At least as far as marketing goes, when trying to hire young and hungry devs. More so at startups.
My old job was quite spread geographically and organizationally - lots of small offices with engineers that had more or less total freedom when it came to tooling. It was actually a gov. agency - so that might surprise someone, but it was one of those places that was transitioning to the digital age, and therefore, didn't really have much solid structure.
The various teams pretty much used the tools they wanted to solve the problems at hand - I think we had three different versioning control systems at play, and multiple different databases. Working with data across the organization was a total nightmare.
But we did have a common platform for communication, sharing stuff, and all that. I think we were around 250 devs. and engineers, and a survey shoved that we used over 20 different programming languages.
One thing I DO remember, was that some people in most teams were constantly pushing for the latest (as in 1-3 years old) tools. Someone's writing an API in Flask? No - screw that. FastAPI where it's at. Team x is still writing RESTful APIs? We're doing GraphQL. And that's how it went.
When some of these guys would end up in dev. blogs or being interviewed, they'd of course push the "See, we're not old and stuffy anymore. We've hired lots of young engineers, and right now we're using [trendy stack]"
Clearly there are businesses that serve millions or billions of users, and have a serious need for engineers with experience with the tools to do so. Engineers seeking those jobs are then motivated to use those tools to engineer systems serving orders of magnitude fewer customers simply so they can claim that experience.
That’s because cows eat soy meal, which is inedible to humans. The economic demand for soy is almost entirely human consumption - they just give the by-products to cows because they can save a few cents by not throwing it away.
Yeah, by mass. Look into the actual dollar numbers. It’s not economically viable to feed human-edible soy to cattle. There are much cheaper food sources. Cows just get the scraps (which outweigh the human-destined product). It’s not grown “for cattle” in the sense that cattle have essentially zero effect on the amount of soy that gets grown. https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/soy
This isn't true at all. The majority of soy produced all over the world is feed grade soy which isn't destined for human consumption.
Other than that I just can't find any sources that corroborate what you say. Every single source I could find that has actual numbers contradicts your statement.
Take the US for example
Just over 70 percent of the soybeans grown in the United States are used for animal feed, with poultry being the number one livestock sector consuming soybeans, followed by hogs, dairy, beef and aquaculture. The second largest market for U.S. soybeans is for production of foods for human consumption, like salad oil or frying oil, which uses about 15 percent of U.S. soybeans. A distant third market for soybeans is biodiesel, using only about 5 percent of the U.S. soybean crop.
> This isn't true at all. The majority of soy produced all over the world is feed grade soy which isn't destined for human consumption.
Yeah because that’s how soy beans work dude. I think there must be some miscommunication here - the majority of the harvested soy bean is physically not palatable to humans.
Perhaps you are misunderstanding what “70 percent of the soybeans” means. 70 percent of the harvested soy material is not salable to humans. It’s called “soy meal”, look it up. It’s not like if you count all the beans that get picked, 70% of them go to cows. Each harvest is mechanically separated into its component parts and shipped to different consumers, and only a minority of the mass is suitable for oil production or direct consumption.
No, this is not about the percentage of harvested material. I’m having trouble believing that you are having this exchange in good faith, so I’m gonna end this here.
And just so we don’t end this discussion with misinformation I’m gonna leave a final quote here:
About 85 percent of the world’s soybeans are processed, or "crushed," annually into soybean meal and oil. Approximately 98 percent of the soybean meal that is crushed is further processed into animal feed with the balance used to make soy flour and proteins.
Literally just google “soybean meal” and you’ll understand what they’re talking about. I feel like I’ve explained this pretty thoroughly. I can’t get my head around how you feel the need to conflate percent mass with percent quantity. Is there some language or conceptual barrier here?
A few off the top of my head. I'm currently working (remotely) for a BigCo that acquired my startup employer last year.
Technical.ly can be a good resource for local postings. I've worked as a SWE in Baltimore for 10 years and have never had employment issues. I don't quite make SV money, but I make solid 6 figures and can afford a very nice home on just my salary and send my kids to private school, etc.
If you (OP of the parent's parent) do interview in the area be sure to dig in to find what the company's lines of business are. CloudTamer, for instance, is ostensibly a commercial product-based company but does business with federal agencies and contractors (per their web site) and was at the AWS Public Sector Summit a few years ago. A different company that I interviewed at in an adjacent space (security vs CloudTamer's compliance) was in a similar position... they were selling their product to the Air Force but swore up and down that they'd never contract with them outside of being a vendor. I was skeptical and my suspicions were proven correct six months later when they put out a press release announcing the award of an Air Force contract.
Maryland/Northern Virginia are _not_ the places to be if you want career options outside of government [contracting] work. It's not un-doable but you'll be much better served looking for work in a place where 80% of the value of the economy doesn't revolve around Washington-type work.
Maryland/Northern Virginia are _not_ the places to be if you want career options outside of government [contracting] work.
While it's true that .gov work is huge in DC metro (and extending to Baltimore), there are MANY companies completely outside, or on the periphery, and even more if you just want to eliminate military jobs.
Amazon has large AWS offices, plus HQ2 is spinning up.
Google and Microsoft both have substantial presences (albeit much of that is .gov work). Walmart has their innovation centre here (Walmart Labs?).
Oracle. VW of A. Several universities. Smaller companies like Ellucian (my employer). Freddie and Fannie (.gov-adjacent). The list is long.
I would add that there are financial technical jobs at T Rowe Price, Legg Mason, Morgan Stanley etc. Not to mention that there are computer security jobs at those places where the stakes are high.
Oh yeah, info-sec jobs abound. Many are .gov consulting gigs, but lots of law firms, banks, and hospitals too.
And Capital One Bank has a massive complex in McLean/Tysons. It's not their HQ (which is in Richmond), but there has to be a few thousand employees here.
TBF, "Washington-type" work also includes journalism and NGOs, so it could be the place to live (along with NYC) if you want to do tech in either of those fields.
Can anyone give a perspective why is it the case? In Europe it seems impossible not to have commercial software positions in a big local hub city - and in US whole areas seem to be devoid of them as HN crowd implies.
It's because Washington, DC is the nation's capital and where our legislative bodies, heads of state, and our various departments (ministries) are based out of. There are also many military bases in close proximity and the military headquarters (Pentagon) is across the river in Virginia.
I think people are misinterpreting my comment... there _are_ non-defense/government jobs in the area but they are dwarfed by the number of such jobs because of the pervasive nature of the aforementioned entities. When I lived in the area more than 90% of LinkedIn recruiter messages that I got were about these jobs. This ceased being the case after I moved even when I was still in the defense contracting industry.
See my sibling comment. I think the OP overstated the lack of non-government jobs in the area. I've lived here (Dulles tech corridor) most of my life and work in non-government software.
-- Early in the pandemic, travel was way down. Rental car companies unloaded a lot of their fleet that were sitting idle. Now that demand is back up, they are back on the market for vehicles.
-- Semiconductor shortages: automobile manufacturers cut their orders in early 2020 anticipating a decline in demand. That decline never happened, so they're now now able to obtain sufficient chips for new vehicle manufacturing. Thus a decline in new car availability that might push some car-buyers onto the secondary market.
My mental model is that there's too much wealth sloshing around for "large incomes" to make too much difference.
High income is like delta-v, it's great. But you're still near the ground, and you're competing against people already in high orbit.
The beneficiaries of the housing explosion have equity which they can parlay into more ownership, whether for themselves as investments or their children.
Record low interest rates help prices by letting people lever up (letting them spend their lifetime earnings now) to compete but of course also bids up prices, again to the benefit of existing homeowners.
Furthermore, in the UK, Australia and NZ (less familiar with the US or Canada) it seems the government will move heaven and earth to prop up housing.
High immigration rates and supply restriction have not been helping.
I'm not as convinced as GP that the situation can last "forever", but I could see it lasting for another couple of decades. A true housing collapse would probably be a phyrric victory for the young.
So the restaurants are getting the option of delivery and the increased customer base and advertising... for absolutely no change to themselves? And the customers who use delivery are the ones paying for it? And if they don't want to pay it they can still go straight to the restaurant who will again make the same money? Sounds like a win to absolutely everyone involved.
What is everyone's problem? Why do we want to interfere with this?
It's falsifying the restaurants prices. Grubhub shouldn't be able to say a dish costs $15 when it actually costs $10. It's a false statement that harms the restaurant.
Sure, they will get some deliveries but what about the people that would buy at $10 but not $15? And what about the people that won't dine in because they think prices are 50% higher than they are.
GrubHub is skimming valuable customers while discarding others. That's good for them but ultimately harmful for the restaurant.
It is unethical only if Grubhub says “I will deliver joe’s 12$ burger to you for a 4$ delivery fee” when the burger costs actually 9$. There’s nothing wrong if they say “I will bring you Joe’s burger for 16$ including delivery.”
In general we don’t expect resellers to reveal their cost of goods sold.
GrubHub describes themselves as a delivery service company, not a reseller. With resellers, I can comparison shop. GrubHub tries to make that difficult at best.
It's marking them up... yeah. Is that a problem? Do you realise when you go to a store all the products are 'falsified' by marking them up on top of what the producer sells them to the retailer for?
Imagine Google Shopping marks up all BestBuy items by 50 percent. And then you decide to never shop at BestBuy, whether it be in person or online, because Google’s marked up pricing lead you to believe that BestBuy’s prices are outrageous.
No, because since the beginning of retail stores that is how it has worked and everyone understands that. For food delivery it has always been that you buy from the restaurant and pay menu price + delivery charge. Grubhub et.al. have come along and used that understanding along with an implied relationship to the restaurant to deceive the customer.
Doordash or whatever says 'for $x we will put a WhateverBurger burger into your hand'. As long as that's what they achieve, this seems fundamentally honest to me.
As a consumer I don't really care where that $x goes to - Doordash, WhateverBurger, delivery person... doesn't seem my business to interfere in people's private financial agreements.
The diner gets offered a deal and can take it or not.
The restaurant gets offered a deal and can take it or not.
The delivery person gets offered a deal and can take it or not.
Seems to me like everyone is acting ethically here, and everyone is accepting a deal they're presumably happy with. If they aren't, they can turn it down and go elsewhere.
>Doordash or whatever says 'for $x we will put a WhateverBurger burger into your hand'. As long as that's what they achieve, this seems fundamentally honest to me.
What percentage of customers do you think understand that Grubhub is marking up their food?
>If they aren't, they can turn it down and go elsewhere.
That's precisely the problem. Some of the restaurants customers are turning it down and going elsewhere because Grubhub has misrepresented their prices.
Is the markup similar for all restaurants? If Joe's burger is $5 marked up to $6, and Fancy Joseph's burger is $10 marked up to $12, isn't any marketing/signalling value of the price maintained?
> Doordash or whatever says 'for $x we will put a WhateverBurger burger into your hand'. As long as that's what they achieve, this seems fundamentally honest to me.
That's not what they do, though. The receipt shows line items with a cost for the food, a fee for the service, and a delivery fee.
The problem is there's an additional fee for the service hidden in the supposed cost of the food; customers don't actually know what Doordash's cut really is.
> customers don't actually know what Doordash's cut really is
But why would you care? I don't need to know the bill of materials for all my transactions. When I buy a coffee I don't expect to know how much they paid for the beans.
That doesn't seem like a good comparison, the burger is not a "bill of materials" it's a final product available directly to customers by the restaurant, consumers would definently care that they are being sold a marked up burger that is available to them for 25% cheaper. If a delivery company charges me 70 dollars to deliver a flat screen tv that's fine, but if they charge me 70 dollars but also markup the price of the TV 25% I'd consider that pretty dishonest and would at least want to know that I have the option to save 25% by managing delivery on my own.
> If a delivery company charges me 70 dollars to deliver a flat screen tv that's fine, but if they charge me 70 dollars but also markup the price of the TV 25% I'd consider that pretty dishonest and would at least want to know that I have the option to save 25% by managing delivery on my own.
...but this is exactly how other industries already work and everyone's fine with it!
When you buy a TV from Amazon they both mark it up and also charge you delivery!
And they didn't give you the option to save by managing delivery on your own!
Why don't you get mad at Amazon for marking up products as well as charging delivery?
Amazon is a marketplace not a delivery service. It is expected that you might pay different prices in different marketplaces, it's not expected that a delivery service would charge you a delivery fee and a markup on the cost of the product that you're buying - that is not normal.
I care because they're explicitly listing a fee for the app that doesn't accurately reflect what that fee is.
If you wanna say "delivering a pizza will cost you $20" and leave at that, fine. If you tell me the Grubhub fee is $5 and it's actually $10, I'm upset.
Doordash or whatever says 'for $x we will put a $y WhateverBurger burger into your hand,' but $y is already higher than a WhateverBurger costs. People are left thinking that $x isn't that high a cost for delivering a $y burger, but the actual delivery cost is $x plus some percentage of $y, so both the numerator and denominator are falsified.
> Doordash or whatever says 'for $x we will put a $y WhateverBurger burger into your hand,' but $y is already higher than a WhateverBurger costs.
So add $x and $y together. If that price works for you go for it, if not, don't.
A markup plus a fee is already a common thing. It's done so that there is a minimum to cover expenses plus something that can vary with higher value items because you can get more profit from people who are willing to pay for more luxury items. It's not strange or unusual or a foreign concept to anyone already living in a Western economy.
I don't see why you'd care how they arrive at the final price. Just look at the final price.
What I think you're missing is that price is (or has been) an incredibly valuable input signal when determining the value of a previously-unknown restaurant. if I'm in the mood for a $20 meal, I know to avoid places that offer $40 meals, and vice-versa. My expectations for a $15 lunch are different than my expectations for a $25 lunch. Most people use price as an important signal, communicating something about the restaurant or meal.
These vendors are distorting that signal by misrepresenting the price. If it were clean-cut, and the original price were still visible, and the delivery as a separate 15-20% fee, then fine, I could do exactly what you suggest. Is it or is it not worth it to have this delivered right now?
But it's not. Let's say I see an arbitrary restaurant serving the kind of food I'm in the mood for, say Vietnamese food. I can then look and see the price to know roughly what quality of food to expect: Is it closer to $10 or $30 for an entree, since those are two very different things.
The total price might not even matter to me. But if I order a $20 entree with an extra delivery fee, and what shows up is a $10 entree, then that's a problem and most people will believe that the restaurant offers terrible value, because they were lied to by the intermediary.
That's the issue. It's not "am I will to have my In-N-Out burger delivered for $6 extra," it's "with Doordash lying to me about these restaurants I've never been to, I have no idea whether this is worth doing or not until I've already paid and accepted delivery."
A restaurant is a brand and a brand gets to determine the pricing of their products. Pricing is one of the ways customers relate to the brand's identity. Having a 3rd party, which may still add value to both the brand and end-user, interject and abstract from the brand's determined prices is unethical, period. These delivery services should really be increasing their delivery fees to cover their costs, but they know customers will not go for a higher line item fee, so they choose to obscure it through price inflation that is not obvious to the customer. Now the customer may think the price of an item is always higher, so they may avoid the location in a future dine-in experience. This is harmful.
> A restaurant is a brand and a brand gets to determine the pricing of their products.
But that’s just not true. Branded products vary in price on different retailers. A can of Coca-Cola can be wildly different prices in different places. Are you not used to this as a consumer?
> Having a 3rd party, which may still add value to both the brand and end-user, interject and abstract from the brand's determined prices is unethical, period.
I don’t understand - have you never bean to a supermarket or a department store before? They sell other brands in their store. Do you not realise they’re also marked up?
I am very aware of how wholesale and retail pricing works - but that is a very different distribution channel, and customers enter supermarkets and department stores well aware of this. Restaurant pricing is based on (with maybe some outlying exceptions) a direct-to-consumer distribution model - something you seem be be having an impossible time understanding. I'm fine with delivery companies marking up the prices - as long as they are transparent about it - which they are not. it's deceitful to the customer experience, and I think you are intentionally playing dumb here.
They're telling me they're shocked that a business would mark up a product they buy from someone else to re-sell? And I think it's a bit off they're calling it 'unethical'. It's no different to what other companies do all the time and people consider it acceptable and the only distinction is the label of delivery/retailer?
The restaurants do it themselves! They resell wine with their own markup plus charge a service fee!
Also, this is a luxury product we're talking about - restaurant food delivered to you home. Why are people so aghast that they're having to pay a marked-up premium for it?
I’m pretty sure that in most countries, a store can’t just sell another company’s products without entering an agreement with them. This agreement allows the company to set a minimum and maximum price for the product.
Imagine you’re selling chocolate that you want people to associate with luxury/wealth. To achieve this you might want to limit resellers to be 5 star hotels and luxury stores rather than the 1 dollar store.
The fact that your company’s product end up being represented by the store and its actions. Mistreating employees and customers, discrimination, bad customer service/return policy, terrible product placement, etc. There are so many ways a store can hurt your company’s reputation by association.
>What is everyone's problem? Why do we want to interfere with this?
Because customers who order through Grubhub/Doordash blame the restaurant for issues such as high prices and wrong orders instead of Grubhub/Doordash. So on one hand, the restaurant gets increased business but on the other they never interact with the customer directly and so their business' reputation depends on Grubhub/Doordash/etc to not fuck up, which is unlikely.
That's a messaging/marketing issue, which we regulate all the time.
It would be better and fairer to legislate that GrubHub and others must be clear about where their pricing comes from rather than legislating what their prices should be.
What? Are we reading the same article? As far as I can tell this new rule caps fees at 10%, it doesn't say anything about charging whatever they want, while being more transparent or disclosing the fees more clearly.
The headline says "Portland approves 10% cap on fees that food delivery apps can charge RESTAURANTS". There's no cap on what they can charge customers.
Legal: "Your pizza is $10. Our fee is $3, delivery is $5. Total bill $18." Restaurant gets $10.
Not legal: "Your pizza is $10 (but we quietly take $3 of that). Our fee is $3 (but we hid an extra $3 in the pizza!). Delivery is $5. Total bill $18." Restaurant gets $7.
Legal: "Your pizza is $7. Our fee is $6, delivery is $5. Total bill $18." Restaurant gets $7.
Legal: "Your pizza is $10. Our fee is $6, delivery is $5. Total bill $21." Restaurant gets $10.
Legal (but not great for business): "Your pizza is $10. Our fee is $600 because 'fuck you, we have VCs to pay', delivery is $5. Total bill $615." Restaurant gets $10.
Am I the only who one thinks it's weird they itemize their service price into two types of delivery fee? Just say pizza $10, delivery $8. Restaurant gets between $9-$10.
Option implies that restaurants can opt in/out which for cases like GrubHub isn’t possible.
These apps can lead to poor experience and perception of the restaurant due to the delivery short comings and customers tend to transfer any unhappiness with the delivery as being the restaurants fault (eg late delivery and cold food).
> Option implies that restaurants can opt in/out which for cases like GrubHub isn’t possible.
Should a manufacturer have the right to say that you can't re-sell something that you bought from them fairly? That doesn't sound great to me. If Doordash fairly buy the food then they can sell it to me (as long as they follow food regulations). That sounds fine, doesn't it?
If the reseller is pretty much pretending to be the manufacturer, and goes on yelp and change the manufacturer's phone number to their own.. I don't know if they have the right, but it's pretty scummy.
I think people get lured in by no delivery fee and reduced prices originally so they order at basically the normal price. But then once the introductory prices go away and the fees go up they get mad at the restaurant, not the delivery service
Actually many times it works agaisnt the restaurant. It misleads consumers into thinking they have high prices for real and many times their own reputation is harmed because these apps use call centers to place the orders and fuck up royally.
There are plenty of “proxy shipping” services that operate under this model. They don’t conceal the fact that they are a third party unaffiliated with the provider.
In addition, most restaurants will not just accept takeout orders from a random person that shows up on a bike, it’s an organized partnership. I wonder how they even achieve that.
> Sounds like a win to absolutely everyone involved.
Let's pare it down to only you and the unsolicited service - You come home from work and the neighbor kid from six blocks down you've never met bills you for mowing your lawn while you were away.
Let's pare it down to only the unsolicited service and the business - Hi, we put out a bunch of ads that say we're you and have a bunch of customers lined up ready to order. We'll tell you who they are for a 10% service fee. Also we lied to your customers about your prices.
Imagine you bought a new car two months ago, then find out the sales person was just some guy who hangs out on the lot, told you he works for the dealership, and charged you a 10% markup over the dealership's actual price. Imagine your elderly neighbors fell for a door-to-door roofing scam that works the same way.
But Doordash don't charge for an unsolicited service. They aren't charging the restaurant at all in this case. They're paying the restaurant's full price for food. Like anyone could.
Then they charge the customer for an additional service actually rendered - the delivery. They charge this as a delivery fee and a markup that they can vary on more expensive items. This is pretty normal for a retail business to do.
The Grubhub UX makes a specific claim, though: "Restaurant X charges $10 for a burger, and we will deliver it for $5".
When they're marking the item price up, that claim is false. Given these apps' SEO juice and ubiquity, users are left with the false impression that Restaurant X sells a pretty expensive burger.
Do they really specifically say 'Restaurant X charges $10 for a burger'? Or do they just say 'the burger costs $10'?
Like when you shop on Amazon - they say 'the TV is $x and our delivery fee is $y' - really the manufacturer charged them < $y but they mark up and then also charge a delivery fee, don't they?
Grubhub positions themselves as a delivery service, not a reseller. Receipts list the price for the item, Grubhub's fee, and Grubhub's delivery fee. I'm sure they're quite careful with exactly how they word it to avoid legal issues, but the implicit claim is pretty clear: "here's the restaurant cost, and here's our cost".
I would be upset if Amazon had brick-and-mortar stores and they sold me a $100 TV with a $10 delivery fee online, but that same product was available for pick-up at $90. I'd be fine with it sold in-store for $100.
I'm generally sympathetic to this perspective, but the problem is that the restaurant receives the reputation hit when GrubHub delivers late, cold, overpriced food. Customers don't understand what they're buying, and when something goes wrong, they leave bad reviews on Yelp et al.
This seems like an information problem rather than a pricing problem. As long as the customers understand the relationship between GrubHub and the restaurant, I don't see any problem with GH charging whatever the market will bear. But right now they seem to be deliberately misleading the customer by listing fake prices separate from the delivery fee.
Are you sure these companies are getting an increased customer base? These services are giving them advertising but also giving advertising to all their competitors so I would assume it cancels out to a degree. Also the negative reviews for high prices or food being served cold probably hurt more than they help
What's wrong with that? If the restaurants are getting the price they want to charge, and if the customers are prepared to pay the higher price, seems everything's OK?
I agree that it's scammy that grubhub etc. is pretending to be the restaurant. But if they made it clear, we are a delivery service giving you access to this restaurant, if you want to order this food you can do so for $17.99, I think everything would be fine with that business model.
Understood. But then the law should ban pretending to be someone else (it probably does, but evidently not effectively enough). Having a cap of x% on fees won't solve this problem. It will solve another problem which wasn't a problem in the first place.
Probably the ludicrous notion that somehow Hillary Clinton is to blame for electing Donald Trump rather than the millions of people who voted for him despite overwhelming evidence of his lack of fitness for the office.
That's not what I gathered from the comment. It seemed like they were saying that Hillary had desired to run against Trump, according to those leaked emails. Is it false that Hillary wanted to run against Trump, back when many (including myself) didn't think he had a chance?
Millions of people also judged Hillary as being unfit for office. She was a horribly flawed candidate. (Not saying that Trump wasn't...)
So, yes, Hillary in fact does deserve some of the blame. She was probably the only candidate the Democrats could have run who would have lost to Trump.
Certainly providing the menu that might exonerate you is probably fine -- but that's what a lawyer is for.