There was a lot of backlash when it was revealed DoorDash was taking tips like the method you stated. Now they give the entire tip to the driver regardless of minimum pay.
OP was making a joke that no, it's not "as always" because there wqs a pretty large scandal just a few years ago centered around DoorDash not paying 100% of tips.
so my understanding is: don't tip on doordash after this. This means that the actual cost will be included in the work. I'm all for it. I hate tips, it is arbitrary and terrible.
> They used tips (and may still use tips) to refund themselves for the minimum pay offered to dashers.
Not trying to make a stance one way or another, just wanted to make sure I understand what you meant by this correctly.
Is what you are describing essentially the same way it works in the restaurant industry for waiters/servers?
TLDR: waiters/servers in the US typically have a base pay that’s below the minimum wage, but they get to keep all the tips. However, if a waiter/server at the end of their pay period makes less with their base pay+tips than what the minimum wage for the area would be, the employer is legally on the hook for making up the difference to the employee.
It would seem to be the same - but also restaurant workers likely don’t hit the minimums frequently, since the kitchen would probably be unprofitable to run in settings where front of house are only making $3/hr.
> TLDR: waiters/servers typically have a base pay that’s below the minimum wage, but they get to keep all the tips. However, if a waiter/server at the end of their pay period makes less with their base pay+tips than what the minimum wage for the area would be, the employer is legally on the hook for making up the difference to the employee.
I believe that's the federal rule, but several states with higher than federal minimum wages have a uniform minimum wage for tipped and non-tipped workers. If I'm reading the chart correctly[1], those states/territories include Alaska, California, Guam, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.
Briefly, in 2019, until it made the news and the policy was changed so that drivers kept 100% of tips. There's more nuance than "DD was keeping tips", but plenty already written about that if you care to find the 2019 articles.
Some programmer wrote that statement in the code, wrote the function that was given a tip amount and a driver profile and reduced the tip amount to give the driver under certain circumstances. Someone cut that ticket, brought it up in a grooming session, people asked and answered questions about exactly when a driver's pay should be docked. Other devs probably approved the PR. I bet it even has a clear and concise comment explaining the math and the business purpose. I bet there's a unit test about "do_not_overpay_driver_with_tip". Jesus
I bet they all came onto HN and bitched about taxes and Unions after.
If a driver would be paid $5 for a delivery, and the customer tipped $5, the driver should receive $10.
But what was effectively happening instead was that the pay would be reduced by the tip amount to as low as $2. So now that delivery would actually pay $2 plus the $5 for a total of $7.
On longer range deliveries that might pay $10, the customer could tip $8 and the driver would still only make $10.
Now, from what I understand, DD no longer does this practice and legitimately gives the entire tipped amount to the driver with no reduction in pay from DD, but DD lowered the base delivery pay to compensate.
At the time, IIRC, DD tried to wordsmith what they were doing to not make it sound like they were stealing tips, and instead was simply subsidizing poor tippers with a higher base pay and acting like the keeping of the tip was just the removal of the poor-tip subsidy. I say to-may-toe, you say to-mah-toe, it's bullshit. They were stealing tips.
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I'm not sure if the culture changed, but when I worked for a firm it was generally known that if you sit on the bench to long you'll be let go.
However, This is likely in correlation to general reduced spending across the board causing reducing spending with firms. With all the cost cutting, most high cost consulting/outsourcing is the first on the chopping block.
Maybe, but by all accounts I have heard that there are a lot of people on the bench at Accenture. People are fighting to get staffed on projects.
Consulting firms are great when the economy is good and executives don't mind throwing money around. When budgets get scrutinized, those contracts get downsized or not renewed at all.
always thought twilio would be acquired by AWS eventually - twilio is more of a product than a company, or even just a set of product features. Never made sense to me as a stand-alone company.
Just last week MSFT nixed the accrual PTO benefit employees enjoyed and opted for the rouse of 'unlimited' PTO. Effectively, ending a liability/cash outlay they would pay when folks quit, or get fired. I hope those who were affected today receive severance that makes up for them losing this benefit.
They lost it going forward, and also lost any kind of arbitrage when paired with salary increases. Eg my accrued vacation is “worth” 10% more after a 10% salary bump than before it.
It also serves as a nice buffer when you are switching jobs - you can take the PTO and still be employed (& so covered by health insurance for a bit longer, and stocks are still vesting), making for a nice break from work.
When my company switched from accrued to unlimited PTO, the way they did it was to tell everyone that until their balance got down to zero, they needed to report their time off. So if you quit before you got your balance down to zero, you had it paid out, but most people probably just burned through their balance within a year or so and the liability was gone.
Wow, that’s shitty. Because you could simply have taken the same time off under unlimited PTO as by burning down the accrual, the company effectively zeroed out accrued vacation time. I’d be pissed that happened to me.
I mean, in real terms, I've come out way ahead since I get a lot more PTO now and probably wouldn't have cashed much (if any) out when quitting regardless. If the alternate was to keep my measly PTO allowance but still get the possibility of cashing it out someday when I quit, I am definitely happier this way.
I had a friend who actually took the “unlimited PTO” thing at face value when he was fresh out of college and joined a cool tech company. He was literally traveling every 2-3 weeks and bragging about it. He was let go for performance reasons within 6 months lol.
payout will be in April's paycheck. I was a little surprised about the difference on when the accrual stops (mid Jan) and when balance will be paid out - in April. Laying off people before April payout explains some of this difference (maybe all?).
Presumably they still need to make the payout because it's an accrued employee benefit on the books. Not doing so would be illegal--at least in a lot of places.
> Effectively, ending a liability/cash outlay they would pay when folks quit, or get fired
This was effective yesterday, and they paid off any remaining pto balance. I initially thought this would be an employee retention effort in the midst of low promotions and raises, but in was probably wrong. I don't know what gives.
