Anyone remember the Dominos Pizza "deliver in 30 minutes or it's free" guarantee of many years ago? A couple of accidents by delivery drivers and it was a "Gentlemen: Start Your Lawyers" situation. This seems eerily the same kind of thing.
Metrics are unavoidable, they're just too convenient, but the way they are designed in such an isolated way is what promotes the self-centered attitude that optimizes for the individual outcome, disconnected from the local community. Many of those events at a large scale contribute to the tragedy of the commons and to that general feeling of society becoming more selfish and individualistic to a fault.<p>Instead of relying exclusively on metrics like <i>time to deliver</i>, <i>drive style safety</i>, tie in a sensible chunk of revenue or bonus to a local community statistic like <i>percentage of accidents in city X or state Y</i>. That's the end result for that community, less accidents holistically, it serves no one that one idiot didn't crash his van but made 3 other people crash.<p>Imagine McDonald's metrics tied in with obesity rate of a nation, or Facebook's metrics tied in to rise in extremism, or something else accurate/easy to measure that impacts society as a whole.<p>And any sort of engagement metric should be made illegal or capped, <i>numbers of eyes on screen</i> or <i>% of daily hours watching content per user</i> or <i>number of paperclips produced</i> is simply a style of metric that no healthy society wants min-max'd.
This seems like reporting of yet another principal/agent conflict when using third parties? The drivers end up with perverse incentives to circumvent the principals instructions when theyre ambiguous or conflicting. Disappointed but not surprised with the click-seeking phrasing of the headline and article.<p>> These drivers say their bosses, who own Delivery Service Partner companies are demanding they turn off the app so that drivers can drive recklessly to hit Amazon quotas without being detected by Mentor and Amazon.<p>> By getting drivers to turn off the Mentor app, Amazon's delivery companies—small contractors which are paid by Amazon to facilitate package delivery around the United States—can push drivers to circumvent Amazon's strict driving rules intended to prevent accidents in turn raising stats that can increase revenue in a cutthroat landscape where many delivery companies are barely scraping by, and get paid per package delivered on time in addition to bonuses that are earned through efficient, safe driving recorded by the Mentor app.<p>> Amazon adds an additional revenue per package delivered, in addition to bonuses that can be pocketed by delivery companies or distributed to drivers at their discretion.
>Amazon delivery companies around the United States are encouraging reckless and dangerous driving<p>this doesn't seem right. my employer's business is in utilities services. even me, who work in IT and never step foot into a water planet is required to take safety courses.<p>the shit storm that a person might die while doing his job or someone else...
The key quote from the article: "The issue here is Amazon does not compensate delivery companies fairly for what they're asking us to do. Everything is done on a shoestring budget," the owner of an Amazon delivery company near Seattle, Washington, told Motherboard.
What a mess. I'm reminded of the quote: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."<p>It's incredibly dystopian how people are made to satisfy this buggy app, while meeting the conflicting quotas, all with their livelihood on the line. /r/AmazonDSPDrivers is eye-opening.