alt Hacker NewsI 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 stops and deliveries to other people. So dispatch logic must be at least somewhat different. Also from engineering/product perspective the delay between priority and standard could be justified. To give rough analogy: FedEx can deliever package that I drop at 5pm to other side of the country at 9am, if I pay a lot of premium. It doesn’t mean that they can deliver all the packages with that speed and they deliberately slow down all other mail.
2. The emotionally manipulative things like “pay the rent”, “tip theft”
3. With all the modern corporate doublespeak trainings, there is 0 chance that something would be called “desperation score” in us business.
4. The benefit fee that goes into some “policy defense” - that I can believe in, actually. But again, emotionally manipulative add on (unions, your delivery guy homeless)
5. Again, Instacart, for example, says that 100% of tip goes to driver. If it’s not, they just painting crazy big target on their backs. So the scheme, as described, while quite evil, and not impossible to implement, looks also out of place with apps that I have used.
To summarize and repeat my point - I could believe some of the things individually, but that one guy has exposure to all of that, I doubt it.
Replies
2. tip theft and pay the rent are valid terms here.
3. quite likely something like this will exist and it might not be called that right in the code base but it sounds like something that will show up in Slack conversations. From a pure ML perspective (throwing ethics out the windos, this is a good feature)
4. this one sounds sus because cash flow details may not be something a backend engineer might be privy to.
5. UberEats as well. Either ways its quite difficult to say whether or not this is true. But the post does say that tipping theft works by reducing base pay and having the customer pick up the tab. So its not so straightforward.
> The emotionally manipulative things like “pay the rent”, “tip theft”
Those are accurate descriptions of what's going on.
> With all the modern corporate doublespeak trainings, there is 0 chance that something would be called “desperation score” in us business.
Not at all unrealistic. These are meant to be internal.
> (unions, your delivery guy homeless)
When was the last time you took an Uber? They don't smell that well, and it's a known fact _a lot_ of drivers live in their cars.
> Again, Instacart, for example, says that 100% of tip goes to driver. If it’s not, they just painting crazy big target on their backs.
This only means that the entire tip amount goes to the driver, which is accurate. It doesn't preclude their other sources of revenue from being reduced, as described by OP.
> but that one guy has exposure to all of that, I doubt it.
Very plausible he/she does. I worked for a similar company and as a software engineer of no particular rank I had access to everything, incl. code, documents describing features, cross-team meetings where those were discussed, etc. I also had friends across the teams who would talk about what they are working on all the time.
> 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'
> 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 stops and deliveries to other people.
What occurs if your order is placed in a bucket of other priority deliveries? Doesn't that simply become a regular order? Also, AFAIK based on some digging, the drivers are not alerted to priority orders they are simply routed for it. That could have changed though.
> The emotionally manipulative things like “pay the rent”, “tip theft”
"New York Attorney General Letitia James today announced a $16.75 million settlement with delivery platform DoorDash for misleading both consumers and delivery workers (known as “Dashers”) by using tips intended for Dashers to subsidize their guaranteed pay. Between May 2017 and September 2019, DoorDash used a guaranteed pay model that let Dashers see how much they would be paid before accepting a delivery. An Office of the Attorney General (OAG) investigation found that under this model, DoorDash used customer tips to offset the base pay it had already guaranteed to workers, instead of giving workers the full tips they rightfully earned. DoorDash will pay $16.75 million in restitution for Dashers and up to $1 million in settlement administrator costs to help issue the payments." - https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2025/attorney-general-james-...
> Again, Instacart, for example, says that 100% of tip goes to driver. If it’s not, they just painting crazy big target on their backs. So the scheme, as described, while quite evil, and not impossible to implement, looks also out of place with apps that I have used.
This was proven out multiple times in court with millions in settlement fees across different companies. For example, one suit alleges Instacart “intentionally and maliciously misappropriated gratuities in order to pay plaintiff’s wages even though Instacart maintained that 100 percent of customer tips went directly to shoppers. Based on this representation, Instacart knew customers would believe their tips were being given to shoppers in addition to wages, not to supplement wages entirely.”
Leading the CEO to release the following:
“After launching our new earnings structure this past October, we noticed that there were small batches where shoppers weren’t earning enough for their time,” Mehta wrote. “To help with this, we instituted a $10 floor on earnings, inclusive of tips, for all batches. This meant that when Instacart’s payment and the customer tip at checkout was below $10, Instacart supplemented the difference. While our intention was to increase the guaranteed payment for small orders, we understand that the inclusion of tips as a part of this guarantee was misguided. We apologize for taking this approach.”
Also, on a side note:
"Leaked messages suggest Uber executives were at the same time under no illusions about the company’s law-breaking, with one executive joking they had become “pirates” and another conceding: 'We’re just fucking illegal.'" - https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/global-u...
"In one exchange, Uber executives warned against sending drivers to a protest in France which could lead to violence from angry taxi drivers. 'I think it’s worth it,' wrote Kalanick. 'Violence guarantee[s] success.'" - https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/10/leaked-uber-files-reveal-h...
All to say that none of this shocks me.
I was previously at Uber. I can imagine that the culture at some of these companies is toxic enough that people may openly discuss or even brag about some of these things.
There is also a good chance that this person only has 2nd and 3rd hand information and much of the post is only partly true.
Re: 100% of tips going to the driver
I have heard that many of the services are required to at least pay minimum wage. Let's say that this is $20/hr. If they receive $15 in tips during that hour, the company reduces their wage to $5. Driver gets $20 for the hour, $15 in tips, $5 in wages. Yes, 100% of the tips goes to the driver. No, the driver isn't economically better off depending on your tip, unless you are a very generous tipper.
In California, there's AB578 [1], which makes that practice illegal. The poster's algorithm (set the wage before the tip, based on the predicted tip) seems like it might be an attempted workaround for that law. I think it adds credibility that the poster has insight on that algorithm, since they aren't claiming just the publicly known offsetting tactic.
[1] https://www.billtrack50.com/billdetail/1830894