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.
1. Entice investors 2. Planning for some external company event like a merger 3. Pandering to analysts 4. Pandering to the sales department, who again, sell into VPs and not to users
I think it's incredibly out of touch to suggest engineers are the ones that lack empathy for their own product, and not the myriad of individuals who haven't touched a line of code or a design file for the past decade. As an engineer I field support tickets every day, I know what problems the system has, no amount of me using the application is going to change what gets consistently submited through help desk.
You'll have to forgive me for being bitter after a decade of trying to innovate in the products I worked on only to be shut down every single step of the way by upper management; then to have to swallow this self-righteous PR stunt where the world seems to blame "out of touch" workers for not knowing what their job is and not having empathy for their users.
Beyond that, don't get me wrong, I don't think doing deliveries is beneath anyone. I would probably accept half a million dollars to do deliveries. However, I do think it's incredibly immoral to suggest that you can pay some people $200/hr to do deliveries, but others only $7/hr. Instead of focusing ire on those that are upset that their job duties are not what was described to them when hired; perhaps we can be upset that doordash has the capacity to pay their laborers much much more, and chooses not to in order to ensure they can pay half a million dollars for what everyone here considers "mediocre engineers".
Also, again, I personally would not work at doordash because of this requirement. However, I wouldn't have any issue with the company if they CLEARLY outlined this job requirement during their hiring process; which it looks like they did not do.
And in my opinion, the doordash product will suffer for it.
Use cases, flows, and product paths seem logical on a whiteboard. However, the real world often introduces nuances that significantly alter use in micro ways.
The objection to interact with customers from engineers I believe is more due to a social aversion, introversion, etc rather than a defiance of not doing the delivery. Engineers can often be afraid of unknown social situations - which is fair.
If I were the CEO, I'd have engineers go in packs of 3 engineers at first for 3-4 months. Then pair to group of 2 with one as a "ride along, no interaction" for moral support.