The delivery service DoorDash is requiring employees with cushy desk jobs to perform a couple deliveries every month. Some of the cushy-desk-job types are throwing fits about it.

According to the salary search site Glassdoor, engineers for the delivery platform DoorDash average a $166,000 a year starting salary, with additional stock compensation of nearly $50,000. Top DoorDash executives became overnight billionaires with last year’s IPO. The company’s generous work from home policy promises “At-home office equipment and monthly WiFi support while working from home. Enjoy your favorite lunch on us while working in one of our offices.” It’s nice work if you can get it!


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Yet DoorDash is facing a mini-revolt among its pampered full-time employees. Pre-pandemic, the company had a policy known as “WeDash” where the desk-job types had to play delivery driver once a month, just to sort of see how the service worked from the bottom up. That program was shelved during the pandemic, since third-party app delivery driving is high-risk for COVID-19 transmission. But MarketWatch reports that DoorDash is restarting that “Engineers deliver once a month, too” policy, and white collar DoorDash employees are up in arms.  

The sentiment comes from an anonymous tech employee venting platform called Blind, in an anonymous post from a salaried DoorDash employee entitled “Doordash making engineers deliver food.” (That the individual said “engineer” certainly indicates the original poster is an engineer.)

The individual complains as such: “Mandatory ‘WeDash’ starts from next year. You need to dash once a month. WILL BE TRACKED IN PERFORMANCE REVIEWS!! What the actual fuck? I didn't sign up for this, there was nothing in the offer letter/job description about this.”

(MarketWatch confirmed with the Blind platform that the original poster used a DoorDash corporate email address. The original poster is also described on the platform as “TC: 400K,” which means that person’s total annual compensation is $400,000.)

The response to the post has been mixed, and most responses (visible to those of us without a Blind log-in) are actually supportive. “Empathy for your customers, dashers and restaurants is a good thing,” says one. “This makes me want to order doordash more often,” says another.

There is also some dissent. “What the fuck? Not acceptable in anyway!,” says one poster. “Sounds like a good way to violate the terms of your car insurance, or get injured on a bike,” complains another.

This is a DoorDash internal issue, so we’ll let them dash it out. But MarketWatch reports that this obligation applies to “All DoorDash Inc. employees, from software engineers up to the chief executive.” So even those overnight billionaires will have to do some deliveries too.

Related: DoorDash Settles for $5.3 Million Over Stiffing Drivers Out of Health Care and Sick Leave [SFist]


Image: RODNAE Productions via Unsplash