DoorDash Is Requiring Engineers To Deliver Food (sfgate.com) 144
DoorDash, the food delivery app based out of San Francisco, is requiring all its nondelivery employees, including CEO Tony Xu, to do a "dash" once a month -- and some employees are seemingly furious. SFGate reports: MarketWatch first reported that the WeDash program, which was launched when the service was founded, is making its return in January after being paused during the pandemic. A spokesperson for DoorDash confirmed its return to SFGATE. But a 1,500-comment thread on Blind, the anonymous social media platform for techies and other white-collar types, was started last week by one disgruntled DoorDash worker.
An engineer with a reported total compensation, or TC, of $400,000 a year griped about the responsibility of having to do a once-a-month delivery. "What the actual f--k?" the engineer wrote on the platform. "I didn't sign up for this, there was nothing in the offer letter/job description about this." While some people replied to the original post to say it would be a helpful opportunity to develop empathy and learn about the myriad frustrations of delivery workers, others sided with the original poster. "Not acceptable in anyway!" said one.
For employees unable to do deliveries, there are other programs in place to work with service employees and businesses. The program was launched, a spokesperson said, to "learn first-hand how the technology products we build empower local economies, which in turn helps us build a better product." Employees then gain "credits" through these services, which are reportedly built into an annual review. The money employees make during deliveries will be donated to a nonprofit, the spokesperson said.
An engineer with a reported total compensation, or TC, of $400,000 a year griped about the responsibility of having to do a once-a-month delivery. "What the actual f--k?" the engineer wrote on the platform. "I didn't sign up for this, there was nothing in the offer letter/job description about this." While some people replied to the original post to say it would be a helpful opportunity to develop empathy and learn about the myriad frustrations of delivery workers, others sided with the original poster. "Not acceptable in anyway!" said one.
For employees unable to do deliveries, there are other programs in place to work with service employees and businesses. The program was launched, a spokesperson said, to "learn first-hand how the technology products we build empower local economies, which in turn helps us build a better product." Employees then gain "credits" through these services, which are reportedly built into an annual review. The money employees make during deliveries will be donated to a nonprofit, the spokesperson said.
How many times is this going to be posted? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How many times is this going to be posted? (Score:5, Funny)
This is 2 in the last week.
Doordash engineers are required to deliver meals.
Slashdot editors should be required to read Slashdot.
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If I had mod points, they'd be yours.
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Re: How many times is this going to be posted? (Score:2)
DoorDash is requiring engineers to post dupes (Score:5, Informative)
Thanks for letting know! [slashdot.org]
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I'd happily do food delivery full time for 400K / year.
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If they are paying someone $400k/year then that person probably has some pretty good options if they don't like Door Dash's work environment.
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It is silent on the relative earnings of someone earning double that.
(200K is about the border of the 10% highest income)
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that's fair. I think elevator software engineers should be required to spend a day in their own creations, learning how shitty their code might be. We all need to sample the dog food every once in a while.
Another Dupe (Score:2)
https://slashdot.org/story/21/... [slashdot.org]
Again? Is this a weekly event now? (Score:2)
That would be overdoing it.
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Ah, true. I got my booster (Moderna) on the 23th, time has been a bit fluid for a couple of days after that.
Yeah that's a stupid idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yeah that's a stupid idea (Score:5, Informative)
> On another, it just pisses them off to have to do something that they're not paid
I don't see anything saying this is an unpaid responsibility.
The engineer who receives $400,000 in annual total compensation is likely FAR better paid than the people who are doing deliveries fool time, yet he throughs his toys out of the cot at being asked to do this.
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400,000 thousand?!
How about 150k
That's the actuality of developer pay.
"Directors" (nor corporate) and above are in the 200K+ range
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This is literally what the article says:
> An engineer with a reported total compensation, or TC, of $400,000 a year griped about the responsibility of having to do a once-a-month delivery.
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Total compensation != pay. It includes all benefits (like retirement, insurance) including those available but not used (like gym access and free breakfast).
Re: Yeah that's a stupid idea (Score:2)
I never said it did.
Read my first comment which I explicitly said someone with $400k in total compensation is likely better paid than someone who relies on door dashing as their main job.
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Still, it's a huge amount compared to most. Almost enough to make up for the fact that you work for DoorDash.
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"That's the actuality of developer pay."
The big, well-known Silicon Valley companies pay a lot more.
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I would think that being able to steal fries and such would make it worthwhile.
Re:Yeah that's a stupid idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Not that I really care if this happens. All these door to door delivery services are a pox and if they die by their own hubris then all the better.
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You claimed it was a job they aren't paid to do. They are paid to do it. Presumably they will be paid their normal salary while doing it, in which case they are paid FAR better than the people for whom it is their main job.
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You claimed it was a job they aren't paid to do. They are paid to do it. Presumably they will be paid their normal salary while doing it
No.. Legally they have to pay the salary that they provided their workers - if they are delivering, then legally they worked, and the employer must pay the stated salary regardless of what the work was.
The real question is whether they are forcing their workers to work additional time to do the deliveries, or whether this program
reduces the total number hours they
Re:Yeah that's a stupid idea (Score:5, Insightful)
At the start of the pandemic India went into full lockdown with little notice. This was a problem for a company I worked at which had manual workers located there, so they had all their employees (engineers and management) stop doing their regular work and switch to the manual work. Lasted for at least a few weeks.
Results? Nobody quit. People created leader boards and had contests (with prizes) to see who could do the most processing. Engineers started fixing all sorts of problems in the process / software used, and writing additional tooling. Even after the initiative stopped, a lot of work that was scoped out continued to be worked on because people were now interested in solving the problems they had identified.
If you're hired as an engineer, you are not hired as as a "programmer" but as an acute mind that collects data and solves problems. Certainly your work should largely be the sort that you most enjoy (or enough $ to motivate you) as part of the arrangement. But if you can't handle some versatility then what was the point of hiring someone ostensibly intelligent and capable? What was the point of getting a college education including courses in all variety of subjects?
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Tech jobs are not hard to come by especially around San Francisco and anyone with aptitude will find another one that doesn't involve menial labor. The ones who don't... well they stay put and the company suffers.
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A couple of people want to make a stink about it doesn't mean people will quit in droves. If an employee that makes a competitive engineering salary wants to quit because they are asked to perform a simple not-labor-intensive task for an hour or two a month, more power to them. I'm sure the employer will also be better off for having less inflexible Karen's in their office.
Prior to that, they got paid to know tech (Score:2)
When I was a kid, you could occasionally see Radio Shack employees studying for the certification tests. They had tests for component-level electronics such as transistors. They had audio and music, which required knowing why you'd recommend a balanced cable like XLR over an unbalanced 1/4 TS plug, if a device had both options. Lots of different areas of study. Employees got paid more to know more. RS stayed pretty busy, with customers coming in asking what they should buy. That worked well for 80 years.
The
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> Then digital wireless phones came out and RS turned into a cell phone kiosk.
I think you're missing a lot of other things here - like fewer customers simply wanting to buy those parts for whatever reasons, likely because electronic goods became:
- cheaper
- harder to repair due to circuit boards
- deliberately harder to repair
- designed to fail to be disposable, which they could because they were now much cheaper
- lack of interest / expertise amongst potential customers
That's not even taking into account c
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Radio Shack WAS slow to get online, and had little selection, because they had experienced losing money with their mail-order business before that. So that's a good point.
On the other hand, Radio Shack was continuing to add stores at the time they did the Sprint partnership, and they were actually the largest electronics retailer in the US. In an alternate universe, their sales of electronics could have plummeted before they went full into cell phones. That's not what happened in the actual timeline we liv
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people who are doing deliveries fool time
Another in the win column for Dr Freud!
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Glad someone saw that...
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and does there auto insurance cover food? (Score:2)
and does there auto insurance cover food?
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I'm sure it makes sense on some level that devs need to experience the consequences of their own software.
That's why you implement an development build which allows you to test the functionality without having to "Pokemon Go" all over town delivering food. Seriously, unless you've botched your GPS API calls (in which case you have bigger problems), there's no reason the app can't be fully run through its paces in a sandbox environment. Requiring your dev team to deliver food makes about as much sense as requiring your delivery drivers (or is it "people sharing their ride with some food" because they're not ac
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It's not about bugs. It's about workflow and usability. When the people making the software don't know how it's actually used, they make uninformed decisions. Dogfooding your own software is very beneficial.
I can understand, however, people not wanting to deal with smelly food (especially those with cultural conflicts with certain types of food), not wanting to fill their cars with smells that might not dissipate for a few weeks, the added wear and tear on personal vehicles, introverts that don't want to
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Re:Yeah that's a stupid idea (Score:4, Interesting)
It's more than testing functionality in an office or lab. Does the software work in real world conditions? Are the options that seem to make sense in a calm test lab usable when some restaurant employee is screaming about a late pick up?
It also develops empathy with the frontline workers and customers. It's a great opportunity to get first hand info about what customers like or dislike about the app. Also useful to hear about new features and ones that seemed like a good idea at the time.
It doesn't seem that hard of task -- certainly less complex than writing software.
Most call centers ask managers and executives to occasionally take calls, and stores put executives in front of customers.
If the job that you're asking people to do is so terrible that you are unwilling to do it even one day a month, maybe you should find a new employer.
No sympathy here.
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unless you've botched your GPS API calls (in which case you have bigger problems), there's no reason the app can't be fully run through its paces in a sandbox environment.
It's not all about API calls, it's about usability in a real-world environment. Those two things are very, very different.
The UI, the responsiveness, the interface mechanics, workflow, etc etc etc. can't really be tested in a lab. I know people like to think they can be, but they can't.
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What you're saying only makes sense if they actually have control over the development of that software. If not, it makes more sense to send the product managers out on the street and not the employees that collectively probably have the largest amount of ignored issues on the backlog.
America's new minor nobility (Score:2)
What I find fascinating about this is how it's bringing above the API/below the API [rein.pk] jobs into sharp focus. If you're pissed off about this, it's a sign you like America's new class structure and you like being on top of the divide. And you feel entitled to be on top of it. We live in a meritocracy; you have demonstrated merit; since you have demonstrated that you're entitled to your position, it's enraging to be made to occupy a lower position, even temporarily.
It's like the king telling an aristocrat
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I'm sure it makes sense on some level that devs need to experience the consequences of their own software.
It makes sense on every level. Not just consequences, but understanding the domain.
On another, it just pisses them off to have to do something that they're not paid, trained or inclined to do.
They're paid to perform other job duties as required. And one of those duties is doing a door dash so they can understand the market, the app, etc. This is a Good Idea(tm) and that some of them are complaining only proves how fucking entitled they are.
They had better be well remunerated
You mean better than a delivery person? They are.
because I can see the ones who have opportunities to do something else heading for the exits just leaving the dead wood.
Just leaving the team players who are not whiny crybabies, you mean?
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It totally makes sense for product managers to do this. I can understand making this optional for coders. But requiring coders to do this is dumb. Your coders should usually not be your product managers. You should be able to document pain points (video, etc) and find solutions. Making coders use a thing usually reinforces what they already know instead of seeing the pain of others who don't "intuitively" know how things work (because they didn't write it).
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With their salary, shouldn't they do everything?
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While I'm sure they're not getting paid for the delivery itself, I'm sure they're getting their regular pay. I'm sure anyone doing the deli
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They'll probably be paid $25/hour to do grunt-work while the full-time grunt beside them earns half that. It's interesting that so many slashdotters think that engineers with a job won't be paid.
Slashdot Is Requiring Front Page Reposts (Score:2)
Seems like overkill (Score:5, Insightful)
I like the idea of the engineers needing to use the app that they developed once or twice a year just to get a feel for any issues that it's users might be experiencing with it.
Once a month seems like overkill, though. I didn't go to college for 6 years to deliver KFC for a living, and neither did these engineers. I'd be pissed off if I was in their shoes as well.
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I'd argue that once a month might not be enough.
After all, what if the app is running slowly, or has some sort of weird intermittent issue?
But really -- if someone's making $400k/year, they can probably pay someone off to use their phone once a month and run deliveries for them.
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Once or twice a year is literally nothing.
Once a month is about the right frequency - but actually I'd do it differently. One day a year, for 8 hours of that day, being available on the app and taking orders as offered to you.
Yeah it's a shit requirement for a job, but it's just a once-a-year experience. I can see why someone would be fucked off with a one-a-month requirement.
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Dog-fooding is one thing, but running time-sensitive deliveries is quite another if you don't have a car. You could clearly state that you do not possess a car. If they still make you go an do a run, and you rely on public transportation, it may take quite a while to do that run.
I am not sure about car insurance requirements here, but it feels to me like there should be a commercial insurance required, since the driving is directly ordered by a job requirement. I'm sure there is more dissonance to be foun
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You make it sound like the developers are indigent! They can very easily afford a car. It's not a massive expense or anything, especially for those making $400k. If for whatever reason someone really doesn't want a car, they can always just rent one.
This is all assuming that the company isn't providing the employee with a company car already.
The car thing isn't a big deal.
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For me, it's not the car, but the driving. In fact, I even recently changed employers expressly to avoid having to drive. For the pre-middle age set, it's the singularly most dangerous thing most people have do (much more compared to sitting in an office, I'm sure) such that making people do that when it wasn't in their job description when they signed on is sleazy at best.
That's aside from the fact that most desk-jockey engineers don't have a commercial driver's license. I don't know what the legalities
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For the pre-middle age set, it's the singularly most dangerous thing most people have do
Yes.. there are many potential safety risks with driving and also deliveries and interactions with customers, etc - this cause anxiety and is stressful for many people and is undesirable work that a LOT of people do not want on their plate that is Also not an ordinary or expected assignment to be had on a regular basis for a role such as a software Engineer.
but the company would at lest have to provide the car and ap
HR nightmare forthcoming... (Score:2, Interesting)
A clothing company I was contracting at had the bright idea to have developers sit in one of the women's apparel shops it owned so they could observe how one of the in-store app was working and being used. I pointed out that several of the men were from countries that had a, er, shall we say, different outlook towards women, and considering we were being positioned right in the changing area, voiced that they might want to rethink their strategy.
Unless DoorDash is offering training for 'employees', since t
The suits didn't think this through (Score:5, Funny)
Do you really want to send Asperger neckbeards into the neighborhood? It'll frighten children and pets.
Re: The suits didn't think this through (Score:2)
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Muggers? Try the police. All it's gonna take is one of these guys getting pulled over and popping off on some stupid pseudo-political rant. He will get his ass beat.
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What does that even mean?
Eating your own dog food (Score:4, Insightful)
Bunch of drama queens (Score:2)
If you dont understand your product from the users point of view, you are totally unable to make it effective.
But how does vehicle insurance work? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Doordash insures your car while you are picking up and delivering.
Doordash auto insurance [doordash.com]
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DoorDash provides auto insurance for Dashers, but this insurance applies only to accidents while using a motor vehicle on an active delivery (from order acceptance heading to the Merchant or from Merchant to the Customer). This insurance applies only after the Dasher goes through their own auto insurance policy first.
For the coverage to apply, the below conditions must be met:
You are liable for damages or injuries to another party while on an ACTIVE delivery;
Your personal auto policy has denied your claim.
What is an active delivery?
You are considered on active delivery from the time you accept a delivery request until the time your customer receives their order, or the order is canceled. If you are online but you didn't accept a delivery request, your personal insurance is still your insurance policy.
Note: Damages sustained to your vehicle in an auto accident are your responsibility and should be addressed directly by your auto insurance carrier. DoorDash requires all Dashers to maintain an up-to-date auto insurance policy. If you fail to maintain your own insurance, DoorDash's coverage may not apply.
Re: But how does vehicle insurance work? (Score:2)
Your insurance policy just means if you do it in that vehicle, any claims you make whilst on the job would be rejected.
You can buy different insurance, likely from the same company, to cover it if you think you need to. Or don't.
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Your insurance policy just means if you do it in that vehicle, any claims you make whilst on the job would be rejected.
You can buy different insurance, likely from the same company, to cover it if you think you need to. Or don't.
No, it means that once you do your first delivery, your entire policy is permanently voided. Any claims at all (not related to your commercial driving) will henceforth be denied.
This is beause you lied to the insurance company when you said you were not using the vehicle for commercial purposes.
This is why, for at least the last 8 years, when you want to make a claim, the insurance company answers the phone the first words out of their mouth are: "Have you EVER used this vehicle for commercial purposes such
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You can buy different insurance, likely from the same company
"Have you EVER used this vehicle for commercial purposes such as ride-share or deliveries?"
[...]
policies are designed specifically for this, and is more expensive (from $70-$300 more) than normal personal
To clarify: that's $70-$300 per month more than your personal policy.
Re: But how does vehicle insurance work? (Score:2)
This website doesn't agree: https://www.ridester.com/doord... [ridester.com]
It's written specifically for people doing delivery services and says several times your personal insurance won't cover you if you have an accident *while delivering*.
It looks like it varies by insurer, so you should ask your insurer if your policy is automatically null and void as you claim it would be if you have "once ever, 5 years ago" used the vehicle for a delivery - I doubt they would void a policy in that circumstance.
They might try to cla
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So what vehicle are you supposed to use if you're an engineer who commutes in to work
What if you ride the bus?
Bit whiny (Score:2)
"What the actual f--k?" the engineer wrote on the platform. "I didn't sign up..."
Well, precious snowflake. It's known as getting inside your customers head, and is, I would have thought, rather a useful insight. Admittedly once a month seems a bit much, they'd learn more by doing several days consecutively once a year.
Some of us have already done that. (Score:2)
Perhaps the CEO should clean the toilets once a month so he knows how his business is doing. I understand that most CEOs are clueless about how the working class works, and project that onto their employees, but some of us worked our way through college delivering pizzas.
For those of us who come from a working class background, this is a waste of our time and an unnecessary risk on our part. We worked hard through college so we wouldn't have to do deliveries after we graduated, and expect both a retur
Great Idea (Score:2)
Don't like it? GFTO for better money elsewhere. (Score:2)
Engineers (as in "degreed engineers" not some nosepicker with a job title) who are any good will be awash in job offers.
If you can't quickly and easily find a better STEM gig in today's economy you suck and should stay in your place.
Knowing their product is a good thing (Score:2)
Getting everyone in the company familiar with the service they provide to customers can never be a bad thing. If these guys need to trot their Gucci loafers out to deliver some food once a month, this does not seem too onerous to me. If they're ashamed of the business they're in, they should leave it.
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Getting everyone in the company
...(and their families) infected with COVID-19 (perhaps including lifelong illness from "long COVID")...
You were saying?
Thanks for the dupe. (Score:2)
If you think doordash is bad, look at what Purina is doing. It is interpreting the term "eat your own dog food" quite literally. Every developer has to eat at least 5 lb of dog food every quarter.
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I thought of this late, so I am glad I got a chance to post it.
If you think doordash is bad, look at what Purina is doing. It is interpreting the term "eat your own dog food" quite literally. Every developer has to eat at least 5 lb of dog food every quarter.
Well Purina does actually make Lab Diet 5045 aka Monkey Chow [nutrimentospurina.com]...
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In high school (about 40 years before most of you were born) I remember noticing the checkerbox logo on my delicious Jack In The Box hamburger bag. I looked it up (pre-Internet!) and sure enough, the company was owned by Ralston Purina!
They sold the burger business about a decade later in 1985.
I wish they still had Jack In The Box around here. I am salivating. WOOF!
Inefficient and silly (Score:2)
This is just so inefficient and silly. I don't want some engineer delivering my food. I want someone who does deliveries all the time to deliver my food. An engineer worth $400,000 driving to Chipotle for me? That's absurd and there's no point besides virtue signaling. T
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I doubt that it's virtue signaling
Did you miss the part about how the delivery pay (fees and tips) that the engineer would have earned (were he not getting his $400K) is donated to some Hunger fund?
Stupid idea. (Score:2)
Saw this post's comments (the dupe) and the previous story (the original one), and it is appalling how tone deaf are most people concerning career motivations. They fall all over themselves on how good dogfooding is, on how arrogant are those people who said that they didn't sign up for that particular job, how they should work for real once in a while... you get the idea.
No, this is not good. This is stupid. First, it requires people to do it once a month. That is roughly 5% of that employee's time. I thin
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5% of their time? One delivery? I could see if they asked them to spend a WHOLE month, but it is one delivery. Maybe 2 hours. Out of 160 in a month, or less than 1% of their time in that month.
If prima donna $400K can't buckle in and do a McDonalds delivery once a month, then perhaps he should find a new job.
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Factor in that they have to clock in, then pick food from producer, then deliver it to customer, then return... these add up quickly. They are not on the road. They are just doing one dash in a city with heavy traffic. I'm assuming a whole workday lost, hence 5%.
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5% of their time? One delivery? I could see if they asked them to spend a WHOLE month, but it is one delivery.
I think it's a whole day of deliveries, not one delivery. But your point is truth. The idea that the engineer will actually know what it's like to be a food delivery grunt, from just pretending for a day, is unbelievably insulting.
And I would suggest that it's the corporate executives who are out of touch, if they think that.
How about take away the engineer's nice house and car, all their medical insurance, access to all their (presumably hard earned) privilege. And then pay them approximately $3/hour to st
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Saw this post's comments (the dupe) and the previous story (the original one), and it is appalling how tone deaf are most people concerning career motivations.
Oh look, another entitled snowflake.
There are other ways to do dogfooding which would be more acceptable.
Then you name some shit that isn't dogfooding and won't teach the same lessons. Guess nobody will cry if you work there and quit. You're exactly the kind of person they want to get rid of.
I love this idea. (Score:2)
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And in a similar vein every CEO of an airline should have to take a coast to coast flight on their airlines once a month in basic economy.
No. Every C-level employee and their board of directors.
Unionize. (Score:2)
Every SV company should do this (Score:2)
Once a month, every engineering and executive employee should be required to use the company's interface as a full customer. Not in a test sandbox, but in the exact manner a new customer would. And if any problem is noted, it must be resolved through the customer relations interface provided. Oops, ther hasn't been time to provide a CSR interface? Then implement one!
Re: The Internet is dead. (Score:2)
In other words, you want some semblance of privacy where none is allowed. Perhaps you would be happier in a shed in the middle of the west Russian forests?
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Took almost 5 hours. See ya on Tuesday.
Another factor that the engineers do not experience is the stress of the performance metrics.
You would be billed for the order, and then fired. If you were an hour late with it, you would be billed and put on notice. If you simply declined that particular pickup, you would start getting negative metrics which will also get you fired soon.
Actually, I'm not sure of how Doordash works those things exactly. I might be exactly right. But I know that all those companies operate by using those "incentives".
And the
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Uh oh, you didn't notice your mask had a tiny tear or slipped below your nose? Well, spread COVID to your whole family...hope y'all are vaccinated!
Normally, I'd support this. I don't see much value, but I assume DoorDash knows what's better for their business than I do. During an omicron surge? I don't see the value outweighing the risk. I am sure the risk is small, but the reward seems pretty trivial as well.
DoorDash is continuing to operate during this pandemic. Thousands of people are doing this very task, every single day. In one way or another, they have come to terms with the levels of exposure inherent in performing food deliveries.
You (or the developer you represent) are not somehow more special than any of they are. If the danger is so great that it's justifiable for the developers to avoid this chore, then Doordash needs to suspend operations because they're putting their delivery people in undue harm.