

It Takes a New Kind of Worker to Make “Instant” Happen - Mz
http://recode.net/2014/08/05/it-takes-a-new-kind-of-worker-to-make-instant-happen/

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timjahn
"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?

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hga
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.

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mschaecher
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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clairity
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.

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curiousHacker
Delivery driver making $80k. Totally negates the value of a college degree.
Embarrassing.

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coldtea
Totally negates the _monetary_ values of a college degree.

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.

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gaius
Paying in tangibles for intangibles is a very subjective thing and needs to be
done wisely.

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twic
And vice versa, of course.

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blakeja
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.

~~~
coldcode
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.

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mschaecher
No they can work fine anywhere just like Dominos can.

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.

