YOUR DOORDASH DRIVER? HE'S THE COMPANY'S CO-FOUNDER

On a recent afternoon in San Francisco, a DoorDash driver was circling the neighborhood — first in his car, then on foot — trying to find the restaurant where he needed to pick up two orders. Finally, he Googled the location and realized DoorDash’s app sent him to the wrong address.

It’s an error he vowed to fix, and he probably will. Because that worker is Andy Fang, DoorDash’s chief technology officer and one of the company’s three co-founders.

“If it happens with one restaurant, it might actually be happening with a lot of other restaurants as well,” Fang said after he retrieved the orders and settled back into his car. “If we can see why that happened, maybe we can fix other issues too.”

Fang is one of a growing number of executives who occasionally do the hourly work that makes their companies hum. Starbucks’ new CEO, Laxman Narasimhan, is a trained barista and puts in a half-day of work at a store each month. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Lyft CEO David Risher occasionally shuttle passengers. Air New Zealand CEO Greg Foran has been spotted serving drinks and snacks on flights.

Amazon recently re-launched a program called the Associate Experience Week, which encourages employees to shadow operations workers for a week to gain a better understanding of their job. The program is mandatory for some managers. A1 Garage Door Service, which operates in 16 states, also encourages job-shadowing and requires all employees to learn skills outside their immediate responsibilities. A1 CEO Tommy Mello says the policy promotes empathy and collaboration.

But few companies have a program as robust as WeDash, which requires thousands of salaried DoorDash employees in the U.S., Canada and Australia to complete at least four deliveries per year. Employees are strongly encouraged to make deliveries monthly. They can use work time to complete those shifts, and they keep any money they make.