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Comment by nrmitchi | Hacker News Reader

Overall I think ideas and programs like this are good for the company long-term; building user empathy is obviously important. It feels kind of odd to be explicitly forcing everyone into it though.

This sounds like it would be concerning for individuals on a work status (TN, H-1b, etc) who are explicitly not supposed to perform work outside of their job or specialization. There's some grey area here for sure, but this seems pretty clearly outside the scope of authorized work.

An engineer helping with a support ticket once in a while, sure, I think it's a reasonable expectation, but I can't see how explicitly putting this as a job responsibility isn't going to muddy the waters for some people.

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> [...] who are explicitly not supposed to perform work outside of their job [...]

Surely these visa programs account for things like health and safety training, other upskilling and so on? If DoorDash obligates its employees to do this under the claim that it helps them perform their day jobs, then I fail to see how the visa could come into question.

You know, I would hope so. But unfortunately with many work status situations the decisions can end up feeling rather arbitrary.

I think there is a stark difference between health and safety training/upskilling, and doing customer deliveries/support: the former is an "additional responsibility" to many positions, while the latter is a job function that the company explicitly pays another person to perform.

> If DoorDash obligates its employees to do this under the claim that it helps them perform their day jobs, then I fail to see how the visa could come into question.

If the mere claim is enough to ensure no questions about visa status, it creates an obvious giant hole to drive immigration fraud through.

This is extremely easy to defend from an H1B perspective for an engineer. It just obviously comes under testing the platform that you build, delivering high quality products and building strong relationships with the rest of your team towards that end.

It is also the reason why this program seems to exist in the first place, so it all looks like good faith.

I want to believe that. I really do. But I'm not sure that I agree. Testing of an app/system can, and does, happen within a non-real-world environment. I think it's kind of hard to justify that "testing the app" also requires the tester to physically drive to a restaurant/location, pick something up, and then physically deliver it to an end consumer. If this is the only way for an engineer to appropriately test a system there was a massive failure somewhere else. If it's not the only way to test, then it's hard to justify having the engineer do a job that a different person is typically paid to do.

"Building strong relationships with the rest of your team" may be a bit of a stretch since you're not doing a delivery with the rest of your team... you do it by yourself.

I'm not accusing DoorDash of acting in bad faith here. I'm concerned that this decision could unexpectedly put a portion of their employees in murky territory

Testing like CX, not testing like QA.

"dogfooding" is often the term used for this type of experiencing.

My company in South East Asia has been doing this for years now, we are in ride hailing and food delivery business among others.

Why is it important?

It drives empathy. Testing in non-production environment can tell that the feature is working as expected but it can't tell what the delivery person goes through or what the customer experience is like.

Our policy is not one trip but one day of doing this.

Overall it drivers a deeper appreciation towards deliver agents.

> Our policy is not one trip but one day of doing this.

That sounds much more effective. :)

It will be fine. They have immigration lawyers.

how would a data engineer call it testing the platform. The delivery is nowhere near his job description. It could be kind of reasoned for an app or web developer. Also what about the OPS team. Its is most likely not in his job description that was submitted to USCIS.

Also even if its was in job description, on H1b it would be considered an additional job and might need an additional H1b filling. Any active income will need to filed by the employer

This is my understanding.

Yes the mandatory “affects your performance” bit signals poor leadership - any moron/asshole can lead when there’s a firing squad closing the formation. I’d gladly participate if it was voluntary, make it into performative bullshit for politics and I’m giving my notice (I’m weird like that).

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