A reddit user who claimed to be an engineer at a major food delivery platform talked about why he doesn’t enjoy working there. TL;DR: a lot of intransparency, fees and tips don’t got to driver, sludge, etc. Particularly, I find the following desperation score to be quite a bad idea:
The “Desperation Score”… a hidden metric for drivers that tracks how desperate they are for cash based on their acceptance behavior."
If a driver usually logs on at 10 PM and accepts every garbage USD3 order instantly without hesitation, the algo tags them as “High Desperation.” Once they are tagged, the system then deliberately stops showing them high-paying orders. The logic is: “Why pay this guy USD15 for a run when we know he’s desperate enough to do it for USD6?” We save the good tips for the “casual” drivers to hook them in and gamify their experience, while the full-timers get grinded into dust.
FYI:
Source: Reddit.