DoorDash engineers are constantly working to get 1% better, and hackathon events allow them to come up with innovative products, cross functional tools, and fresh new ideas. These events give our engineering and product teams an opportunity to take a break from day-to-day development efforts and work together to build the best “hack” or innovative new feature, experience, or tool.
This year, DoorDash’s theme was “Going Global,” with over 90 teams joining together in-person in San Francisco, Mountain View, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Australia, and in remote locations to work across three divisions: Going Global open division, Environmental Sustainability, and Supporting Diverse Communities.
In the Going Global open division, we challenged teams to take a look inward at our current tools and processes across the globe and showcase an impactful innovation. The division was also an opportunity to get creative and propose any cool new feature, experience, or capability for the platform.
“Events like the hackathon are really good opportunities to meet new people and strengthen many skills, from knowledge sharing to leadership. Hackathons are also a great low-risk environment to foster our entrepreneurial spirit by working together to bring new ideas to life and get feedback from the rest of our organization,” said Jodie Lu, Software Engineer and a member of the Going Global division winning group. “As someone who not only builds the product, but also uses it almost daily, I’ve amassed a list of features and improvements that I would love to see in the product, and I know others have as well! Getting to discuss a diverse set of ideas on how the product can change and improve helps me better understand how others use the product, and I can incorporate those insights into my day-to-day, even after the hackathon ends.”
As we scale and expand globally, so does our environmental footprint. In the Environmental Sustainability division, we challenged our teams to identify technical or non-technical solutions to reduce DoorDash’s environmental footprint.
“It was a really insightful experience to work with engineering and design teams from all across the business. Our collaboration brought so many interesting ideas, problems and solutions to the table. I’m glad our project resonated with the judges – I know each of us is super passionate about finding ways to make DoorDash greener!”
Insha Ardron, Senior Policy Research Analyst, part of the Environmental Sustainability winning group and part of the Best in Show winning group
At DoorDash, we recognize that our employees, merchants, consumers, and Dashers are members of diverse communities with unique challenges. In the Supporting Diverse Communities division, we partnered with our Employee Resource Group leadership and Global Employee Engagement team to judge and engage with impactful solutions developed by our teams to tackle challenges faced in local communities around the globe.
“The hackathon experience was great because I had the opportunity to meet engineers from different teams and was able to take away learnings from them,” said Minesh Javiya, Software Engineer and a member of the Supporting Diverse Communities division winning team. “Working on the hackathon made it feel like I was back in college, just coding because that’s what I love to do. Hopefully we can make our project a reality because much like our other efforts at DoorDash, it could impact thousands of people.”
We’re proud to share that Abhinav Pandey, Benny Lin, Ely Alamillo, Insha Ardron, John Park, John Quinye Jiang, Jorge Ibarra, Josh Woods, Sravan Konda, and Zuocheng Ding from combined efforts to be the division winner in the Environmental Sustainability division, which also took Best in Show. Congratulations also go out to Alan Lin, Justin Wang, Bonnie Wang, Cody Zeng, Jodie Lu, Sharne Sun, Ryan Teshima, Will Gan, and Rachel He on winning the ‘Going Global’ division and Michelle Lee, Minesh Javiya, Ankit Agarwal, Ying-Chun Wang, and William Gao on winning the Supporting Diverse Communities division.
These teams follow in the footsteps of previous winners who have had their projects implemented, ranging from Kitchens Without Borders to Dark Mode and our WeDash Dashboard.
Learn more about how DoorDash leverages Hackathons to drive innovation and check out open positions available in our Engineering organization.
