Every DoorDash employee, from engineers to CEO, will make deliveries
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I still remember a story about being yelled out of a restaurant for coming in to pick up a delivery. The restaurant owner set a message to couriers in the app that instructed us to wait outside for the pickup, but I didn’t see it because the text was so small. Instantly filed a bug report for the Driver app team to make the messages easier to read!
- got Royal Bank Canada while I was there to star out account numbers on ATM receipts. Had to find a competitor's receipt first (CIBC) and show a senior manager to "prove" there was an issue.
- shortly after leaving Netscape found email parsing bug and submitted that to a an ex-coworker who channeled it to the right developer.
Stay tuned for some more in process.
We often debated whether this was actually effective overall, or was just a culture-building stunt (like Amazon’s door desks). But there was no question that it helped the sales team quickly build relationships with fulfillment, relationships that could make or break their ability to solve problems for their customers.
It was onboarding so I was still setting up my environment at the same time, but I credit that startup for shifting me to a much more empathic mindset where I would learn how to question designs based on my own understanding of what it would be like for someone to have to interact with it. It also resulted in me getting on especially well with the support team.
Honestly I wish more places would do onboarding that way. Put new hires on the front-line as it were, so they understand the product from the perspective of users and those who have to run support. Maybe give people refreshers every year or so, so they don't become detached from the reality of using the product.
When the customer finally cleared the payment, CEO made the responsible sales team fill the container by hand (I was one of them). But it was an eye-opening experience. We dragged our ass from our A/C equipped office and wore our usual suits and leather shoes, oh boy were we stupid. What I remember the most was how stuffy and hot the air was nearing the innermost end of the container especially when carrying boxes. The entire team was drenched afterward except somehow the ladies managed to wiggle their way out by "hey we are just gonna get everyone an ice coffee, be right back". It was fun still.
Our systems were terribly unhelpful in handling the average call. I was embarrassed to note the vast difference between the systems we gave our call center versus what we gave our customers. Also their needs were pretty much the same (obvious in retrospect). The customer-facing system had continuously been measured and improved for user experience and delight. The systems our call center used looked like a wasteland of retro tech. Agents were hopping between systems and copy-pasting sensitive customer data. For one simple customer query I saw an agent hop between 4 systems and 5 pages.
I left with my tail between my legs and a wealth of insights that continue to have an impact several years later.
I imagine that customers were calling for things like needing to update their info but the website wouldn't let them, and the call center tech had to manually enter their address into 3 web forms, is that about what it was?
- In car-oriented areas, it's very unlikely that a standard car insurance policy would permit commercial use like this. If employees end up in a crash, and it is discovered that they were performing a delivery their claim may be denied. This seems like a compliance and liability nightmare.
- In urban areas where bikes are preferred, employees may or may not have one, but it's very possible they won't have one that is appropriate for delivery. Also, woe on Doordash when the first $500k+ TC SWE gets doored and puts in a worker's comp claim.
The actual deliverers are contractors, so it is reasonable to expect them to provide their own equipment: a car with proper commercial insurance, or a bike that can be locked outside safely. That's part of being a contractor. It is not reasonable whatsoever to expect FTEs to use their own equipment to perform job duties.
The only company that I can think of forced dogfooding of the "provider" side being worse at (besides obvious jokes like MindGeek) is Airbnb.
But that's not all: it doesn't accurately simulate the contractor experience at all! There's no pressure! They have no incentive to actually ride fast (and, from my experience from encountering delivery riders as an NYC cyclist, in the wrong direction, at night, with no lights...) since there's no actual correlation between my delivery performance and my TC. It's just SWEs cosplaying as delivery people for a day.
As someone who is now a C-suite exec, I was aghast reading that discussion. If you're a CTO who doesn't code, so be it do what works for you, CTO is such a broad title that there are plenty of companies that don't need a CTO who codes. But the shock was at how adamant people were that CTOs have better things to do than contribute to software. Not only have I worked with excellent CTOs who all contributed source code to projects, many CTOs I admire and look up to do the same, such as John Carmack, Fabrice Bellard, Cal Henderson.
There are domains where a CTO absolutely need not code, and coding is not the end all be all of building a technology company by any means, but it's hard to imagine many situations where CTOs who do code are doing it at the expense of a more valuable skill, and furthermore I can think of many companies that would benefit from having CTOs who did actually contribute source code.
There's a belief among managers that "profesionnal management" is a thing and that there's no need to understand what you are managing; only the art of management itself.
Think about Apple under John Sculley or Boeing since the merger with McDonald Douglas...
I've seen this pattern many times on smaller and larger scales. Betting on a technical manager is almost always the correct bet to place.
I think GP’s claimed belief “among managers” is true for a very small sliver of the management ranks (and I think a smaller sliver than in the internet commenters’ case).
It might help in e.g. startups, but I think it'd have less of an impact than you think it will.
So I don't think it's managers who need this so much as engineers who can do something to help, because as a colleague put it, laziness is a powerful motivator for engineers.
Managing by walking around is still amazingly more successful than managing by arbitrary metrics, but it's still rare.
Seems to me that dealing with that is even more of a problem with requiring engineers to do one particular class of the work one day a month as it is for having the engineers engage with those during the work as part of product design and development, so I’m not sure what relevance it has to the present discussion.
Engineers are usually far removed
See how things are from the bottom up.
The huge division between 'service workers' and professionals I think is not good for companies but much more importantly it's bad socially. People lose empathy for the day-to-day problems of what is probably the majority of employees in numbers and it creates a class of people living in a bubble. You learn a lot of humility pretty quickly if you go from management work or coding to carrying packages around and having to deal with angry customers.
I wonder what changes you'd see at companies like Facebook if the management had to sit in one of their outsourced content moderation centers for a few weeks.
Someone gave me a 20$ tip for a bag of egg rolls once.
How do I know the service was any good? If it's grub hub it probably isn't so low tip is definitely justified. Hell if we go the traditional route of what a tip is, many actually deserve zero
Then they started pushing it hard, and it's received an almost universally poor response. We don't have a mandatory-tipping culture, because it's expected that everyone doing a job is at least earning a living-wage. Tipping is reserved for exceptional service or doing something out of the ordinary.
Edit: Some have questioned my $6 figure and have talked to drivers who say they are making good money. I think it's because they are not taking into account the wear and tear on their car and subsequent decrease in value. They are basically taking equity out of their car and putting it into their pocket and thinking they are making money.
disagree. I don't like tipping culture in general, so I welcome any effort to uproot it.
But, does Uber (or whatever other gig employer) actually pay that? I hate that in the US, as a consumer, I don’t know. Much easier in much of Europe, where wait staff is paid a reasonable wage and tipping isn’t expected.
As Scott said, "tipping, and the aristocratic idea it exemplifies, is what we left Europe to escape. It is a cancer in the breast of democracy"
At the start of the 20th century when Tipping was infecting the USA, it was common for business owners not only to fail to pay a salary, but to actually charge people to work for them!
Gunton's Magazine stated that tipping was offensively un-American, because it was contrary to the spirit of American life of working for wages rather than fawning for favors. Caiman's defence from that era boiled down to "you should be able to bribe your way to preferential treatment".
It's ironic that the "home of capitalism" is so much in favour of hiding information. Rather than a posted price for a given good or service, it's a price, plus an unspecified amount of tax, plus a tip of some sort which can vary from 0% to 30%.
Tips of course also allow us to bypass all those pesky problems that we try to eliminate. If you're a racist? Great, you don't have to pay black people, only white people (or vice versa). Don't like that waitress having a Trump2024 bumper sticker, don't pay her wage.
Typical user testing is monitoring your users as they succeed/fail to use your product. So I could imagine developers monitoring a sampling of Doordash drivers (with a dashcam or the like) as they use their apps in a typical delivery process.
White-collar Doordash engineers/CxOs doing a blue-collar tour for a day would provide insight into some of the initial onboarding struggles for the "new driver" persona, but seems like it would provide limited feedback for the "experienced driver" persona. Even then, app devs/designers are so familiar with getting around odd workflows in their apps that they wouldn't really represent a new driver. It risks biasing product development in a particular way.
I'd agree that it's biased, but I still think it's valuable. Being intimately familiar with all possible personas would be nice, however I'd hope that Engineers/PMs/Employees will use this as an additional input into their decisions about how to run the business. Just as they already use a combination of metrics, customer interviews, financial impact, and intuition about the future when deciding how to operate.
Perhaps it'd be valuable for employees to do "ride-alongs" with experienced dashers for the additional perspective you mention
Eating your own dogfood is powerful at many companies, and a bad sign at a B2C company if your staff don't use it unless there are special circumstances that prevent them.
There is a ton of unspoken information that even veteran users don't communicate. I used to sit for hours watching people use microscopes, and learned way more in those hours than I would have sitting at my compiler. Many of my really killer ideas came from watching users.
It's hard to know what you don't know.
Facebook recruited me a few years ago. I told them 100% that I don't use Facebook. I think a few people I met with didn't get the memo because...well, I ultimately didn't get a job because I don't use Facebook.
So yeah, I could see that happening.
Gemba walks denote the action of going to see the actual process, understand the work, ask questions, and learn. It is also known as one fundamental part of Lean management philosophy.
I spent a few years at a motorcycle parts manufacturing plant in India, and while I am in software now, I keep seeing how effective the Lean Manufacturing system would be here. We need more of it.
That being said, how would a company like this deal with Gemba if their employees can't drive anything. I can't drive a car or a motorcycle. So how would I be able to join the Gemba walk?
This practice is very similar to when teachers would reward students for good behavior on days the teachers would be evaluated.
Principal looks good to the board/state, teachers look good to the principal, and students look good to the teachers - but yet, we get caught up in looking good and impressing others, that we forget the real issue of children that are still getting left behind.
> "As the company grew, the founders wanted everyone to experience different parts of the product so we could get closer to all our audiences and understand how the product works," a DoorDash spokesperson said
Does that mean delivery persons get to be an engineer or a CEO for a day?
It's going to have to change.
In the 2008 US presidential election, three of four presidential and vice-presidential candidates (Biden, McCain, Palin) had children serving in Afghanistan or Iraq.
If there are 3 million military personnel in the US, because humans have sexual reproduction [meaning two parents per individual] that means they would have up to 6 million distinct adult parents, out of about 250 million US adults, making the Congress pretty normal with about 2% of its members being parents to service members.
A more detailed demographic analysis might tell us something more interesting, but would of necessity also reduce the size of the comparison so it would be less statistically valid (e.g. age breakdown, because of how time works humans have more children when they're older, Congress is older than the US workforce)
Some engineers will complain they didn’t sign up for this, but those ones aren’t truly committed to figuring how to make things better for the deliverers, and you could argue it’s a wash to watch them go elsewhere.
As long as they let them (engineers who work at door dash) do two things I would love this myself (as an engineer, who doesn’t have to do labor or gig jobs)
1) - let them keep the same money DoorDash drivers would get 2) - give them as much credits in door dash food as the customers they’ve served ordered. (Maybe 3) - provide a cheap reliable fuel efficient vehicle
This both proves it isn’t about skimping costs by making engineers deliver cuz they would lose more this way, but they probably would get super motivated engineers (those that stay), who would be motivated to figure out how to get more customers.
sounds like an interesting way to break up the monotony of work too and actually see the effect of changes you make. It kills my motivation sometimes when something gets rolled out and you don't really see an impact
Normally, if you ask to be integrated with the business people look at you like you just crawled out of a swamp. Personally, I have a hard time deciphering code if I don't know the business case (intent) first...once I have that knowledge the code is easy to read. Rarely is code expressed in domain language.
How are they going to square this policy with disabilities legislation when it runs into a wheelchair user or someone with juvenile onset rheumatoid arthritis?
Or are they unintentionally indicating that as an employer they discriminate against the disabled?
(Wanting all your employees to be familiar with what the job demands is in principle a good idea, but the second-order consequences can be a bear.)
But when COVID started, the situation worsened, majority of the restaurants including big national chains stopped delivery people from using the washrooms (at least in Toronto, Ontario). I happened to deliver around that time and I delivered for about a week and then I realized I couldn't hold my pee for longer times, and didn't want to use bottles to pee. This was a real problem and I can't believe it took Ontario more than a full year to pass the legislation in that regard [1].
What's even more sadder is this happened on upscale so-called Vegan restaurants, owners advertising fair food policies and organic products and customers ordering as per their convenience thinking they are doing great good by ordering from these places. None of the parties customer, owner or the platform knew that the food was being delivered at the price of human dignity under a very simple matter of common decency. A basic need to have access to a washroom was being denied. It is certainly the most ironical experience of my life.
TL;DR : There are actual problems that needs to be discovered and solved because each party thriving in the gig economy thinks 'its not our problem'. This can happen a lot faster if some of the staff of these companies actually goes through the experience end to end.
1. https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-set-to-introduce-legislat....
The "it wasn't part of the job description" engineer would be on my short list for reevaluation. In a dynamic org, change is constant, and stick-in-the-mud complainers like this range from underproductive to actively toxic. If it's just an isolated bad day, fine, but if it's an underlying 'not-my'job' attitude, then they're likely better employed elsewhere.
This practice should be pretty standard, as well as flexible roles & responsibilities, mentoring/interning, etc. to spread & grow knowledge as much as possible.
Talk about toxic, this kind of garbage is why workers need strong labor laws and unions protecting them.
No, it is specifically NOT that.
It is exactly what I said, expecting people to have a "Can Do / put your shoulder to the wheel / solve the problem" attitude, and to be flexible about how it gets done. Especially in a development situation (vs production that's been static for years).
If the company failed to make clear at the beginning that it was a dynamic and changing environment, and that Can Do attitude is expected, then yeah, it is their fault.
But even in relatively staid environments, a "not my job" attitude can become toxic and contagious in a hurry. Then, it may not be far before no one has a job.
I'm strongly pro-union and pro-workers getting a larger slice of the economic pie. But I also recognize that the "not my job" attitude and over-constraining work rules is an enormous part of what lead to the demise of unions. Of course you don't want plumbers doing electrical work and vice-versa, but when a plumber or manager cannot toss a stray shovel onto the truck without a foreman/union/mgt meeting being called for stepping over the line (literally seen it happen), that's beyond unsustainable.
Maybe we should have laws as well to protect companies from rogue employees do things outside of their job descriptions.
Imagine the horror not having to worry over not being able to pay your mortgage or rent whenever your boss or some power tripping middle manager decided they want you to start juggling bowling pins while riding a unicycle while you were hired to develop software.
Won't someone please think of the poor employers? /s
There are pros and cons. How would you hire someone at a startup? Do you specify they can only write code for the website and then if you need their help with something else they just say "not in my job description"? Eventually you'd just get contracts that have laundry lists of vague responsibilities to get around this and it would just wind up like standard terms of service for websites/electronics where people just sign and take the job. Too much money at stake to not do it and for little gain.
As a start-up you'd hire contractors which you'd pay a much higher fee for, as these wouldn't have the labor protections of employees.
Salaries for contractors are I guess similar to the US maybe a bit lower, for salaries employees definitely lower than the US (for tech at least).
But then again my rent is cheaper, and my insurances are cheaper too, I get PTO and unlimited sick-days, stuff like that. At the end of the day, if I want to make more money and not have many protections (like in the US) I'd become a contractor. (which does come with some strings attached to prevent employers from hiring normal employees like contractors).
You have a choice over here for both models essentially.
We as in all of Western Europe or for a specific country? What are some examples you've seen where the US has "strict", literal interpretations of contracts that are unreasonable as it relates to employment/the topic at hand? Off the top of my head the only thing that comes to mind immediately is maybe non-competes but I think that's an issue of leverage and not really a contractual issue, and even so it's risky for companies to enforce except for key employees.
> As a start-up you'd hire contractors which you'd pay a much higher fee for, as these wouldn't have the labor protections of employees
Isn't this just sidestepping the protection? And without needing to do an exhaustive list what are the labor protections? I assume there are like a minimum number of paid days off/holidays/vacation, exact job you'll do (though this is still vague to me how it's handled practically) and some protections around being fired/how you are fired?
Is there a big protection for tech workers I'm missing?
> But then again my rent is cheaper, and my insurances are cheaper too, I get PTO and unlimited sick-days, stuff like that. At the end of the day, if I want to make more money and not have many protections (like in the US) I'd become a contractor. (which does come with some strings attached to prevent employers from hiring normal employees like contractors).
My "rent" (mortgage in this case) is pretty cheap and so is my insurance. I work remote for a great company, get PTO, and take it as you need it sick days and stuff like that too. Of course rental rates in certain markets (NY, SF, etc.) are much higher, as is compensation. $250k-$300k for many tech workers. I think that probably compensates for the higher costs though who knows what'll happen with the post-pandemic labor market (2024-2026 or so).
I'll say this much, our justice systems in western Europe (with the exception of the UK) are based on civil law you could find more about this on Wikipedia to find sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law
When it comes to contractors, yes they have less rights (at-will employment, no PTO, no sick-days etc. etc. etc.) So yes it does side-step labor protections but it's more expensive, also in my country at least contractors are required to get disability insurance and not everyone can be considered a contractor. If a judge finds that a contractor actually more resembles an employer (so not being independent of the company hiring), they will retro-actively be considered an employee. (This has happened with Uber drivers for instance)
Some of the protections employees enjoy over here are:
- Not being fired unless the labor board approves (which required documentation from the employees, and them to follow strict labor rules).
- At least 4 weeks PTO.
- Up to 2 years of continues sick-days, (with a doctors note) (after which you'd get fired and get social security)
- After being fired you'd get 1 month of continued salary for each year you were employed, until you find new work
- Paid Maternity/paternity leave
- The right to bargain for a collective bargaining agreement which allows for additional minimum rights/salaries to be applied to all workers within a field
- The right to ignore your boss after hours unless additional consideration (salary) is offered and time schedules are agreed upon
- The right for employees to have a employee-board whenever there's at least 50 employees within a company/org
- The right for employees to keep their jobs if they become disabled (if possible, judged by the labor board not the employer)
When it comes to costs/salaries, I reckon it'd highly depend on the region/job market/sector.
> When it comes to costs/salaries, I reckon it'd highly depend on the region/job market/sector.
I do want to bring this conversation back to make sure we're still talking about tech workers per my original comment.
> I'll say this much, our justice systems in western Europe (with the exception of the UK) are based on civil law you could find more about this on Wikipedia to find sources
Thanks for the link. I really like the common law approach myself. It's interesting that you noted that common law was based on strict contract interpretations (which I think you noted in a negative context since one was considered reasonable but the other wasn't) but then at the same time common law tends to be more predictable (according to the article) versus civil law since case precedence acts as law. I guess it depends on your interpretation of reasonable. As an American I'd want the law to be applied equally no matter who you are, but that's my culture and lens. I also like that it's flexible and, again noted by the article, able to cope with social changes better. With respect to contracts I think I prefer to enforce what was written - how else do you know what the contract is then?
It's nothing personal, it's business.
Attitudes of "Can Do", "Solve the problem", "How do we get better than our competition" are pretty much the polar opposite of a "not my job" attitude.
It is one thing to see in a low-level position, where a certain percentage of it is expected. But in a responsible position like serious software development, it's a red flag for lack of engagement. I've also seen it turn into an actively undermining the company attitude, which is toxic for everyone. I'd look for it to get fixed fast, or they're on the short list for "we don't really need to pay you to come here anymore" attitude.
I did a tour at a shop that tried this, but then it really fizzled out by the time HR figured out they couldn't really make everyone do this sort of thing. I wonder how DoorDash is dealing with those issues.
Definitely reads like marketing fluff to me.
0: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20091123-00/?p=15...
> The renewed push adds choices for employees who may not be able to do deliveries, a spokeswoman said.
I would guess they simply forgot -- as usual! -- initially and when realized they just opened themselves to an ADA lawsuit which they would surely lose then they hastily issued this comment and then scrambled to fill it with meaning.
They forget because neurological disabilities of this kind most of the time are completely invisible at a "white collar" workplace and even in personal lives most of us live mostly normal lives. You can live fine without swimming, skydiving, driving...
It's a fantastic way for the high and mighty engineer to get out their bubble
It will be eye opening for them
My customers are the developers.
The possibility there could be something to learn by personally understanding/experiencing your employer's core business?
Developing a shared sense of empathy and responsibility towards making the jobs of the drivers as efficient as possible?
I think it's important to use your own product (so get food delivered), but I don't really see any value in doing someone else's job as a pretend fantasy for a day. If you have any empathy, you'll know that the work isn't so bad, but the lack of health insurance, childcare, long-term career growth, etc. are the problems with the gig economy. The job itself is fine. The most positive outcome is probably having the realization that the gig economy is quite abusive and that you want nothing to do with it, so stop working for the company entirely.
Any employee in a C-level position isn't going to be managing front-line processes, and getting down to that level of detail betrays a mistrust of your management teams and/or a failure of process feedback mechanisms that move information about inefficient or ineffective processes up to the C-suite.
Also, I would hope that a C-level manager would have an understanding not only of how the front-end processes work, but also how they affect the company's "big picture".
In the beginning, there was a plan, And then came the assumptions, And the assumptions were without form, And the plan without substance,
And the darkness was upon the face of the workers, And they spoke among themselves saying, "It is a crock of shit and it stinks."
And the workers went unto their Supervisors and said, "It is a pile of dung, and we cannot live with the smell."
And the Supervisors went unto their Managers saying, "It is a container of excrement, and it is very strong, Such that none may abide by it."
And the Managers went unto their Directors saying, "It is a vessel of fertilizer, and none may abide by its strength."
And the Directors spoke among themselves saying to one another, "It contains that which aids plants growth, and it is very strong."
And the Directors went to the Vice Presidents saying unto them, "It promotes growth, and it is very powerful."
And the Vice Presidents went to the President, saying unto him, "This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor Of the company With very powerful effects."
And the President looked upon the Plan And saw that it was good, And the Plan became Policy.
And this, my friend, is how shit happens.
http://web.mnstate.edu/alm/humor/ThePlan.htm
Reading reports filtered up through an organization is no replacement for going to the Gemba.
This is a good exercise. “I would hope” is no substitute for ACTUALLY seeing how the sausage is made.
Its not that unique in businesses, amazon used to expect that office workers do a few shifts in a warehouse, not to manage the warehouse process, but to view how 90% of the workers work, and what a critical component of their business is like.
> I would hope that a C-level manager would have an understanding not only of how the front-end processes work, but also how they affect the company's "big picture".
Do you think they can get that understanding in their home office while taking zoom calls with the finance dept?
But I wouldn't be surprised if at the end of the exercise, they actually really do end up unearthing some weaknesses that the process feedback mechanism failed to put sufficient spotlight on.
I mean, how else do you actually test the process feedback mechanisms? I realize that nobody does that, but you'll never know if that mechanism truly works unless you let your CxO do all the work end to end and then ask them if they had sufficient awareness about each small point of friction they encountered.
Another more subtle detail: not sure if DoorDash experiences this, but in my experience it can be difficult to get a newly poached manager from a different company to wrap their head around how - and why - this company is different. The more experienced people are, the more they tend to reach for their old playbooks, which can be good and bad.
You do have a point that large parts of the company could have been carved out (eg: the communications team), and the exercise would have still yielded the same insights, which is why in the end this is a publicity stunt.