alt.hn

3/22/2026 at 4:48:37 PM

Introducing DoorDash Tasks

 https://about.doordash.com/en-us/news/introducing-doordash-tasks

by ChrisArchitect

3/22/2026 at 5:59:43 PM

Labour getting ever-granular in the age of micro-loans and RentAHuman.

> "Dashers have a new way to earn on their own terms"

The classic meaning inversion of precariousness and lack of benefits as a virtue.

by cheesecompiler

3/22/2026 at 6:46:18 PM

It's also unlocking economic value that was impossible to realize in the old model. If you're sitting around your house with nothing to do for an hour you can now earn money in ways you couldn't before.

by CSMastermind

3/22/2026 at 7:19:30 PM

"Earn money" most markets are so saturated with drivers, nobody is making above minimum wage.

by ChromaticPanic

3/22/2026 at 6:47:24 PM

"value"

by spicyusername

3/22/2026 at 6:04:32 PM

Neither of these two things are something that DoorDash as a company can realistically do anything about.

by vovavili

3/22/2026 at 6:29:34 PM

DoorDash lobbies heavily against laws that would regulate labor, or classify its workers as “employees” and thus require they be covered by the minimal protections our country offers.

by matthewdgreen

3/22/2026 at 7:04:33 PM

The question is what happens if these sorts of micro-contract work arrangements are outlawed... is the expectation that these businesses will instead hire these people full time, thus increasing full time employment?

Maybe, although it seems unlikely. These sorts of tasks aren't going to be worth most companies hiring someone to do it full time. Instead, the work simply won't be done and the business will just be a little less efficient and responsive.

The other alternative is that someone would start a specialized service providing each of these types of tasks, and hire full time workers to do the work, and then contract out the services directly.

Is that better for the workers? Maybe for some, they will have full time employment. But will they make more money? Maybe, but now there is a new company extracting profit, with overhead and all the related costs.

Is that a better world for the average person? I don't know. I just don't think the answer is as simple as saying DoorDash obviously makes it worse.

by cortesoft

3/22/2026 at 7:52:24 PM

A lot of that is about medical insurance. Employers generally have to offer subsidized health plans to full-time employees. If we could break that policy linkage between employment and health plan coverage then it would reduce the importance of classifying workers as employees versus independent contractors.

by nradov

3/22/2026 at 6:44:38 PM

If the politicians are bought out by evil DoorDash's lobbying, why don't the voters just vote the politicians out? Do you have any evidence of a politician voting against their constituents' interests for personal gain?

by reddozen

3/22/2026 at 6:47:04 PM

Ignoring the easy second line, the answer to the first line is: we have two political parties in the US. What if neither are doing what the voters want?

by brianwawok

3/22/2026 at 7:06:17 PM

> Do you have any evidence of a politician voting against their constituents' interests for personal gain?

You have to be kidding.

In the current US political system, the hard part would be finding examples of a politician doing anything but.

by CPLX

3/22/2026 at 6:48:52 PM

To be fair, it’s not really their fault that there are people who want to treat work that normally would be considered a way to pick up a few bucks during free time as a full time career.

Sure, go ahead and make fast food delivery a highly regulated line of work that pays $30/hour with benefits. Just don’t be surprised when it no longer becomes economically viable for DoorDash to continue operating.

by xienze

3/22/2026 at 6:49:36 PM

In a certain Euroland country an analogous delivery company just awards the driver minimum hourly payment on certain agreed before hours if they're clearly working but circumstances had them earn less. Minimum wage requirements stifle nothing.

by loa_in_

3/22/2026 at 6:12:00 PM

If only there was some other kind of employment model where people had regular shifts and they were paid consistently and transparently. Unfortunately I also do my office work by logging into an app at 6AM every day and bidding on a white collar job for a mystery amount of time and money

by jrjeksjd8d

3/22/2026 at 6:19:00 PM

I am pretty sure that DoorDash employs quite a few of people for their tasks at hand.

by vovavili

3/22/2026 at 6:31:47 PM

Notably not the people who actually make the company money, though.

by DonaldPShimoda

3/22/2026 at 6:04:57 PM

> Tasks and the new app are currently available in select places in the U.S., excluding California, New York City, Seattle and Colorado.

Anyone know why that is?

(Claude thinks it's because those places have gig worker protection laws such that "classifying Dashers as independent contractors for non-delivery work is most legally risky")

by simonw

3/22/2026 at 6:08:50 PM

Probably exactly that. Those places have minimum wage laws for gig workers.

by malfist

3/22/2026 at 6:09:28 PM

I have no idea but when reading the article my mind immediately went to businesses having dashers take photos of competing businesses as some type of weird crowdsourced corporate espionage.

by flufluflufluffy

3/22/2026 at 6:41:37 PM

Those jurisdictions stifle innovation. Thankfully, the vast majority of the US does not do that. Door Dashers in 99% of the US will now have a button to click that will put more money in their pockets. Very good!

by k33n

3/22/2026 at 6:43:26 PM

Pretty sure Task rabbit operates in said jurisdictions, so it's not that.

by fragmede

3/22/2026 at 7:08:21 PM

Piecemeal labor! Shift work! SRO’s! Unlicensed taxis!

I can't imagine what these innovators will come up with next.

by CPLX

3/22/2026 at 6:43:39 PM

Innovation in what exactly?

by EA-3167

3/22/2026 at 7:18:35 PM

It's right there in the article. An innovative idea in the field of distributed labor, enabled by technology is being launched in the 99% of the US that allows ideas to be tried freely. I'm happy to see it!

by k33n

3/22/2026 at 6:23:32 PM

There was a startup that did this in the mid 2010s named Magic, but was just via SMS. I used it a few times to get random things done, and it was really useful when it was cheap, then it became mega expensive.

by hhh

3/22/2026 at 6:40:48 PM

I don't quite get how that would work. They were completing tasks to train models but via sms? Can you elaborate?

by steezeburger

3/22/2026 at 6:18:30 PM

Meta doesn’t even need to use this, they’re just going to be constantly recording all video and audio from those rayban glasses ;)

Smart move, Zuck.

by codemog

3/22/2026 at 6:28:26 PM

I wonder who can give tasks. And how do they combat potential abuse cases. Surely there is lot of tasks that can be exploited for more nefarious purposes. Or just simply exploiting those that would do the tasks.

by Ekaros

3/22/2026 at 6:37:08 PM

So, Quri (2009, now part of Trax), which was the startup copy of Proctor & Gamble's retail intelligence operations. But now like a sponge for any AI budgets not earmarked for hardware.

by nmacias

3/22/2026 at 6:25:32 PM

So they’re training a model

by PUSH_AX

3/22/2026 at 6:10:41 PM

Interesting - same concept as Amazon Mechanical Turk when you could crowdsource tasks

by jimiasty

3/22/2026 at 6:55:31 PM

Basically turning their delivery fleet into a crowdsourced data labeling workforce. Smart use of an existing network. The real question is whether dashers will still have jobs once the robots they're training are ready.

by balkanist

3/22/2026 at 6:47:40 PM

I had a terrible thought while out on a hike the other day. I'm almost loath to post it on HN because I worry some idiot is going to read it and think it's a good idea. On the other hand, if I thought of it, it's just a matter of time before someone else does.

Here is the idea: programmers may move to a DoorDash like model as well in the future. You may have full time employment but it will be at a much lower base salary than in the past.

Instead of working on "stories" you will work "contracts."

So someone wants feature X or system Y, that's a contract. You get paid on delivery.

Meaning, since it will become possible to build more complete / fleshed out things with enough requirements and so forth with the use of AI, the best programmers will really be the best 'coding drone operators.' Whoever can get the most jobs done in the shortest amount of time at the highest quality for the least tokens, they'll rule the roost.

Real compensation will then happen in terms of boosts to the base salary for getting contracts done, similar to how many execs are paid a low salary and then are expected to earn their keep by the bonuses and equity the earn for delivering results. (Yes, I know, delivering results, har har).

by _doctor_love

3/22/2026 at 6:53:56 PM

Congratulations, you invented Upwork!

by bombcar

3/22/2026 at 6:56:11 PM

So... contractors? I don't understand how what you're describing is any different.

by platelminto

3/22/2026 at 6:43:12 PM

Are they supposed to open the food in order to take photos of it?!

by johnisgood

3/22/2026 at 7:21:50 PM

No, it's just an inventory check.

by wildrhythms

3/22/2026 at 5:50:36 PM

Neat product expansion. Isn’t this what store employees are already doing though? Maybe it’s more for building datasets.

by wxw

3/22/2026 at 6:00:59 PM

It's essentially mystery shopping. There's a pretty big disconnect between what a large corporate HQ thinks occurs at their stores and what actually occurs at their stores.

by ocdtrekkie

3/22/2026 at 6:09:43 PM

Its mystery shopping without any of those pesky minimum wage requirements

by malfist

3/22/2026 at 6:16:31 PM

Definitely won't be abused by burglars, stalkers and spies.

by opengrass

3/22/2026 at 6:34:53 PM

Funny to see how creatively tech marketing teams are spinning their push for a permanent underclass in America.

No employment contracts. No benefits. No protections. Unpredictable wages. But hey, it's great because in this new model people have "flexibility" and "freedom".

by paxys

3/22/2026 at 6:41:50 PM

It's also appears to be a hustle side job employer in PR regarding employment MO, while clearly trying to capture the market for deliveries in weekday work hours.

by loa_in_

3/22/2026 at 6:27:06 PM

Introducing DoorDash Deskilling.

by cdrnsf

3/22/2026 at 6:40:33 PM

If you haven’t figured it out by now the future of all work is transfer learning and encoding human action so that all possible action is mechanized and commoditized.

I’ve been obsessed with this problem for the better part of 20 years

The fact that we’re finally starting to see it realized is very exciting

by AndrewKemendo

3/22/2026 at 6:48:33 PM

It’d be nice if folks like yourself were equally obsessed with the systemic harms that would come about from solving or addressing this problem rather than charging full-speed ahead into the unknown at everyone else’s expense.

Problems aren’t solely technological in nature, nor are their impacts and solutions. Never forget the humans behind the models.

by stego-tech

3/22/2026 at 7:03:11 PM

What’s that look like in your mind?

by AndrewKemendo

3/22/2026 at 7:10:15 PM

You should be concerned and not excited. This future might be near than we can imagine and we're just accelerating things without thinking about the consequences.

by yrds96

3/22/2026 at 8:00:56 PM

What specific consequences are you anticipating?

by AndrewKemendo

3/22/2026 at 6:44:59 PM

Straight out of Black Mirror.

by johnisgood