DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC • Hacker News Board

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#241

Post by zachkatz » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:02 AM UTC

interactivecode wrote: post #201

jsyang00 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this incentivize Dasher's to... take longer to deliver? This whole model feels screwed up to me.

Indeed, it would be better if doordash would just hire full time employees. And vet them before hiring with a regular interview process. Instead of constant punitive surveillance with the threat of instant unemployment. Can you imagine if your dev job was like this? Picking up jobs to write a single function. And if youre too slow, or one too many tests fail you get sacked.

The “problem” is that many (most?) delivery cyclists in NYC aren’t legally allowed to work, so this option would be jeopardizing a large part of their workforce (bad for DoorDash) while also being bad for the workers themselves (who aren’t exactly swimming in job options). I’m not making a value judgement here, just weighing in with a tradeoff to consider.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#242

Post by sokoloff » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:03 AM UTC

troupo wrote: post #172

lhorie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a somewhat outdated narrative to still be parroting. Uber just got included into the SP 500. One of the pre-requisites for that is being profitable on a GAAP basis.

> That's a somewhat outdated narrative to still be parroting. It's not. Most of those "innovators" are still posting losses in the hundreds of millions > Uber just got included into the SP 500. One of the pre-requisites for that is being profitable on a GAAP basis. Because you can somehow lose a billion dollars a year for 10 years, become a publicly traded company with a steatement "we don't even know if we'll ever t…

I don’t have much dog in this fight, but it seems as if Uber’s losses were self-evidently sustainable.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#243

Post by RHSeeger » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:04 AM UTC

bigtunacan wrote: post #212

darth_avocado wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not very doable pretty much everywhere outside NYC. The lower density of restaurants made it harder for delivery to be a thing except all the pizza places that offered it.

That's a generalization with no supporting data. As an actual sample size of 1; I lived in a smaller city of only about 250k people and there was a huge selection of restaurants that offered delivery, not just pizza. Honestly DoorDash when it did come reduced restaurant profits, lowered quality of food delivered, and increased consumer costs. Zero advantage for anyone other than DoorDash unless you consider being abl…

I've lived in a city of 50k people and smaller, and in various suburbs (of major cities) and ALWAYS had a collection of delivery menus in a bag next to the junk drawer. I don't think I've even lived anywhere that didn't have a reasonable amount of delivery. That's not to say such places aren't common... just that "unique to NYC" certainly doesn't describe it.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#244

Post by xkekjrktllss » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:04 AM UTC

interactivecode wrote: post #201

jsyang00 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this incentivize Dasher's to... take longer to deliver? This whole model feels screwed up to me.

Indeed, it would be better if doordash would just hire full time employees. And vet them before hiring with a regular interview process. Instead of constant punitive surveillance with the threat of instant unemployment. Can you imagine if your dev job was like this? Picking up jobs to write a single function. And if youre too slow, or one too many tests fail you get sacked.

>Can you imagine if your dev job was like this?

Mine is. We have stack ranking and it's a living nightmare.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#245

Post by sokoloff » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:06 AM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #120

hotpotamus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never really gotten this. We can speculate about the intelligence of VCs, but I assume most of them know a bit of basic math. I wonder if perhaps they are so deep into a bubble of wealth and privilege that to them, spending $50 for a (cold by the time it arrives) burger seemed reasonable. Perhaps they thought that once everyone could experience this for an amount of money they find trifling, it would catch on? I…

>I've used these services a time or two just to see what the fuss is about and I don't get it myself. It's similar to fast food itself. convenient and cheap. these days the latter is falling off the wayside (again, just like modern fast food). It was invaluable during a pandemic to help encourage social distancing, but even if it was still cheap it was bound to fall off a bit (probably not to pre-pandemic levels, but…

> convenient and cheap

But it’s neither of those things, assuming you believe (as I do) that receiving food that should be hot but is cold isn’t convenient.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#246

Post by runeb » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:07 AM UTC

darth_avocado wrote: post #229

bigtunacan wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a generalization with no supporting data. As an actual sample size of 1; I lived in a smaller city of only about 250k people and there was a huge selection of restaurants that offered delivery, not just pizza. Honestly DoorDash when it did come reduced restaurant profits, lowered quality of food delivered, and increased consumer costs. Zero advantage for anyone other than DoorDash unless you consider being abl…

That is not a generalization, that is actually a fact. Doordash and other delivery apps gradually added restaurants on their platforms and still add new ones regularly. The fact that this happened in itself is a proof that they didn’t have food delivery as an option before. If you want more concrete data, you need to look at how McDonald’s did deliveries in Manhattan but not rest of the US until they partnered with f…

Without commenting on this topic in general, you appear to have a flaw in your reasoning. That a restaurant was added to Doordash does not prove that it never had the ability to deliver before that.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#247

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:10 AM UTC

shmatt wrote: post #233

zepton wrote: post #147

DoorDash is being misleading when they imply that NYC required a minimum wage of $29.93/hr for delivery workers. DoorDash could comply with the bylaw by paying its contractors $17.96/hr for the full time they work (including time waiting for orders). But DoorDash instead chose to use the "Alternate Method" which has a 67% higher minimum wage, but only for the time the contractor is actively delivering food (not stand…

While true this would lead to thousands of people being online without demand. If one really wants their food in 45 minutes, or an uber driver always 3 minutes away, they need a lot of people doing nothing staring at their screens for long periods of time Capping the # of people online would cause tons of other issues, its very easy to exploit a system like that, plus it would slow everyone down Either we want people…

[deleted]

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#248

Post by porknubbins » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:12 AM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #199

interactivecode wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does it include health and sick pay for when you get injured or older and you’re less mobile? Cycling all the time could be way more taxing than driving.

Of course it doesn't include any of that. It's "independent contracting". Though keep in mind they're throttle e-bikes, so there isn't a lot of actual pedaling going on. And as far as accumulated workplace injuries go, merely riding a bike is pretty easy compared to a lot of blue collar work. No, I think what'd get you here is the crashes.

I wouldn’t discount the long term health costs of breathing exhaust fumes all day either. Even as a recreational cyclist or occasional commuter in NYC I noticed it.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#249

Post by massysett » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:16 AM UTC

standardUser wrote: post #177

darth_avocado wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other part of this is that Doordash workers need to pay for their own delivery vehicles (gas, upkeep etc.) which factors into the actual wages they get. They are not making significantly more than minimum wage workers.

I'd estimate in NYC that 90% of deliveries I get are made by bicycle, so their average expenses are comparatively very low.

Though the significant risk to life and limb from working on a bicycle has to be accounted for.

Re: DoorDash raises minimum pay to $29.93 per hour in NYC

#250

Post by dannyw » Tue, Dec 05, 2023, 1:28 AM UTC

bondarchuk wrote: post #231

crmd wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the city, it's not just the Applebees/Ruby Tuesdays who are growing; there's another emerging level of corporate food service. For example, a friend of mine is a data scientist who reports up into the CFO of a company that owns around 10 restaurants in New York, California, and Las Vegas. The flagship of the brand is a Michelin-starred celebrity chef. His entire job is presenting to executives the profitabili…

How would you even assess the profitability of a small recipe change? You'd only notice by the time a customer comes back and there are so many variables (and time) going into that I can't imagine you could really get some signal out of your a/b-test of a few drops of chili oil in the soup.

If you have 10 restaurants you could do A/B tests.

This is massively prevalent for food science and prepackaged goods (through panels and such; usually not to the end customer). Seems like restaurants are catching up.