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DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food

sfgate.com

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Re: DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food

#61

Post by fairity »

dymk wrote: post #56
fairity wrote: post #29

Has anyone considered that this is simply a viral stunt created by the gossip website (which I'd rather not name) in order to promote itself? Even if the commentary isn't fake, it's just one engineer within a huge organization. For those upvoting this story, shouldn't our outrage/attention be directed elsewhere?

> which I'd rather not name Why? It's the primary source where this was first "reported". Many many DoorDash employees confirmed that this was really happening on Blind. https://www.teamblind.com/post/Doordash-making-engineers-del...

I'm not disputing that the policy is real. I'm saying there's a possibility that the engineer's disdainful reaction to the policy is fake -- and done to stoke outrage and promote the gossip site.

> Why [not name the source]?

Because my intuition is that there's a high probability of this being a viral stunt -- in which case, I'd rather this site not exist.

Re: DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food

#62

Post by LNSY »

bena wrote: post #60
LNSY wrote: post #12

Let's do some math. So, say you're paying me $15 an hour. Really, if you own a business by the time you pay for taxes, infrastructure, capital outlay and insurance you are really paying about $45 an hour for me to hang out and do what you tell me to do at varying levels of competency. You need to make that much more value from my labor per-hour or you are going to go out of business. Say I have a piece of software th…

How are you not double counting your time? Regardless of how you spend your hour, it still costs them $45/hr for you. If $7.50 of that is paying for idle time, that's still part of the $45, it doesn't get added again. If they could save those 10 minutes, that would just make you more productive and allow them to reach $45/hr easier.

That is a good point. You're still cutting out 1/6th of my productivity, which has to be quantified.

How would you quantify this?

Re: DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food

#63

Post by LNSY »

LNSY wrote: post #62
bena wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you not double counting your time? Regardless of how you spend your hour, it still costs them $45/hr for you. If $7.50 of that is paying for idle time, that's still part of the $45, it doesn't get added again. If they could save those 10 minutes, that would just make you more productive and allow them to reach $45/hr easier.

That is a good point. You're still cutting out 1/6th of my productivity, which has to be quantified. How would you quantify this?

P.S. I have seen software deploys add 30 seconds to transaction before, it certainly has an effect on a companies bottom line.

Re: DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food

#64

Post by karagenit »

juliosueiras wrote: post #20

I notice that none of the comment think about scenario where the engineer doesn't know how to drive or doesn't own a car

Probably because the article addresses this.

> For employees unable to do deliveries, there are other programs in place to work with service employees and businesses

Re: DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food

#65

Post by wiseowise »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #57
wiseowise wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One of the issues I have in the whole software industry is the lack of empathy for regular folks and a lack understanding of how hard the average person has to bust their ass just to make it in life with just the basics. And how is that industry issue?

My guess is they're talking about money. Many parts of life are much easier when you're financially secure. And the challenges to navigate vary by wealth level.

Same can be said about any white collar job, why is that suddenly a problem here?

Re: DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food

#66

Post by wiseowise »

dymk wrote: post #55
wiseowise wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting paid a lot means you can demand anything now?

Yeah, and they can quit and work somewhere else that’ll pay them just as well if they don’t like it. They’re not being asked to scrub toilets, they’re being asked to exercise the company’s product. The thing that pays their salary. Let’s see how many actually quit over this. My guess is few to none.

> Yeah, and they can quit and work somewhere else that’ll pay them just as well if they don’t like it.

I think that's the main sentiment in those threads and the main response to that is "oh woe how dare you think like that, you prima donna".

Re: DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food

#67

Post by bena »

LNSY wrote: post #62
bena wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you not double counting your time? Regardless of how you spend your hour, it still costs them $45/hr for you. If $7.50 of that is paying for idle time, that's still part of the $45, it doesn't get added again. If they could save those 10 minutes, that would just make you more productive and allow them to reach $45/hr easier.

That is a good point. You're still cutting out 1/6th of my productivity, which has to be quantified. How would you quantify this?

It's essentially lost profits.

Let's say that your $45/hr number accounts for all the overhead. Just to keep the math simple here.

Let's then say that you generate $60/hr value for the company. That's $15/hr of profit for them right now.

If they could eliminate that delay, that's $10/hr of value you could be adding with that time. That's straight to their profits if they could eliminate it at zero cost.

Now, we both know that it's not zero cost. There's some cost associated with eliminating that delay. If the cost of eliminating that delay is more that $10/hr, it'll cost more to remove it than to realize it. And that'll eat into the $15/hr they're currently making.

We also know that while it'll cost now to fix the delay, at some point it will stop costing because the delay will be fixed. At that point, we get to realize the full profit.

Then it becomes a calculation of how long will it take. Because if it would take $11/hr for an entire year, then it might be worth it to suffer the loss in profits this year because the extra profits in the new year will make up for the shortfall this year.

And if you have multiple people using the app, the cost to fix it gets spread out across all the employees. With two employees, that's now $20/hr I could capture and as long as it costs less than that, we'll be good. Well, less than $30/hr because we aren't capturing that $20/hr until the work is done and we have to pay for the labor in the meantime and that means affecting current profits.

And of course, that scales. The more employees you have using the app, the more you can afford to throw at the problem and the more profitable it becomes to capture that extra. At just 100 employees, that's $1500/hr you can afford to fix this issue and you'll see returns of $1000/hr.

Re: DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food

#68

Post by CoastalCoder »

wiseowise wrote: post #65
CoastalCoder wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is they're talking about money. Many parts of life are much easier when you're financially secure. And the challenges to navigate vary by wealth level.

Same can be said about any white collar job, why is that suddenly a problem here?

Don't want to speak for the original commentor, but I'd guess that the size of the income gap is very large.

Re: DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food

#69

Post by felipellrocha »

todd3834 wrote: post #25
windowsrookie wrote: post #15

Requiring the engineer to actually use the product they are working on in real life is good. Maybe it can help make the experience better for the dashers, the restaurants, and the company. That $400,000/yr engineer makes more money in a day than a DoorDash worker makes in 2 weeks working full time. I do not feel any sympathy for the 1 dash they will have to make a month.

Another thing to consider is one less dash, per employee, available for the dashers who might need the money. Perhaps there are not enough to be significant but if you dash by the office I bet you’ll notice.

One less dash hardly makes a difference, but you benefit from the engineer feeling the experience first-hand by dog fooding the product.

Re: DoorDash is requiring engineers to deliver food

#70

Post by LNSY »

bena wrote: post #67
LNSY wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a good point. You're still cutting out 1/6th of my productivity, which has to be quantified. How would you quantify this?

It's essentially lost profits. Let's say that your $45/hr number accounts for all the overhead. Just to keep the math simple here. Let's then say that you generate $60/hr value for the company. That's $15/hr of profit for them right now. If they could eliminate that delay, that's $10/hr of value you could be adding with that time. That's straight to their profits if they could eliminate it at zero cost. Now, we both…

Thanks for this!
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