Archived because it’s kind of juicy and I’m half-sure it will be taken down:
spoiler
I’m posting this from a library Wi-Fi on a burner laptop because I am technically under a massive NDA. I don’t care anymore. I put in my two weeks yesterday and honestly, I hope they sue me. I’ve been sitting on this for about eight months, just watching the code getting pushed to production, and I can’t sleep at night knowing I helped build this machine.
You guys always suspect the algorithms are rigged against you, but the reality is actually so much more depressing than the conspiracy theories. I’m a backend engineer. I sit in the weekly sprint planning meetings where Product Managers (PMs) discuss how to squeeze another 0.4% margin out of “human assets” (that’s literally what they call drivers in the database schemas). They talk about these people like they are resource nodes in a video game, not fathers and mothers trying to pay rent.
First off, the “Priority Delivery” is a total scam. It was pitched to us as a “psychological value add.” Like I said in the title, when you pay that extra $2.99, it changes a boolean flag in the order JSON, but the dispatch logic literally ignores it. It does nothing to speed you up.
We actually ran an A/B test last year where we didn’t speed up the priority orders, we just purposefully delayed non-priority orders by 5 to 10 minutes to make the Priority ones “feel” faster by comparison. Management loved the results. We generated millions in pure profit just by making the standard service worse, not by making the premium service better.
But the thing that actually makes me sick—and the main reason I’m quitting—is the “Desperation Score.” We have 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 $3 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 $15 for a run when we know he’s desperate enough to do it for $6?” 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.
Then there is the “Benefit Fee.” You’ve probably seen that $1.50 “Regulatory Response Fee” or “Driver Benefits Fee” that appeared on your bill after the recent labor laws passed. The wording is designed to make you feel like you’re helping the worker.
In reality, that money goes straight to a corporate slush fund used to lobby against driver unions. We have a specific internal cost center for “Policy Defense,” and that fee feeds directly into it. You are literally paying for the high-end lawyers that are fighting to keep your delivery guy homeless.
And regarding tips, we’re essentially doing Tip Theft 2.0. We don’t “steal” them legally anymore because we got sued for that. Instead, we use predictive modeling to dynamically lower the base pay.
If the algo predicts you are a “high tipper” and you’ll likely drop $10, it offers the driver a measly $2 base pay. If you tip $0, it offers them $8 base pay just to get the food moved. The result is that your generosity isn’t rewarding the driver; it’s subsidizing us. You’re paying their wage so we don’t have to.
I’m drunk and I’m angry. Ask me anything before this gets taken down.
The two weeks thing makes me think it’s fiction, but I don’t have grounds to claim it is fiction. It doesn’t really matter — the fact it sounds believable already shows how shitty things are in the 2026 world.
The comments in both Reddit and “Reddit LARPing as H4x0rz” are making me cringe.
Maybe they got a new job
It looks fishy to me because they claim to be “under a massive NDA”, while leaking info. In that situation, you’d probably avoid mentioning any fluff that would help the business to identify you. I’m not sure though; it’s also possible they genuinely give no fucks about it.
The fluff could also be intentionally placed red herrings for anyone trying to identify them. I’d certainly do the same if I were in that position.
It’s possible. I’d argue it’s less effective than it looks like, but you’re right, at least some would do it.
I’d certainly do the same if I were in that position.
Speaking on that. It’s a bit off-topic, but PSA:
In case anyone here is ever in a position that you need to publish something anonymously, pay close attention to your own writing style. This is essential to hide your identity; we leak a lot of info about ourselves not just by what we write, but how we do it: vocab, spelling, grammar, even discourse structure. Here are some good albeit slightly sensationalised examples of that.
Also, keep it as short as reasonably possible; the more you write, the more you tell others who you are.
This is a proper time to use an LLM. You want their generic sound.
Yes, prompting an LLM to phrase it is a good idea. Just be careful if the LLM you’re using isn’t “dialling home”, I’d definitively not trust OpenAI/Anthropic/Google/etc.
What info given here would pinpoint the guy? It could easily be aabout any food app anywhere in the world.
“I put in my two weeks yesterday” = “I submitted my resignation letter in the 1st of January”. Any delivery business that fits what they said, and concerned about NDA violations, could use this info to narrow down the list of potential suspects.
It could easily be aabout any food app anywhere in the world.
There are plenty clues around the text that he’s from USA. You could even narrow it down further to general area + age range.
I’d love to dig further into this due to linguistic curiosity, but in the chance the text is genuine, I’d rather not, I’d be potentially helping a corpo against a worker.
