Unlikely. I've worked as a delivery driver for a couple of different places and it was always W2. If you're scheduled to work and you deliver only for Instacart, the IRS will almost certainly view you as an employee.
Uber and Lyft both 1099 their drivers. I'm not sure specifically about Instacart but I imagine most "on-demand" companies that can get away with it, will do it.
If they're having you use your own vehicle and not forcing you to adhere to a specific schedule, they can probably do it.
Totally negates the value of some college degrees. And to be frank, it's unclear why some of those degrees exist in the first place (beyond just bringing in easy tuition money to the university while making the students feel that they are following their dreams).
Well if that's what you plan to make for the rest of your life, then sure. It's not about the starting package. It's about your growth. Would you be happy doing that for 10 years ? 80K is nearly not enough for most ambitious folks.
Sure, some people are very self motivated and don't need a degree to help them grow. But for most, it lends them more options and also more ammunition for future career growth. Most high end jobs or opportunities today are intellectual/knowledge skill based.
He seemed to be targeting a specific group that's considered "ambitious." One could argue that everyone is ambitious but I'm sure his point was that those people who aren't satisfied with low-wage jobs and want to do something they see as important, would consider 80K "not enough."
How much is enlightenment actually worth if it makes you a wage slave for the rest of your life? College degrees with no monetary value were fine... Until they started costing enough to put you below the poverty line for decades at a minimum wage job. Want to feed your soul? Make it so you never have to work in fast food.
Today's bachelor program is the high school of yesteryear. Not optional anymore - and it's the complexity of life which makes you study till you're 22 - when some century ago in 16 you not only learned all you need to learn by studying, you'd already have some serious experience.
Why now, in 2014, one with a B.S. makes about as much despite all that knowledge escapes me as well.
In 10 years how much will employers care about what you learned in college compared with your expectation for higher wages, increased healthcare cost and decreased willingness to give them unpaid overtime relative to a fresh graduate?
Automating a delivery driver is actually a harder problem than it appears unless you can convince people to accept packages dropped on the curb. I would not lay odds on that being the next job to be automated out of existence.
maybe it was mentioned elsewhere in the series, but it seems like they buried the lede with this story: fractional employees.
as opposed to the post-WWII boom where value and growth were predicated on economies of scale/scope, the value of the sharing economy seems to be predicated on exploiting fractional employment to create a more fluid and continuous labor supply.
technology is enabling an economic shift (arguably an innovation) around labor, where value is derived from the efficiencies of better matching supply to demand as a result of being able to get some fraction of a person's labor capacity. on the other side, labor can mix and match jobs to suit lifestyle needs. unfortunately, power shifts further toward capital, leaving labor earning less.
Does anyone else living outside of San Fran read this and go "San Fran blah blah blah". Seriously not trying to be rude, I just do not think any of the models presented in this article represent real life much outside of SF or maybe NYC.
Exactly, many of these ideas likely can never work outside of compact cities like SF or NYC. Where I live in the DFW metroplex Uber doesn't even support 1/4 of the population. I can drive almost an hour E N or W and still be in the metro area. It's hard to scale if the distance is too great.
Except Instacart, the company mentioned in the lead-in of the article, is not just in SF or NYC. Neither is Uber or Lyft. So I'm not sure what you're saying totally holds up.
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"But Monterrosa admits that even though UPS tracks his trips down to every time he opens the truck door, the company doesn’t even provide its drivers with GPS navigation systems, or a phone with maps. It’s up to him to figure it out on his iPhone."
What?? Is this really true? In 2014, UPS provides zero navigation options to its drivers who drive around all day from point to point?
This seem counter to other things I have read about eliminating left turns, etc.. Maybe they give directions but not with a phone with map or GPS? It seems crazy to not use GPS enabled mapping for a delivery company.
Leaving something as important as driving the quickest route possible to the driver seems silly, when that greatly affects the bottom line. UPS is built upon delivering packages as quickly and efficiently as possible.
I would imagine most of the efficiency is taken up before the order even gets to the driver - although what you're saying makes sense. The benefit of completely integrating route management would seem to outweigh the cost of the equipment over the long run.
I don't think there's any substitute, especially in terms of overall transaction speed, to learning your route. A simple mapping system won't tell you which door to deliver to or how best to get to it, and looking up every destination, especially at that level of detail if annotated, is going to slow you down significantly.
That presumes low turnover, which we have to at least some degree in my home town of 55K, "metro area" of 200K.
Yes but it'd be insanely easy for a company like UPS with the data it has to:
- Give you a preprogrammed recommended stop route.
- recommended stop route can auto-adjust throughout day based on variables like traffic etc
- the only time you have to "look anything up" is when you need to manually change your recommended stop route.
- and that could be done via simple voice commands
I really find it hard to believe UPS doesn't have some kind of great GPS like this for most of it's fleet.
Delivery routes in lower density parts of the country are going to be huge geographic areas too unlike a SF or NYC too.
They supposedly use software to determine how to store packages in the back of a truck efficiently, I can't see how they wouldn't throw their same weight at navigation.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 80.7 ms ] threadIf they're having you use your own vehicle and not forcing you to adhere to a specific schedule, they can probably do it.
Totally negates the value of some college degrees. And to be frank, it's unclear why some of those degrees exist in the first place (beyond just bringing in easy tuition money to the university while making the students feel that they are following their dreams).
Sure, some people are very self motivated and don't need a degree to help them grow. But for most, it lends them more options and also more ammunition for future career growth. Most high end jobs or opportunities today are intellectual/knowledge skill based.
Most of the US population lives (and will die having lived with) making less than that annualy.
He seemed to be targeting a specific group that's considered "ambitious." One could argue that everyone is ambitious but I'm sure his point was that those people who aren't satisfied with low-wage jobs and want to do something they see as important, would consider 80K "not enough."
The idea behind science is not to study it because you'll make a lot of money off of it. Even less it is so for humanitities.
Why now, in 2014, one with a B.S. makes about as much despite all that knowledge escapes me as well.
So you have to take into account current value of a college degree and value based on future evolution.
Automating a delivery driver is actually a harder problem than it appears unless you can convince people to accept packages dropped on the curb. I would not lay odds on that being the next job to be automated out of existence.
as opposed to the post-WWII boom where value and growth were predicated on economies of scale/scope, the value of the sharing economy seems to be predicated on exploiting fractional employment to create a more fluid and continuous labor supply.
technology is enabling an economic shift (arguably an innovation) around labor, where value is derived from the efficiencies of better matching supply to demand as a result of being able to get some fraction of a person's labor capacity. on the other side, labor can mix and match jobs to suit lifestyle needs. unfortunately, power shifts further toward capital, leaving labor earning less.
They just need to get transaction/delivery volume up, so that density of orders shrinks the coverage area for any given "driver agent".
Scaling while trying to maintain balanced supply and demand key.
Moderate increase in delivery density can mean step changes in efficiency and almost all other aspects of these businesses.
Source: I work at Munchery mentioned in the article but I'm from Nebraska originally and delivery drove in collge.
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What?? Is this really true? In 2014, UPS provides zero navigation options to its drivers who drive around all day from point to point?
That presumes low turnover, which we have to at least some degree in my home town of 55K, "metro area" of 200K.
- Give you a preprogrammed recommended stop route. - recommended stop route can auto-adjust throughout day based on variables like traffic etc - the only time you have to "look anything up" is when you need to manually change your recommended stop route. - and that could be done via simple voice commands
I really find it hard to believe UPS doesn't have some kind of great GPS like this for most of it's fleet.
Delivery routes in lower density parts of the country are going to be huge geographic areas too unlike a SF or NYC too.
They supposedly use software to determine how to store packages in the back of a truck efficiently, I can't see how they wouldn't throw their same weight at navigation.