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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

#281
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With my mortgage, interest is monthly on the remaining principal and paying extra in a month is entirely on the principal - it reduces the total interest paid, so the bank gets less.

The idea that you pay the interest up front is a very common misunderstanding of how mortgages work and more broadly the concept of an amortization schedule.

Yeah, I see people describe it like that all the time, it's never corrected, and doesn't match how I always thought mortgages in general work (and definitely doesn't match mine), so I'm never entirely sure if it's a different system from another country or just a version of the blind leading the blind. Which is why I made my comment so specific to myself.

The parent of that comment mentioning "a fee to overpay" is one I've never even heard of before. Definitely not the case here, free to pay down the principal as much as I want whenever I want as long as the current interest for the month is paid first.

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

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$38/hr sounds pretty good to me though.

If you drove 50 miles in an hour, then likely $38 does not cover your car costs.

The IRS mileage cost of 0.70/mi is for a car in a situation that an Uber driver should never be in, that is, an average car with average fuel economy being professionally serviced and maintained, with average depreciation and interest rate. None of those should be the case for anyone driving Uber.

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

#283

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…

I don't think you have to claim you made that thing up. I don't care about the language, the hyperbole of the post just the claims. The claim that you know the OP of an anonymous reddit account is where I'd stop reading.

Don't let that one claim distract you from the others. They might still be true.

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

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two datapoints in the text. One is the 2 weeks notice, the other is that they knew of this since 8 months ago. If this were me, I would give random made up information of this kind to throw off anyone trying to investigate this. Also, this is not that far from what we already know from whistleblowers of similar gig economy companies so my believability is not stretched at all.

Other comments pointed out the semi-obvious use of AI due to em dashes. I'm honestly at a point where every suspicious aspect of that post could as well be counted as a countermeasure to getting caught. Said engineer could still be working at the company or could've left years ago. In my opinion the mentioned financial adjustments could've been a discussion topic for higher ups far far earlier than 2025. Considering…

Where did AIs learn those em dashes from?

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

#285

> 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…

Also, the NDA part. I've never heard of SWEs getting "NDAs". Technically everything you do while employed is supposed to be confidential. It doesn't require a special NDA.

I've signed NDAs at a few companies. Implied confidentiality has more limitations and gray areas than an NDA and requires trials when businesses tend to prefer arbitrators (those supposedly neutral parties that know their future business depends on "making the right decision" which is why companies win nearly 95% of arbitrations).

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

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing the tech industry it sounds entirely plausible. I'm surprised people think this is news.

Some of this seems plausible—even expected—but other parts feel implausible. It's hard to believe that "Priority Delivery" does literally nothing. Optimizing payouts down to the lowest amount drivers will accept, on the other hand, is entirely believable. Also, given Uber's well-known microservice architecture, it seems unlikely that a random backend engineer would have deep insight across multiple independent system…

> It's hard to believe that "Priority Delivery" does literally nothing.

That's not exactly what they said. They said normal orders get artificially delayed and priority deliver orders get sent right away. They were clear that the real issue is that priority only exists because they actively made normal orders worse (I'd guess they actually took a few months of slowly backing off normal order time to get customers accustomed to the extra wait).

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

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not backing up the claims, but, You don't need to know the account or account number, just need to know the transaction logic, which most backend developer will know of as long as they work in that area. If the product managers keep boasting about their new strategy (which I have seen in almost all companies I have worked for), even the juniors will know what's going on.

Except this is complete bullshit. Money is anonymous. Why would they have some kind of pipeline account that goes directly from the fees to political spend? Why wouldn't the fees just go to a generic revenue account and the lobbying would come out of the same account? This is like claiming someone set up a special account where all their paychecks on rainy days get spent directly on weed. It makes zero sense.

Stick around any corporation (especially one that is heavily regulated and has a revolving door with the government) and you'll hear all kinds of stories.

I'd put this into that bucket of "someone I trust told me they heard the story from someone they trust". It means the story may not be true and they don't have any hard evidence, but they found it believable enough to repeat.

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

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you drove 50 miles in an hour, then likely $38 does not cover your car costs.

The IRS mileage cost of 0.70/mi is for a car in a situation that an Uber driver should never be in, that is, an average car with average fuel economy being professionally serviced and maintained, with average depreciation and interest rate. None of those should be the case for anyone driving Uber.

But that was the lure of ridesharing. Bring your own average car, no need to buy special equipment.

If you do have to buy a car just for uber, then you would have to consider the interest payments as additional cost (not just the depreciation of the equipment, which will be super brutal for a brand new car).

In any case, you are looking at something north of 50 cents per mile.

AAA has a nice breakdown: https://www.ace.aaa.com/automotive/advocacy/cost-of-driving....

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

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider that demand for food delivery is not constant throughout the day and night. I believe throughput would actually be reduced every time demand increases, which would happen in the morning, at various meal times, around the different opening and closing times of various restaurants, etc. I do agree that the throughput reduction would be more complex than “1 driver sits idle for every 1 order”.

Throughput would still remain unchanged. Suppose that the "lunch rush" is from 11AM to 1PM, and imagine that it's uniform for the sake of simplicity. Then drivers would end up being fully utilized from 11:10AM to 1:10PM, instead of 11 to 1. The 10 minute lag at the end where drivers are still finishing the queue makes up for the 10 minute delay at the start.

Oh yeah that makes sense actually. Thanks for explaining.
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