DoorDash Will Eliminate 1,250 Positions

Food delivery giant DoorDash was among some of the biggest winners of the early pandemic era where troves of new customers turned to the app amid lockdown orders. Like Amazon and others before it, DoorDash responded to that new demand with a wave of hiring. Now, however, DoorDash is reeling from a post lockdown comedown. On November 30, CEO Tony Xu released a statement saying the company would reduce its corporate headcount by 1,250 employees. That comes out to around 6% of the company’s total corporate staff.

“Most of our investments are paying off, and while we’ve always been disciplined in how we have managed our business and operational metrics, we were not as rigorous as we should have been in managing our team growth,” Xu said.

The CEO went on to cite growing inflation and other economic concerns as additional reasons for making the cuts.

“Our business has been more resilient than other ecommerce companies, but we too are not immune to the external challenges and growth has tapered vs our pandemic growth rates,” Xu added. “While our business continues to grow fast, given how quickly we hired, our operating expenses—if left unabated—would continue to outgrow our revenue.”

The speed bump follows years of growth at DoorDash that kicked off prior to the pandemic. Since 2019, the company has beefed up its operations, largely through acquisition of major services like Caviar, Chowbotics, and Wolt Enterprises.