Comment by deanCommie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deanCommie | Hacker News Reader

On reddit, "spagheddie" wrote:

I was once a FedEx delivery driver, so I don't know how it is for Amazon, but I would imagine it's similar? At FedEx we got paid per package delivered, which means the faster you deliver your packages, the more you are technically getting paid per hour. In addition to this, you'd get a daily bonus for delivering the packages fast. We could take our lunches whenever, nobody cared as long as the packages got delivered. However, very few people ever stopped to eat their lunch. Most people would eat and drive. If there was a bathroom on your route, that's cool, but otherwise you are peeing in a bottle because you aren't trying to waste time searching for a bathroom when you could potentially deliver 4 or 5 packages in that time. All of this holds especially true at this time of the year, when guys are getting ran 6 days a week, with 200+ packages per day, and with the sun going down an hour earlier (night time delivering slows you way the fuck down).

Well what happens when you deliver so slow that you're making less than minimum wage? I don't know about Amazon, but at FedEx if you were so slow that you made less than minimum wage with your per package deliveries, you were simply paid minimum wage for that day's work.

Anyways, there are a lot of shitty jobs to have during the Christmas season but, in my opinion, this is the worst one of them all. The pay isn't bad if you have your route down; but goddamn you can't even enjoy the damn holidays because you're always on "go" mode.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7iv6s9/amazon_dr...

I've noticed this sort of thing a lot in the job market: performance or pay are directly tied to metrics resulting in employees being incentivized into odd behaviors (breaking the law, sabotaging coworkers, skipping breaks/lunch, stagtegically cancelling or avoiding work, etc). This type of management through metrics goes hand in hand with the gig economy and also temp agency/contract work.

Not to mention Wells Fargo...

And the people making those incentives know it! They can't always legally tell an employee to do bad/illegal things, but they sure know how to build a system where thats the only option.

Exactly, it's in the company's best interest to have people do as much as possible for as little as possible money. This is why we have worker rights, things like minimum wage and maximum working hours. As well as health coverage etc.

Or should anyway. But nope, money first, people second.

Thanks, Ctulhu, for looking out for the common man. :)

On-topic: Workers' rights have taken a backseat due to aggressive lobbying for several decades, not least in the US.

Even in countries with very strong socialist foundations unions are hollowed out to the point where entire fields like IT feel like they have no use for them. Sweden is a good example: IT professionals are sought after to the point where they currently (rightly) feel like they have no use for unions, but when they turn out to be the new factory workers they won't have an already established base to unionize on.

Maybe I'm silly to worry, but I feel like this is all a pretty big mistake.

Maybe that's because the Swedish unions did not historically unionize as much in the M&P area.

Are you actually advocating for socialism on a site centered around VC-funded tech companies that absolutely couldn’t exist in a socialist country? Awesome.

VC-backed companies do exist in socialist countries (i’m from Denmark). maybe it’s all time Hacker News readers did start arguing for socialism: self-obsession exists now in more abundance than ever and capitalism is doing everything it can to broaden the cloak of its dreadful shadow

I guess my point is, the socialist movement in the USA seems to favor things like taxing income over 1MM USD at 90ish percent. At that point, what would possibly be the point of risking a 1MM investment to only make 10% if the company doubled in value?

Our system is already structured in a way to incentivize actually reinvesting and doing stuff with that money instead of adding it to one's personal hoard -- think that but enough to actually be effective

Socialism and unions aren't the same thing. You can have unions without socialism, and socialism without unions.

it's in the company's best interest to have people do as much as possible for as little as possible money.

If you're in an industry where hiring costs are high (eg software) then it's often cheaper to keep staff happy than to recruit new ones. 'as little as possible money' is sometimes spending more now in order to save a larger sum of money you'd have to pay out on recruitment if someone left.

That said, I strongly suspect this is not the case for delivery drivers.

> but they sure know how to build a system where thats the only option.

That's also how research/PhD programs work. Sure, you aren't forced to work like a slave and sure, you don't need to endure slave wages... But your supervisors and advisors tell you that's what it takes to get that competitive advantage in a very competitive field, and if you want to get ahead in life you need to have what it takes and be a team player...

There should be laws against creating a metric-based system that clearly causes people to work for less than minimum wage and to violate standard employment conditions (e.g. required breaks.)

This type of gig is just a means to exploit poor people by one of the riches, most successful companies on the planet.

Completely agree, but I would say that this is not a new gig econmy/temp contract thing but originates actually from the world of manufacturing. It's almost like a retro trend.

Manufacturing piecework has existed for hundreds of years, you're right, but there are some crucial differences.

If you're assembling widgets at home, your throughput - and hence your workload and earnings - will be about the same from day to day and from week to week. If you're sick you don't earn money - but you're not otherwise punished.

On the other hand if you're delivering for Amazon, your earnings vary with their sales, which you have no control over. And if you can't drive due to poor weather or sickness? Sometimes you owe your employer money!

I agree it's not new for companies to structure themselves to incentivises breaking the law and unsafe behaviour. What the gig economy adds is transferring business risks like poor sales, bad weather and sickness to hourly paid employees also.

That is why taxi drivers are such bad drivers. They are incentivised to drive fast and run red lights.

Also note that the better carriers that don’t do bullshit like this (FedEx Express, UPS) perform better and are very competitive.

I work at a place that has acquired ITIL religion for technology operations. Just like the minimum wage driver, it encourages bullshittery like this and wastes money to provide inferior service. Unfortunately, once you’ve found Jesus (aka metrics), the answer to all questions is more religion.

which means the faster you deliver your packages, the more you are technically getting paid per hour. In addition to this, you'd get a daily bonus for delivering the packages fast.

Am I the only one here who thinks "that might actually be fun for a little bit" --- as in, not doing it as a full-time job, but as in "playing a game" once in a while? It sounds rather competitive.

When the employee has no other options it becomes a full time job.

I used to work GrubHub for a year. I even moved up to the catering delivery but it still sucked. Let me try to explain why.

When you tip with your credit card through grubhub, 99% of the time it goes to grubhub and it never reaches the driver. Grubhub guarantees a hourly wage, but to keep your tips that you have to earn more then your hourly rate. This means the driver won't receive any tips until he/she makes themselves free for grubhub. Pretty ingenious IMO, make the driver a contractor so you don't pay payroll tax, and the drivers basically work to make themselves free for you to hire.

I'll break it down for you how it works because I was confused for a long while about how it works (which is probably by design).

You work 8 hours for grubhub. For brevity, lets assume in your area grubhub pays $10 a hour, the mileage they pay you is 25 cents a mile (from restaurant to customer only, you don't get anything driving to restaurant) and the delivery fee is $2. You deliver 10 deliveries during that time, your (payable) mileage is 40 miles:

You worked 8 hours, so your hourly wage is $80. Now lets see how much in tips you need to make before you can start keeping your tips!

Delivery fees - $20 Mileage - $10

You would need to make $50 in tips to start actually getting your tips.

Now I'm getting a new pizza delivery job where the hourly rate is a couple bucks an hour lower, so my hourly rate in this example would be $8, so while I would only make $64 dollars from my hourly rate, I get to keep my delivery fees, mileage, and tips on top of that.

The Grubhub I worked for spreads the work around so that people earn the minimum hourly rate. Why wouldn't they? it lowers their labor costs to near zero.

It's not that I want the tips, I really do think tipping is a horrendous system and it is "my fault" for signing up to work for them (I was incredibly desperate for money). I just feel it is disingenuous to call it a tip when it should be called a "please pay my driver's hourly wage for me" fund. I know that is basically what a tip is, but when someone tips me very well I have this sick feeling in my stomach because they wanted it to go to me not grubhub. That is why I'm left grubhub.

If you have to use grubhub tip in cash, or better yet just don't tip. I don't care I am making the minimum hourly rate 99% of the time. If grubhub can't survive without stealing the credit card tips from their drivers it shouldn't be around.

Source: I'm currently involved in a class action lawsuit over GrubHub's labor violations.

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