Probably a needed move (and timely with the recent upsurge in Reform UK wins). Deliveroo has been running on a regulatory arbitrage -- it got to decent size in the UK due to lax laws on low quality/illegal immigration. If that has an expiry date approaching (it looks like it does), to maintain its scale it has to plan for a technological shift in the way it operates -- it is too small to do that by itself. DoorDash isn't.
Maybe the reason your comment has been downvoted is because people on HN aren’t aware of the intersection between UK employment law, specifically independent contractors substitution rules, delivery apps and modern slavery.
An easy to follow starting point here for people interested:
I made this site because over the years I've had a lot of experiences where the official Transport for London Tube (metro) statuses were wrong (e.g. ‘Good Service’ when there were delays or ‘Severe Delays’ when it wasn't that bad). I looked into it towards the end of last year and apparently TfL staff set them manually (using guidelines). It isn't really a 21st century way of doing things (it’s at least slow/inexact/inconsistent, and probably prone to truth bending etc.), so I ended up creating TrueTubeStatus.com. It monitors trains across the London Underground (using TfL’s API) and compares live performance with timetables to produce objective statuses.
A few ways it can be useful:
Peace of mind that an official ‘Good Service’ status is backed up by the maths.
When it shows a delay that TfL isn’t reporting you can dodge it (delay your journey, change your route etc.) or at least brace yourself!
You can see recent performance in a color-coded sparkline (mini chart without axes), which tells you how good/bad things are and where they’re headed.
I’ve just put it in open beta and would be very interested to know what people think!
