholders of the company and to some extent the end customers (who, other things being equal, would have to…
> There's a monopolistic market maker
But there isn't? Doordash and Uber Eats compete nationally. Most cities have a litany of local competitors. And that's before we get to restaurants that handle delivery in house.
Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh man you had me right til the end
I’m just upset he didn’t plummet sixteen feet through the announcer’s table
I definitely did consider it, but for the fact that we'd start endless debates about whether HN is becoming Reddit and so on. Though now that I think about it, that is a worthwhile honeypot to capture such a person in.
Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app
#175Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app
#176A sprint planning meeting seems like the wrong place to put that topic. I'm also not used to developers having that much visibility into accounting practices. And that seems like an odd way to structure things.
Why not? They have to implement the systems that power this. Also, water-cooler gossip
I suspect it depends on the company — eg, at Amazon the tech team went out of our way to blind ourselves to what the tax analysts were doing; at a fintech startup, we knew intimate details of what clients were doing.
This sounds like the kind of big-co where intentional segmentation and blinding would happen.
Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app
#177> 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…
The biggest red flag is: "I don't care anymore, I hope they sue me", and saying they're about to contact reporters. It's designed to boost credibility (this is gonna be proven legit, any day now! skeptics will look dumb!), but then why hasn't he gone to them already? Texting a Signal number takes a second. Why would he take additional legal and financial risk for fake internet points on a minor subreddit known for it…
Raising awareness is not a bad call. I would not know about this, if it would surface in a random US paper
Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In other words, I see this not a special greed of this particular company, but a logical conclusion of the economic system it operates in. (I'm not saying it is good either. Only that raging against the symptom is a bit misplaced, and instead you should focus attention at the causes). I think this is conceptually sound take but at the same time it's way too kind towards the people who are on the field making these…
> it's way too kind towards the people who are on the field making these decisions. So I guess, nicer taxi corporations existed, and got turfed out by Uber and Lyft who managed to reduce prices or increase convenience, and are reaping the fruit of their investment. Capitalism in motion. I guess my fundamental point is, you can't fix this by putting pressure on companies to be nicer, because the ones being less nice w…
I remember people welcoming Uber not because of the app, but because the idea "you'll know exactly how much the ride will cost you before you take it" was revolutionary at the time. Over here, what used to happen was that you order the taxi, the guy says "yeah I'll take you there it'll cost you $10" and then the bill was $20 and there was nothing you could do about it except pay. It was completely normal for taxis to scam people. So when Uber came and started scamming drivers, everyone cheered.
The point is, you're essentially right. It's just that before Uber customers were most likely victims of scams, while with Uber it's the drivers. As in, in a capitalistic market the scamming is always present, the question is who scams who.
Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app
#179This is believable. I have a personal anecdote regarding "Priority Delivery". This was about 2 years ago. After watching the driver go to another business and house before me, I messaged support and they refunded this priority delivery fee. The driving tip and base pay accusation can be easily verified by testing tip amounts and asking drivers what they are awarded.
Re: I'm a developer for a major food delivery app
#180Library wifi and burner laptop?
1. Any serious IT person knows you don't need burner laptop with VM
2. Doxxed himself to said company in the same paragraph, nice.
Fan fiction or really bad opsec.
Also, anyone who drives for any food app in any country, knows it sucks.