11 ms·

Every DoorDash employee, from engineers to CEO, will make deliveries

157 points by brutus1213 5y ago

riffic 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba#Gemba_Walk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba#Gemba_Walk 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.
- zepto 5y ago
  Walking to inspect a process is quite different from doing it yourself.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    Still way better than the current practice of observing from status reports and not knowing the process at all.
    - chexx 5y ago
      It's not. Actually it's almost worse because it tends to hide issues even deeper. 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.
  - riversflow 5y ago
    Given the distributed nature of a business like door dash using the app as a driver is about as close as you can come to walking around the floor.
- stonecharioteer 5y ago
  I was searching for someone to mention Gemba. The Toyota Manufacturing system is so amazing: its tenets keep somehow following us into the tech industry, reminding us that all of these have been tried and tested in the grind of the shop floor. 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?
notreallyserio 5y ago
Great idea. Not sure why boards of directors don't require this of all their CxOs. For example, make a CEO in the travel industry sit at a counter and rent out cars or hotel rooms for a day and see if they don't demand improvements.
- rovr138 5y ago
  I don't think just a day, but yes. Make them work there with some frequency and they will start hating it enough to demand improvements.
  - yosito 5y ago
    Make them eat their own dog food at least once quarterly, under a pseudonym, with no special treatment. That'd change a whole lot of companies.
    - java-man 5y ago
      And fire them if they don't perform!
      - rovr138 5y ago
        I bet a lot of them will get called out on things.. Speed, policies vs how we actually do it, etc.
    - meibo 5y ago
      I don't think it would. I'd like to believe leadership in companies that exploit their workers know exactly what they're doing, grilling burgers for a day won't change that. It might help in e.g. startups, but I think it'd have less of an impact than you think it will.
      - 6510 5y ago
        Its not just exploitation, the way managers imagine the work is done is very different from how it really gets done. Imagining how things work is never exactly how it works and you cant imagine how far off you could be. We've all been surprised by reality.
ziggus 5y ago
This seems like a publicity stunt. 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".
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Strongly disagree. Everyone in a large organization already OUGHT to distrust the effectiveness of feedback mechanisms that move information up the chain of command. This is a good exercise. “I would hope” is no substitute for ACTUALLY seeing how the sausage is made.
- vineyardmike 5y ago
  Its not really about managing the process as much as experiencing it end to end. Seeing the "big picture" while still experiencing the customer facing parts. 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?
- aerosmile 5y ago
  Definitely a publicity stunt. 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.
itamarst 5y ago
The difference, of course, is that the engineers and CEO won't end up making $200 that week: https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-delivery-driver-in-oregon-what-i-wish-i-knew-2020-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-delivery-driver-in-...
- awb 5y ago
  Because that’s not the point of the policy. > "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
  - tdeck 5y ago
    It's still a salient point though. For example, I'm constantly seeing a pileup of delivery drivers parked illegally around restaurants while they run inside for a pickup. You're probably a lot more motivated to cut corners like that when you're hustling to make a living from delivery fees, and at the same time the prospect of paying a ticket yourself is a lot scarier on $200/week. Maybe these companies would care more that their service model basically requires drivers to break the law in urban areas.
    - iso1631 5y ago
      I was discussing this earlier, something about a supermarket using deliveroo to deliver food rather than their salaried employees in company vans. Those employees get sick pay and thus obey the law like isolating after a positive test. If you're paid per delivery you aren't going to put health and safety first, you aren't going to park safely and spend 15 minutes doing the delivery, you're going to break as many laws as you can and deliver as much as you can and generally make everything worse for everyone because you have a financial incentive to do so. It's going to have to change.
    - arcbyte 5y ago
      That's the kind of "difficult to predict and unlikely to be reported" thing that this sort of activity is well suited to capture. Otherwise you'd never know how much of an issue it was until it was on the news.
astrange 5y ago
Do they use their own cars?
ferdowsi 5y ago
I understand why this would be valuable from a team-building perspective (and support it as such), but I'm not totally convinced this is valuable as a way to improve the product. 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.
- ford 5y ago
  > "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
- novok 5y ago
  They're not doing it for a day, they are doing it once a month. Eventually they will get out of the newbie persona and into the casual one, which is the vast majority of drivers for these kinds of apps AFAIK. 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.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- anarticle 5y ago
  Personas are just that, models. Models are wrong but useful. 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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things
a4isms 5y ago
I was once in sales for a majors electronic components distributor. All salespeople and sales management were required to spend two weeks in the warehouse for onboarding, and were told that if the warehouse staff didn’t give them a favourable evaluation, they would fail probation and be let go. 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.
- ridiculousthrow 5y ago
  Sounds like it was actually effective overall then.
- ljm 5y ago
  I started one job as a software dev and new starters had to spend the first two weeks with customer support, answering requests and basically just learning about what the users generally experienced. 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.
  - ajdsudnd 5y ago
    I believe software devs should spend a day a month doing CSR work so they find out how people use the product. Not how they think they use it
- davidjytang 5y ago
  I was an international sales for an electronics company. One time there was customer payment delay for which held the goods at the pending-payment zone in the factory for more than 1 month!. We were basically waiting for the payment to clear before we ship. There were two 20-ft containers worth of electronics in the corner of the outgoing area. It was such an eyesore that manufacturing head yelled at sales head during every management meeting for that month. 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.
mwattsun 5y ago
I used to drive Uber and deliver Uber Eats for something to do in retirement. I don't know why, but it struck me funny that I delivered a bunch of smoothies to the Uber Palo Alto office. They tipped well.
- carabiner 5y ago
  Wow this is fascinating. I wondered how people deal with boredom, loneliness in retirement. Is this a FIRE situation? Did you enjoy it?
  - xeromal 5y ago
    I delivered postmates to handle boredom during the pandemic. If I didn't have to deal with entitled dick customers, I probably would've kept it up. Someone gave me a 20$ tip for a bag of egg rolls once.
    - mwattsun 5y ago
      Uber started this sh*t that people don't need to tip, so I never got a lot of tips. Oh well, I wasn't doing it for the money.
      - gruez 5y ago
        >Uber started this sh*t that people don't need to tip disagree. I don't like tipping culture in general, so I welcome any effort to uproot it.
        alistairSH 5y ago
        I generally agree. I’d prefer everybody made a living wage (or better) and priced goods & services appropriately. 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.
oxymoran 5y ago
I like this idea. I wish insurance company management and software engineers would handle some insurance claims. The processes they create without experience are poop.
- jobigoud 5y ago
  I wish politicians would have to only use public services.
  - UnpossibleJim 5y ago
    This and send their children to active service units.
    - nkrisc 5y ago
      One of two things will happen: you'll have fewer wars, or you'll have only politicians who have no kids and more wars.
      - iso1631 5y ago
        Or you'll have kids with bone spurs
    - TMWNN 5y ago
      Congressmen's children are overrepresented in the military. As of 2007 12 senators and representatives out of 535 (2%) had kids in the armed forces. By comparison, there are 1.5 million active duty and 1.5 million reserve/guard soldiers in the US, or 3 million out of 310 million (1%). In the 2008 US presidential election, three of four presidential and vice-presidential candidates (Biden, McCain, Palin) had children serving in Afghanistan or Iraq.
      - tialaramex 5y ago
        That seems like you're not comparing apples versus apples. 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)
tekno45 5y ago
As a cloud, CI/CD engineer. What should i learn from doing deliveries? My customers are the developers.
- zackbloom 5y ago
  Empathy is a powerful thing. We make many little decisions during the work week around if it's ok to take something down, if an engineer's request needs to be handled immediately, etc. I think the goal of the company is to align everyone around empathy for the drivers (I presume you're all already customers), so that you make those decisions in ways which enable engineers to deliver software well.
  - john-tells-all 5y ago
    Absolutely! We developers think we're above it, but empty is a _magic power_ to make our software much more effective => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYWlfVqBQLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYWlfVqBQLc
- paulcole 5y ago
  Humility? 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?
- grogenaut 5y ago
  It would connect you with what actually matters to the customer. You may be building features for the developers that paper over or hide issues for the end user. I've see this where frameworks chose metrics that paged engineers less but caused micro outages. Not saying this is you but the end user's experience is the core product. Sometimes you have to make the devs life a bit worse to make the customers better. Hopefully you get to come back and also make the devs experience better over time.
- jrockway 5y ago
  It's just feel-good horseshit. DoorDash wanted some PR, and CNN is there to give it to them. Now we're discussing them by name on HN. It's all very clever. 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.
atl_punk 5y ago
I don’t know if they still do it, but Home Depot used to have the same policy when you went to work at the headquarters in Atlanta. No matter your role, you had to go work at a Home Depot store for a week. You got to choose which store though, didn’t have to be the ones in Atlanta.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  Going to guess that was only for direct employees. I was a contractor at the SSC in various software development roles and it was never suggested that I go work at a store though it wouldn't surprise me if it was policy for actual employees. I did hear a lot about the importance of "voluntarily" contributing to the "Orange Voice" which is Home Depot's lobbying organization. Haven't seen any other company push so hard for workers to pay into the company's lobbying arm.
toss1 5y ago
Seems like proper dogfooding 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.
- swongel 5y ago
  That's a nice way to say "Do what I tell you regardless of what we agreed your role would be or I fire you". Talk about toxic, this kind of garbage is why workers need strong labor laws and unions protecting them.
  - trixie_ 5y ago
    Great idea. The law should read like the employee cannot be fired if asked to do something not specified in their job description when hired. /s Maybe we should have laws as well to protect companies from rogue employees do things outside of their job descriptions.
    - swongel 5y ago
      Where I'm from (western europe) we have this, but unironically. 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
      - ericmay 5y ago
        How are tech salaries in Western Europe compared to the US? 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.
helen___keller 5y ago
Sounds more like a culture building program than a product development program, which seems reasonable
Barrin92 5y ago
I think that's a really great idea. In Germany we have a fairly strong 'grey collar' culture and this was one of the things I missed most in the UK. (and I think the US is similar in that regard). 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.
chx 5y ago
This sounds extremely ableist and as a disabled sr developer whose disability bars operating any vehicles it certainly made me raise an eyebrow. But it turns out this is just shoddy reporting. A better version is at https://www.marketwatch.com/story/doordash-will-require-all-workers-to-deliver-goods-or-perform-other-gigs-and-some-of-them-arent-happy-11640300491 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/doordash-will-require-all-... > The renewed push adds choices for employees who may not be able to do deliveries, a spokeswoman said.
- Xeronate 5y ago
  Don't you think you have to be reading with bad faith or a huge amount of preemptive judgement to jump to the conclusion that DoorDash would penalize disabled employees based on this?
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    Given the track record of employers in general, and gig economy “employers” in particular, I don’t think his initial leap was unfounded.
  - chx 5y ago
    Apply Hanlon's Razor. 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...
xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
"*except for employees on visas, employees with disabilities, employees outside the USA, part-time employees, and contractors." -- some fine print somewhere, probably. 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.
dboreham 5y ago
Delivering your own dogfood
nudgeee 5y ago
As a former Uber engineer I did the employee delivering program a couple of times (pre-covid) and it was really eye opening. I’m based in Amsterdam so cycled on bicycle to make deliveries - it’s hard work, but also was a great way to explore the city and discovered some great eateries I wouldn’t have gone to otherwise. 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!
- whoisburbansky 5y ago
  Do you know if they did make the message easier to read after all?
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    I've initiated "process improvements" a few times. It's always unpleasant since you're rocking the boat (kinda like when you report a security issue to a company with no established process.) - 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.
    - tata71 5y ago
      Thank you in advance, loving already.
jmspring 5y ago
I kind of wish those writing cloud services were forced to use and build things on those services. I suspect it would result in a good number of usability issues - like consistency in networking in different services.
cstross 5y ago
Stupid question: I assume that some of those employees -- if only some of the software/UI devs -- must be disabled or mobility-challenged. 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.)
- s0rce 5y ago
  Someone who can't drive could simply join another employee who can, basically a ride along, maybe not as useful but still doable. If you can't do that there are other customer service jobs you could do like a call center or something.
- tonymet 5y ago
  those who are unable to drive can perform another customer service role instead
alistairSH 5y ago
Will DoorDash be paying for the employees to rent a car to make deliveries? No way I’m risking my new car on delivering groceries. No way I’m paying for commercial auto insurance either (I suspect my normal policy won’t cover DoorDash or other gig activities).
- pylua 5y ago
  I strongly agree with this. Surely this is a form of discrimination. What about drivers safety and liability ? Is this okay to osha ?
- flashgordon 5y ago
  Yeah I am very confused on this. Is the idea to develop customer empathy or deliverer empathy? Wouldnt I get customer empathy by you know actually being a customer? What if I am not a customer? Does that mean I cannot get a job here? If this is the right thing to do how should this extend to other companies? Say CIA? Grindr/Tinder? On a more general note what suggests I cannot have customer empathy or give my best just because I don't prefer doing this?
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    If you’re running a 2-sided network, both sides are your customers.
    - flashgordon 5y ago
      Actually that's a good point. So I guess now the point is whether customer empathy actually is a key ingredient to professionalism. I suppose you can be a professional without having customer empathy (well ok maybe customer contact) but you won't be a fanatic and that's what companies are trying to recruit to reduce churn?
  - l8rpeace 5y ago
    "What if I am not a customer? Does that mean I cannot get a job here?" 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.
hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
Also discussed 4 days ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29675076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29675076 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667072
yoelo 5y ago
Will they also be paid the same shitty salary?
tayo42 5y ago
I think this is pretty cool. I wanted to do something like this at work. I work on a platform internal infra team and was thinking we should use our own service in some of our team tools we build. People seemed somewhat onboard with the idea but using it seemed like it was becoming pretty over-engineered for our own small uses. 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
datavirtue 5y ago
I sat with customer service for years as an application support engineer. I was able to learn the business much faster than if I was just talking to other devs and IT people who had barely groped one part of the elephant. 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.
worker_thread 5y ago
Absolutely, if you take pride in what you work on, you should definitely step in the shoes of the core users of your app - the lone gig worker. I used to deliver with UberEats, occasionally I would go to a restaurant that would refuse to let me use washrooms until I buy something on the menu. I didn't fuss about it because I'd go to next restaurant that would let me in. But I have seen drivers arguing and just walking out of the restaurant if they were refused access to a washroom. I raised this with UberEats casually and the customer support rep told me they can't do anything, it's the choice of the restaurant. 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-legislation-allowing-delivery-workers-to-access-bathrooms-at-businesses-1.5630533#:~:text=TORONTO%20%2D%2D%20The%20Ontario%20government,drivers%2C%20and%20food%20delivery%20workers https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-set-to-introduce-legislat....
RyJones 5y ago
William was so helpful[0] someone asked for him much later. 0: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20091123-00/?p=15943 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20091123-00/?p=15...
CaptainJustin 5y ago
One of my favorite experiences working at a large bank was sitting in on calls in the call center for a morning. It blew my mind. 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.
- PascLeRasc 5y ago
  Were you able to make any changes to the call center system? I feel like most banks wouldn't even be able to receive feedback like that - "you haven't been assigned the job code necessary to determine project priority, plus you have tasks in your queue already". 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?
literallyaduck 5y ago
Waffle Street movie is a must watch for this situation. I won't spoil it but these large corporation announcements sound like an equality empathy booster and make for good PR.
deleted 5y ago
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mostertoaster 5y ago
This is a great idea. 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.
bradlys 5y ago
So many people here don’t get how capitalistic systems work. Legislation is the only way you’ll get better treatment for the drivers. Dogfooding makes sense but not at this scale. You’re just wasting time. Also - I think many people here are assuming you will do this and take time off your regular tasks. This is where you’re wrong. This is in addition to regular tasks. So either work faster on what you have already or add more hours to your work week which is already hellish. Doordash isn’t known for its lovely WLB. It’s not just the dashers who have to work hard.
chakhs 5y ago
will they be paid per delivery too and have some averages to uphold?
ajdsudnd 5y ago
I love this! They should understand where the product fails drivers It's a fantastic way for the high and mighty engineer to get out their bubble It will be eye opening for them
webinvest 5y ago
Seems like a great way for employees to become more intimate with the product they’re developing. This, I would expect, would lead to developing a better product and user experience.

157 points by brutus1213 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba#Gemba_Walk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemba#Gemba_Walk 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.

zepto 5y ago
Walking to inspect a process is quite different from doing it yourself.
- edoceo 5y ago
  Still way better than the current practice of observing from status reports and not knowing the process at all.
  - chexx 5y ago
    It's not. Actually it's almost worse because it tends to hide issues even deeper. 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.
- riversflow 5y ago
  Given the distributed nature of a business like door dash using the app as a driver is about as close as you can come to walking around the floor.
stonecharioteer 5y ago
I was searching for someone to mention Gemba. The Toyota Manufacturing system is so amazing: its tenets keep somehow following us into the tech industry, reminding us that all of these have been tried and tested in the grind of the shop floor. 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?

notreallyserio 5y ago

Great idea. Not sure why boards of directors don't require this of all their CxOs. For example, make a CEO in the travel industry sit at a counter and rent out cars or hotel rooms for a day and see if they don't demand improvements.

rovr138 5y ago
I don't think just a day, but yes. Make them work there with some frequency and they will start hating it enough to demand improvements.
- yosito 5y ago
  Make them eat their own dog food at least once quarterly, under a pseudonym, with no special treatment. That'd change a whole lot of companies.
  - java-man 5y ago
    And fire them if they don't perform!
    - rovr138 5y ago
      I bet a lot of them will get called out on things.. Speed, policies vs how we actually do it, etc.
  - meibo 5y ago
    I don't think it would. I'd like to believe leadership in companies that exploit their workers know exactly what they're doing, grilling burgers for a day won't change that. It might help in e.g. startups, but I think it'd have less of an impact than you think it will.
    - 6510 5y ago
      Its not just exploitation, the way managers imagine the work is done is very different from how it really gets done. Imagining how things work is never exactly how it works and you cant imagine how far off you could be. We've all been surprised by reality.

ziggus 5y ago

This seems like a publicity stunt. 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".

Robotbeat 5y ago
Strongly disagree. Everyone in a large organization already OUGHT to distrust the effectiveness of feedback mechanisms that move information up the chain of command. This is a good exercise. “I would hope” is no substitute for ACTUALLY seeing how the sausage is made.
vineyardmike 5y ago
Its not really about managing the process as much as experiencing it end to end. Seeing the "big picture" while still experiencing the customer facing parts. 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?
aerosmile 5y ago
Definitely a publicity stunt. 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.

itamarst 5y ago

The difference, of course, is that the engineers and CEO won't end up making $200 that week: https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-delivery-driver-in-oregon-what-i-wish-i-knew-2020-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/doordash-delivery-driver-in-...

awb 5y ago
Because that’s not the point of the policy. > "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
- tdeck 5y ago
  It's still a salient point though. For example, I'm constantly seeing a pileup of delivery drivers parked illegally around restaurants while they run inside for a pickup. You're probably a lot more motivated to cut corners like that when you're hustling to make a living from delivery fees, and at the same time the prospect of paying a ticket yourself is a lot scarier on $200/week. Maybe these companies would care more that their service model basically requires drivers to break the law in urban areas.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    I was discussing this earlier, something about a supermarket using deliveroo to deliver food rather than their salaried employees in company vans. Those employees get sick pay and thus obey the law like isolating after a positive test. If you're paid per delivery you aren't going to put health and safety first, you aren't going to park safely and spend 15 minutes doing the delivery, you're going to break as many laws as you can and deliver as much as you can and generally make everything worse for everyone because you have a financial incentive to do so. It's going to have to change.
  - arcbyte 5y ago
    That's the kind of "difficult to predict and unlikely to be reported" thing that this sort of activity is well suited to capture. Otherwise you'd never know how much of an issue it was until it was on the news.

astrange 5y ago

Do they use their own cars?

ferdowsi 5y ago

I understand why this would be valuable from a team-building perspective (and support it as such), but I'm not totally convinced this is valuable as a way to improve the product. 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.

ford 5y ago
> "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
novok 5y ago
They're not doing it for a day, they are doing it once a month. Eventually they will get out of the newbie persona and into the casual one, which is the vast majority of drivers for these kinds of apps AFAIK. 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.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
anarticle 5y ago
Personas are just that, models. Models are wrong but useful. 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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Design_of_Everyday_Things

a4isms 5y ago

I was once in sales for a majors electronic components distributor. All salespeople and sales management were required to spend two weeks in the warehouse for onboarding, and were told that if the warehouse staff didn’t give them a favourable evaluation, they would fail probation and be let go. 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.

ridiculousthrow 5y ago
Sounds like it was actually effective overall then.
ljm 5y ago
I started one job as a software dev and new starters had to spend the first two weeks with customer support, answering requests and basically just learning about what the users generally experienced. 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.
- ajdsudnd 5y ago
  I believe software devs should spend a day a month doing CSR work so they find out how people use the product. Not how they think they use it
davidjytang 5y ago
I was an international sales for an electronics company. One time there was customer payment delay for which held the goods at the pending-payment zone in the factory for more than 1 month!. We were basically waiting for the payment to clear before we ship. There were two 20-ft containers worth of electronics in the corner of the outgoing area. It was such an eyesore that manufacturing head yelled at sales head during every management meeting for that month. 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.

mwattsun 5y ago

I used to drive Uber and deliver Uber Eats for something to do in retirement. I don't know why, but it struck me funny that I delivered a bunch of smoothies to the Uber Palo Alto office. They tipped well.

carabiner 5y ago
Wow this is fascinating. I wondered how people deal with boredom, loneliness in retirement. Is this a FIRE situation? Did you enjoy it?
- xeromal 5y ago
  I delivered postmates to handle boredom during the pandemic. If I didn't have to deal with entitled dick customers, I probably would've kept it up. Someone gave me a 20$ tip for a bag of egg rolls once.
  - mwattsun 5y ago
    Uber started this sh*t that people don't need to tip, so I never got a lot of tips. Oh well, I wasn't doing it for the money.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >Uber started this sh*t that people don't need to tip disagree. I don't like tipping culture in general, so I welcome any effort to uproot it.
      - alistairSH 5y ago
        I generally agree. I’d prefer everybody made a living wage (or better) and priced goods & services appropriately. 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.

oxymoran 5y ago

I like this idea. I wish insurance company management and software engineers would handle some insurance claims. The processes they create without experience are poop.

jobigoud 5y ago
I wish politicians would have to only use public services.
- UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  This and send their children to active service units.
  - nkrisc 5y ago
    One of two things will happen: you'll have fewer wars, or you'll have only politicians who have no kids and more wars.
    - iso1631 5y ago
      Or you'll have kids with bone spurs
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    Congressmen's children are overrepresented in the military. As of 2007 12 senators and representatives out of 535 (2%) had kids in the armed forces. By comparison, there are 1.5 million active duty and 1.5 million reserve/guard soldiers in the US, or 3 million out of 310 million (1%). In the 2008 US presidential election, three of four presidential and vice-presidential candidates (Biden, McCain, Palin) had children serving in Afghanistan or Iraq.
    - tialaramex 5y ago
      That seems like you're not comparing apples versus apples. 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)

tekno45 5y ago

As a cloud, CI/CD engineer. What should i learn from doing deliveries? My customers are the developers.

zackbloom 5y ago
Empathy is a powerful thing. We make many little decisions during the work week around if it's ok to take something down, if an engineer's request needs to be handled immediately, etc. I think the goal of the company is to align everyone around empathy for the drivers (I presume you're all already customers), so that you make those decisions in ways which enable engineers to deliver software well.
- john-tells-all 5y ago
  Absolutely! We developers think we're above it, but empty is a _magic power_ to make our software much more effective => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYWlfVqBQLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYWlfVqBQLc
paulcole 5y ago
Humility? 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?
grogenaut 5y ago
It would connect you with what actually matters to the customer. You may be building features for the developers that paper over or hide issues for the end user. I've see this where frameworks chose metrics that paged engineers less but caused micro outages. Not saying this is you but the end user's experience is the core product. Sometimes you have to make the devs life a bit worse to make the customers better. Hopefully you get to come back and also make the devs experience better over time.
jrockway 5y ago
It's just feel-good horseshit. DoorDash wanted some PR, and CNN is there to give it to them. Now we're discussing them by name on HN. It's all very clever. 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.

atl_punk 5y ago

I don’t know if they still do it, but Home Depot used to have the same policy when you went to work at the headquarters in Atlanta. No matter your role, you had to go work at a Home Depot store for a week. You got to choose which store though, didn’t have to be the ones in Atlanta.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
Going to guess that was only for direct employees. I was a contractor at the SSC in various software development roles and it was never suggested that I go work at a store though it wouldn't surprise me if it was policy for actual employees. I did hear a lot about the importance of "voluntarily" contributing to the "Orange Voice" which is Home Depot's lobbying organization. Haven't seen any other company push so hard for workers to pay into the company's lobbying arm.

toss1 5y ago

Seems like proper dogfooding 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.

swongel 5y ago
That's a nice way to say "Do what I tell you regardless of what we agreed your role would be or I fire you". Talk about toxic, this kind of garbage is why workers need strong labor laws and unions protecting them.
- trixie_ 5y ago
  Great idea. The law should read like the employee cannot be fired if asked to do something not specified in their job description when hired. /s Maybe we should have laws as well to protect companies from rogue employees do things outside of their job descriptions.
  - swongel 5y ago
    Where I'm from (western europe) we have this, but unironically. 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
    - ericmay 5y ago
      How are tech salaries in Western Europe compared to the US? 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.

helen___keller 5y ago

Sounds more like a culture building program than a product development program, which seems reasonable

Barrin92 5y ago

I think that's a really great idea. In Germany we have a fairly strong 'grey collar' culture and this was one of the things I missed most in the UK. (and I think the US is similar in that regard). 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.

chx 5y ago

This sounds extremely ableist and as a disabled sr developer whose disability bars operating any vehicles it certainly made me raise an eyebrow. But it turns out this is just shoddy reporting. A better version is at https://www.marketwatch.com/story/doordash-will-require-all-workers-to-deliver-goods-or-perform-other-gigs-and-some-of-them-arent-happy-11640300491 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/doordash-will-require-all-... > The renewed push adds choices for employees who may not be able to do deliveries, a spokeswoman said.

Xeronate 5y ago
Don't you think you have to be reading with bad faith or a huge amount of preemptive judgement to jump to the conclusion that DoorDash would penalize disabled employees based on this?
- alistairSH 5y ago
  Given the track record of employers in general, and gig economy “employers” in particular, I don’t think his initial leap was unfounded.
- chx 5y ago
  Apply Hanlon's Razor. 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...

xyzzy_plugh 5y ago

"*except for employees on visas, employees with disabilities, employees outside the USA, part-time employees, and contractors." -- some fine print somewhere, probably. 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.

dboreham 5y ago

Delivering your own dogfood

nudgeee 5y ago

As a former Uber engineer I did the employee delivering program a couple of times (pre-covid) and it was really eye opening. I’m based in Amsterdam so cycled on bicycle to make deliveries - it’s hard work, but also was a great way to explore the city and discovered some great eateries I wouldn’t have gone to otherwise. 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!

whoisburbansky 5y ago
Do you know if they did make the message easier to read after all?
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  I've initiated "process improvements" a few times. It's always unpleasant since you're rocking the boat (kinda like when you report a security issue to a company with no established process.) - 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.
  - tata71 5y ago
    Thank you in advance, loving already.

jmspring 5y ago

I kind of wish those writing cloud services were forced to use and build things on those services. I suspect it would result in a good number of usability issues - like consistency in networking in different services.

cstross 5y ago

Stupid question: I assume that some of those employees -- if only some of the software/UI devs -- must be disabled or mobility-challenged. 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.)

s0rce 5y ago
Someone who can't drive could simply join another employee who can, basically a ride along, maybe not as useful but still doable. If you can't do that there are other customer service jobs you could do like a call center or something.
tonymet 5y ago
those who are unable to drive can perform another customer service role instead

alistairSH 5y ago

Will DoorDash be paying for the employees to rent a car to make deliveries? No way I’m risking my new car on delivering groceries. No way I’m paying for commercial auto insurance either (I suspect my normal policy won’t cover DoorDash or other gig activities).

pylua 5y ago
I strongly agree with this. Surely this is a form of discrimination. What about drivers safety and liability ? Is this okay to osha ?
flashgordon 5y ago
Yeah I am very confused on this. Is the idea to develop customer empathy or deliverer empathy? Wouldnt I get customer empathy by you know actually being a customer? What if I am not a customer? Does that mean I cannot get a job here? If this is the right thing to do how should this extend to other companies? Say CIA? Grindr/Tinder? On a more general note what suggests I cannot have customer empathy or give my best just because I don't prefer doing this?
- sokoloff 5y ago
  If you’re running a 2-sided network, both sides are your customers.
  - flashgordon 5y ago
    Actually that's a good point. So I guess now the point is whether customer empathy actually is a key ingredient to professionalism. I suppose you can be a professional without having customer empathy (well ok maybe customer contact) but you won't be a fanatic and that's what companies are trying to recruit to reduce churn?
- l8rpeace 5y ago
  "What if I am not a customer? Does that mean I cannot get a job here?" 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.

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago

Also discussed 4 days ago at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29675076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29675076 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29667072

yoelo 5y ago

Will they also be paid the same shitty salary?

tayo42 5y ago

I think this is pretty cool. I wanted to do something like this at work. I work on a platform internal infra team and was thinking we should use our own service in some of our team tools we build. People seemed somewhat onboard with the idea but using it seemed like it was becoming pretty over-engineered for our own small uses. 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

datavirtue 5y ago

I sat with customer service for years as an application support engineer. I was able to learn the business much faster than if I was just talking to other devs and IT people who had barely groped one part of the elephant. 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.

worker_thread 5y ago

Absolutely, if you take pride in what you work on, you should definitely step in the shoes of the core users of your app - the lone gig worker. I used to deliver with UberEats, occasionally I would go to a restaurant that would refuse to let me use washrooms until I buy something on the menu. I didn't fuss about it because I'd go to next restaurant that would let me in. But I have seen drivers arguing and just walking out of the restaurant if they were refused access to a washroom. I raised this with UberEats casually and the customer support rep told me they can't do anything, it's the choice of the restaurant. 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-legislation-allowing-delivery-workers-to-access-bathrooms-at-businesses-1.5630533#:~:text=TORONTO%20%2D%2D%20The%20Ontario%20government,drivers%2C%20and%20food%20delivery%20workers https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-set-to-introduce-legislat....

RyJones 5y ago

William was so helpful[0] someone asked for him much later. 0: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20091123-00/?p=15943 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20091123-00/?p=15...

CaptainJustin 5y ago

One of my favorite experiences working at a large bank was sitting in on calls in the call center for a morning. It blew my mind. 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.

PascLeRasc 5y ago
Were you able to make any changes to the call center system? I feel like most banks wouldn't even be able to receive feedback like that - "you haven't been assigned the job code necessary to determine project priority, plus you have tasks in your queue already". 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?

literallyaduck 5y ago

Waffle Street movie is a must watch for this situation. I won't spoil it but these large corporation announcements sound like an equality empathy booster and make for good PR.

deleted 5y ago

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mostertoaster 5y ago

This is a great idea. 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.

bradlys 5y ago

So many people here don’t get how capitalistic systems work. Legislation is the only way you’ll get better treatment for the drivers. Dogfooding makes sense but not at this scale. You’re just wasting time. Also - I think many people here are assuming you will do this and take time off your regular tasks. This is where you’re wrong. This is in addition to regular tasks. So either work faster on what you have already or add more hours to your work week which is already hellish. Doordash isn’t known for its lovely WLB. It’s not just the dashers who have to work hard.

chakhs 5y ago

will they be paid per delivery too and have some averages to uphold?

ajdsudnd 5y ago

I love this! They should understand where the product fails drivers It's a fantastic way for the high and mighty engineer to get out their bubble It will be eye opening for them

webinvest 5y ago

Seems like a great way for employees to become more intimate with the product they’re developing. This, I would expect, would lead to developing a better product and user experience.