
Amazon drivers are hanging smartphones in trees to get more work - Umofomia
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-01/amazon-drivers-are-hanging-smartphones-in-trees-to-get-more-work
======
jameshawkins
I used to work at Uber and we would see similar behavior from drivers at
airports. There would be a geofence around the parking lots where drivers had
to wait before they could be sent a ride. However, the app would still send a
ride to the closest available driver, so they would all lean their phones
against the gate to get as close to the edge of the geofence as possible.

Ultimately, Uber implemented a FIFO queue at these lots, meaning a driver was
added to a waiting list as soon as they entered the lot, thus removing the
need for this behavior anymore.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Most every taxi firm in the uk has a piece of plastic water pipe and a bunch
of ping-pong balls. As each driver comes back they take their number from the
basket and drop it into the far end of the tube. The next call that comes in,
and the despatcher takes the ball out the "near" end.

It is an almost foolproof FIFO pipe (literally), simplemfor everyone to
understand and very cheap to run.

~~~
h4kor
At German train station the taxis form a line. You are expected to take the
first car in the line. If you try to take another one most drivers will tell
you to go to the first car.

~~~
corobo
Same here (UK) the only exception to jumping their taxi queue is if you need a
specific vehicle further back in line (large, wheelchair friendly, etc)

~~~
gutnor
Or if they don't want to carry you because you need to "cross the river" or
get out of Zone 1.

Does not happen nearly as often since Uber is squeezing them though.

------
sandworm101
Does the amazon brain actually think that the person standing 10/20/50 feet
closer is the better person for the job? My first impression was that these
phones were being run by people blocks/miles away, but they are actually only
a few feet closer.

>> That means a phone in a tree outside Whole Foods’ door would get the
delivery offer even before drivers sitting in their cars just a block away.

That seems ridiculous. Plus or minus what, a minute? There has to be a better
way to select drivers.

~~~
crazygringo
The requirements were surely to give preference to closer delivery people, and
the easiest code to write will simply order delivery people by distance.

The simplest solution is therefore that, yes, someone 10 feet away will get it
before someone 20 feet away.

The developers would have to go out of their way to add a buffer zone, e.g.
find the closest person, add 1,000 feet, find everyone within that range, then
select randomly. Or create a "local zone" distance range and a queue. Or other
options -- once you try to figure out "what's fair" it gets really
complicated.

That extra code is only going to get written if it has to.

So there's nothing ridiculous about it at all. In fact it's the simplest, most
expected solution.

Now that it's news, however, Amazon might actually come up with more
sophisticated requirements.

~~~
cortesoft
This sort of "unintended consequence of over precision" has happened a few
times... I remember a while back a dating app (I think?) was returning the
distance between the two people with a ridiculous amount of precision, which
allowed people to triangulate where someone was with three phones

~~~
cyral
Here’s an article about how Tinder fixed it:
[https://robertheaton.com/2018/07/09/how-tinder-keeps-your-
lo...](https://robertheaton.com/2018/07/09/how-tinder-keeps-your-location-a-
bit-private/)

~~~
cortesoft
Oh man, I forgot they originally sent the actual location. I still can’t
believe how many developers think you can trust the client.

------
supernova87a
It's just amazingly interesting to see our own societal evolution in action,
rapidly spurred on by technology.

A company or event or technology changes something, and an
evolutionary/behavioral niche newly forms to take advantage of it. People are
smart and infinitely adaptable...

~~~
Nacdor
> our own societal evolution

I'm not sure I'd call it "evolution" so much as a race to the bottom. The
drivers in this article are now forced to pay an intermediary in order to
secure work that was previously available for free. It's basically a form of
scalping.

This is why labor laws are important and why classifying employees as
contractors can be so detrimental.

~~~
Shivetya
However these are the essence of contacted work. A job is put up and you
choose to take it. There is nothing being forced upon anyone. I know people
who drive for Uber, no one is forcing them too. They have their stories of
taxi drivers who tripled or quadrupled their income by switching.

Using California's onerous law that has caused so much trouble in this area,
did you know that taxi services are not affected unless the city or county
regulation body says so? isn't that interesting? they typically are in rental
agreements with cars and medallions. However the government has a vested
interest in medallions and these companies donate to local politicians all the
time. Their workers are getting the shaft but it does not make news because it
does not involve an internet company with billions.

The situations I do not like were stories surrounding instacart shoppers being
able to cancel tips after delivery, now that is fraud and the company should
be liable. I believe uber eats did something similar. T

~~~
acdha
> There is nothing being forced upon anyone.

This is leaving out the lack of the normal jobs which would be created if the
employer couldn’t avoid it this way. People are desperate enough to take gig
economy jobs because there’s been a steady erosion of other options.

~~~
curryst
I don't think those jobs losses were caused by the gig economy, though. Rather
the gig economy arose out of the glut of labor available.

It's an important distinction to make. Although Uber et co may be predatory on
underutilized workers, I don't think banning them is going to bring back the
better jobs that used to exist.

The best way to make Uber pay better would be to have compelling other options
for these workers; easier said than done though

------
twoslide
It is pretty easy to spoof GPS locations, at least in Android, in a way that
is undectable to apps using location services. Might be a better option for
these drivers?

~~~
mullen
That might require a level of technological sophistication that a lot of
drivers don't have.

~~~
dmurray
Seems like a business opportunity for someone to sell them that service (sell
them an app, or personally configure their phones, or both).

~~~
bigiain
"Business model: Uber, but for Uber"...

------
gimmeThaBeet
I agree, it seems they saw a bunch of phones hanging in a tree, so I'd give
them the benefit of the doubt it is an existent phenomenon, but would also
question the extent. It's interesting because the case here is that the gig
worker wants to behave like an employee, basically polling the system and
taking a job without evaluating it is akin to getting assigned it. It feels
like the flip side of what you normally see.

Now the problem here is the why, that is necessity, desperation. And the who,
which is that it seems some parties might be predating here, snapping up the
gigs and basically scalping/arbitraging them.

The part I grapple with is that it's certainly unfair for companies to utilize
gig workers and expect employees. Is it just as wrong for a company to stand
by and watch their gig workers sort of organize themselves into employees?

~~~
boogies
Did you mean for this to be a reply to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24343643](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24343643)?

~~~
gimmeThaBeet
Ah apologies, yes I did. Thanks!

------
MattGaiser
Wouldn't Amazon just adjust its algorithm to punish delays in delivery?
Penalize drivers who take longer to get there than they should if they were
truly nearby?

~~~
UncleEntity
Apparently they are putting the phones in a location that is impossible to be
physically closer to in order to get the job first -- park car, walk over to
the tree to sync your phone then wait in your car for the next job offer.

The trick -- per a previous job -- is to figure out where _the computer_
thinks the address is (on the street, in the middle of the parking lot,
&etc...) and get your location as close as you can to that to get an edge over
the competition.

~~~
calvano915
Why are drivers willing to allow this and not just walking over and destroying
these phones? I don't understand the benefit of getting more deliveries but at
the cost of a significant percentage of the payment.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Because destroying other people's phones is a crime.

------
todd8
The Amazon drivers seem to be far less careful in their deliveries as well. In
the past, deliveries were delivered to my porch. Then the started showing up
on my drive. Yesterday my wife found a book delivery under a shrub next to the
curb.

------
wccrawford
Simple Solution: Treat all phones within X distance of the store as being the
same distance away. If the typical parking lot is 1/4 mile away, that's the
minimum distance to use.

------
tibbydudeza
It is no different from traders laying down their own cables and private
communications infrastructure to get a millisecond advantage on trades on the
DOW.

~~~
ironmagma
It is quite different. They are Amazon’s own fleet of workers, competing to
get work assigned to them by Amazon.

~~~
tibbydudeza
Not employed by Amazon since they are "gig" workers , pretty sure there are
similar hacks used by Uber/Lyft drivers to get the best paying rides.

~~~
ironmagma
Gig workers are still workers. This whole ridiculousness would be avoided if
they just paid them like the employees they should be.

------
bleah1000
I always wonder in these kinds of articles how many people are doing this. The
problem is that it is so sensationalized, that it could be that there are 10
people doing this, and it's not really a big deal. Or it could be that 50% of
the people doing this work, do this. For example, the article says that it
reviewed photos and videos of phones near Whole Foods and Amazon delivery
stations. Okay, so how many phones did they find? How many people do they have
personal knowledge doing this?

I've noticed that a lot of news articles tend to take a few examples of
something outrageous, but never say anything about how widespread the practice
is. I find it hard to be outraged or care unless there is some quantification
of the problem. In any system, people will find a way to cheat.

Amazon is aware and maybe they are working on a way to fix this, but it's not
clear Amazon has had much time to figure out what to do. Even if you think
Amazon is evil and doesn't care, it takes time to figure out how to defeat
this. Maybe they won't care, but at least give them some time to respond.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I 've noticed that a lot of news articles tend to take a few examples of
> something outrageous, but never say anything about how widespread the
> practice is._

That's entirely on purpose. Most of such "outrageous" things, including some
hot political topics, wouldn't look nearly as outrageous if it were compared
against the baseline. So necessary information is not included. Actually
informing people "weakens the story".

~~~
Talanes
Don't underestimate the role of laziness. It's much less work to just find a
localized instance of something, and then report it as a phenomenon vs. doing
the actual in-the-weeds journalism in order to get a widespread view of the
topic.

------
im3w1l
I can't help but think of the stories from before stock market colocation was
a thing. Nowadays the stock exchanges have a fair setup where people can put
their machines in the same data center as stock exchange. And everyone gets to
connect with an equal length wire. But before this modern solution, it was a
free for all with companies trying various tricks to rent space as close as
possible.

~~~
bschne
Isn't this sort of still the case in HFT, where some firms try building e.g.
their own microwave radio tower networks to beat others by a few milliseconds?

~~~
Qworg
Yes - between Chicago and NYC.

~~~
gorbypark
I believe there is one between London and Frankfurt as well.

------
Cthulhu_
Instead of paying their drivers a fair wage regardless of how much they
deliver, they're letting them fight amongst themselves while they laugh all
the way to the bank.

And the drivers actually seem to want this, knowing full well the market is
oversaturated. If Amazon were to pay drivers a fixed amount, they'd probably
end up with much less drivers.

------
btbuildem
Unidentified person or entity?

Just talk to the guy with a baseball bat hanging out in the vicinity to thwart
all the "yay free phones!" folks.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's enough that they wrote this piece, it may very well kill this system -
the trick gets less profitable for drivers as more of them participate.

That, and being in the news will probably spur companies to combat this.

------
sigmaprimus
I have a hard time believing this story, not because the technological
explination doesn't make sense but because it is my understanding that there
is no shortage of work for Amazon delivery drivers.

I have read several stories about Amazon contract drivers being worked half to
death, no breaks, long days and constant pressure to deliver more. Several of
these stories have been posted in HN. (Just Google "Ycombinator Amazon drivers
overworked").

It is possible that the Whole Foods delivery contracts are more lucrative but
to imply that due to the recession drivers are desperate to get work doesn't
jive.

~~~
wutbrodo
The articles I'm reading from that Google search refer to drivers who are FTEs
or have set contracts (eg 10-hour shifts with quotas).

By contrast, this article is talking about the just-in-time, on-the-fly gig-
work market, like lyft and uber's labor markets. This is pretty clear from the
fact that it's not really possible for an employer to overwork a gig worker
without the gig worker's enthusiastic consent, since they explicitly choose
each marginal contract they do (in fact, the theme of gig worker complaints in
this area is usually against the restrictions placed on consecutive hours
worked).

------
Malic
We really are living in a William Gibson novel, aren't we?

~~~
xsmasher
Or Stephenson;

> You don't work harder because you're competing against some identical
> operation down the street. You work harder because everything is on the
> line. Your name, your honor, your family, your life. Those burger flippers
> might have a better life expectancy -- but what kind of life is it anyway,
> you have to ask yourself. That's why nobody, not even the Nipponese, can
> move pizzas faster than CosaNostra. The Deliverator is proud to wear the
> uniform, proud to drive the car, proud to march up the front walks of
> innumerable Burbclave homes, a grim vision in ninja black, a pizza on his
> shoulder, red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or
> 15:15 or the occasional 20:43.

~~~
nicbou
That's exactly what I was thinking about. Snowcrash was a ridiculous (but
thoroughly enjoyable) novel, but it feels less and less so every year.

------
adolph
_One reason Flex contractors do this is to get around the requirements for
being a driver, such as having a valid license or being authorized to work in
the U.S., according to a person familiar with the matter. In such cases,
someone who meets the requirements downloads the Flex app and is offered a
route earning $18 an hour. He or she accepts the route and then pays someone
else $10 an hour to do it, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss
a private matter._

[https://fourhourworkweek.com/](https://fourhourworkweek.com/)

~~~
stygiansonic
Delivery gig arbitrage. Now how long before the cash flow from such operations
is securitized and sold off? </sarcasm>

~~~
gumby
Amazon could do this under an innocuously-named subsidiary to reduce their
effective hourly pay costs.

~~~
adolph
It might be a valid way around "sticky wages."

 _If one looks at the whole economy, some prices might be very flexible and
others rigid. This will lead to the aggregate price level (which we can think
of as an average of the individual prices) becoming "sluggish" or "sticky" in
the sense that it does not respond to macroeconomic shocks as much as it would
if all prices were flexible. The same idea can apply to nominal wages._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_rigidity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominal_rigidity)

If Amazon were to open a subsidiary for lower priced delivery services it
might be able to maintain its workforce branding and add lower rungs to the
wage ladder for the purpose of labor supply development. It might be
politically inconvenient for a wealthy company like Amazon to have an
acknowledged wage tiering system even if it makes sense on different levels.
For example, Amazon probably cannot publicly hire people without workforce
documentation--an unacknowledged arms-length subsidiary would be able to
provide this service.

~~~
gumby
This is sort of like taxi medallions. Amazon could have people _pay_ to become
authorized drivers, and then the medallion holders could rent them out.

------
RandomBacon
Walk up to the phones and check to see if you can see any software running?

Wouldn't it be a prime target for cell phone theft?

~~~
wutbrodo
Per the article, one person stands nearby

~~~
RandomBacon
Then wouldn't they keep the phone in their pocket?

~~~
wutbrodo
Yea that's a good question: a pocket wouldn't work, but I wonder why they
couldn't just stand next to the store with a bag full of phones.

------
tosh
reminds me of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect)

------
Wolfenstein98k
This is why humans > AI.

The best laid plans of algorithms and men!

------
peter303
I thought I saw an app that would spoof a false location for a mobile device.
That app would be more practical.

------
Havoc
Sounds like the market is just self-optimising in a way? Obviously to the
detriment of those left behind.

~~~
wutbrodo
It would be self-optimizing if they were just waiting in Whole Foods parking
lots, not hanging phones in trees. It's a case of optimizing for the metric,
not the objective, by exploiting the divergence between the two. This is
generally pretty distinct from a market self-optimizing.

The objective is "closest driver", the metric is "closest phone that connects
with Amazon's servers", and the divergence is exploited by this multi-phone
syncing/dispatch setup. (In this case, the divergence is unavoidable, short of
unspoofable, unremovable microchipping of anyone who wants to pick up gig
work)

Though it seems like a pretty easy fix: just lower the granularity of the
location query.

------
aszantu
Come on. .. someone who can do this can prolly get a better job in IT

~~~
mayama
Apparently they are using some third party app to accept orders.

------
HumblyTossed
"Amazon knows about it,” the driver said, “but does nothing.”

But why should they as long as from Amazon's perspective, the system is
working?

~~~
orborde
Efficiency.

If a driver has to spend 4 minutes of every hour doing stupid antics to get an
order, and can earn $15/hour doing antics+delivering, then effectively $1/hour
is going to pay for stupid antics, from Amazon's perspective.

Amazon would like to switch those 4 minutes from "doing stupid antics" to
"doing deliveries" so that they can pay the same $15/hour but get a full hour
of real work instead of only 56 minutes.

~~~
orborde
More concretely: Amazon's drivers (arguendo) don't care what they're getting
paid $15/hour to do. If Amazon removes the incentive for antics, then it can
pay 14/15 the per-delivery fee, and each driver can do 15/14 the deliveries
and still make $15/hour.

------
dpeck
This feels more like practical magic/cargo culting than reality.

I’ve heard that if you say “bezos bezos bezos” while spinning around counter
clockwise in front of an amazon locker your delivery tips will go up 5%

~~~
notdang
It seems that Amazon selects the closest driver. So they are hanging those
phones in the closest tree to the warehouse, while the driver is not there.

Doesn't seem like a cargo cult.

~~~
sigmaprimus
>>>"while the driver is not there"

How many deliveries is a cell phone worth? I can't imagine a driver would
leave a phone for anyone to take just to make 10 bucks or less.

~~~
city41
The article suggests one person runs the set of phones, and sells their
service to drivers. So I'd imagine that person has tuned the number of phones
to be profitable. You can get older used cell phones for dirt cheap.

------
ebg13
It seems obviously fabricated that a pile of phones hang from a tree and not
one person turns them off, smashes them, or takes them.

~~~
ponker
The drivers are sitting 10 feet away, they’re not just abandoning them.

~~~
daveFNbuck
The article described drivers as walking up and syncing to them to get a job,
so they're not always sitting by the phones.

~~~
wutbrodo
Seems like a trivial extension to the story that one person is sitting nearby
keeping an eye on the phone. The advantage still holds, since all the other
drivers in the group can spread out.

------
aaron695
> to get a split-second jump on competing drivers.

Or it uses GPS and sees they are closer rather than the impossible.

I get reporters believe this fantastical stuff because they are not in IT and
are somewhat more the Arts realm.

But they need a way to fix this, like a wiki. Or not. I guess stupid people
believe it and click.

The core of the story is true somewhat, you do miss out on the idea leaving
phones in strange places fools the GPS and you can use this to an advantage.
Or why not just GPS spoof. Or is it using the wireless, so why not use a
repeater?

