How gratifying engineering work and meaningful projects keep Dhruv Upadhyay engaged at DoorDash

In 2018, Dhruv Upadhyay wanted to join a company with an interesting consumer-facing product in a fast-paced environment. He also wanted to work on projects where he could feel the impact he was making. As an avid user of DoorDash, Dhruv was intrigued at the opportunities to implement business initiatives and incentives as an iOS engineer on DoorDash's Affordability team, a sub-team interacting with Consumer behavior.

Throughout his interview process with DoorDash, Dhruv had opportunities to ask technical questions, speak with fellow engineers, and learn about working as part of the team. With that feedback and after a variety of interviews with other organizations, he was confident DoorDash could be the place where he'd have truly unlimited potential to own his career growth. In his first week with the company, Dhruv was filled with nervousness, excitement, and a ton of information.

"DoorDash did an amazing job in educating new hires about our company, the various engineering teams, and what it's like to be a Dasher - the drivers who use our platform to make deliveries," Dhruv said. "As part of our company culture, we're highly encouraged to participate in the WeDash program, making actual deliveries using the platform. By doing so, we can help discover friction points and opportunities to improve how deliveries are made."

In his time at DoorDash, Dhruv has worked on meaningful cross-functional projects while helping deploy new features alongside other engineers, designers, and product managers. He's worked on initiatives such as DashPass, our monthly subscription service, and the DashPass and Chase partnership, an incentive that rewards certain Chase credit card customers.

"I really believe that the emphasis on teamwork at DoorDash has allowed me to grow as an engineer as I've been able to learn something new from each person I've worked with.

One of the best aspects about our engineering culture is the freedom we're given. Software engineers are given full ownership of the features we work on, and we are able to come up with implementation plans as we best see fit as well as suggest modifications to the overall feature during meetings with product managers and designers."

Dhruv Upadhyay, Software Engineer at DoorDash

For Dhruv, seeing the impact he's made and continuing to find new opportunities at DoorDash has kept him coming back for more and kept him engaged in his work.

"I think it goes back to the opportunities and the work that I do. It's very gratifying," Dhruv said. "You want to work on things you can be proud of. I think that's the biggest thing whenever we launch a new feature and see the data come in, it's really exciting to see something I've worked on and can be proud of. And then culturally, we have internal celebrations when we launch new features and it's nice seeing how the whole team shows appreciation for all the work that's been done."

After three years at DoorDash, Dhruv's advice for anyone looking to join our growing company focuses on encouragement to own their work-life integration.

"I was trying to make a good first impression and everything early on, so I was definitely suffering a bit from imposter syndrome and focused on work over trying to find a balance in life. But I think over time I was able to find a sweet spot in staying focused on work, but also making sure I'm able to take time off, take recharge days, or take PTO when needed," Dhruv said.

"My team had a recharge day earlier this month for the whole team, which was pretty cool to see because that shows they really care about the employees being able to take time off and not burning out. It was definitely harder when I first started, but I think I've found a nice balance now. So I'd say just make sure you communicate with your manager and the rest of your team honestly about your workload and how you're feeling."

If you're ready for a new challenge, ready to experience the opportunities Dhruv has, and want to help our international business grow, click here to learn about open positions at DoorDash.

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