Afshin Dehghani was looking for a change of pace when he stumbled upon an opportunity at DoorDash. It was 2021, and he'd spent a few years in the banking and financial services industry when he wanted to join a company that moved fast, was growing even faster, and where he could work a bit more closely to the customer.
"So I joined DoorDash as a full stack engineer and I right away jumped on some large projects,"Afshin says. "This is a place that encourages me to build. We're constantly thinking about how we can do better, deliver better value to our customers, and opportunities to be innovative."
Since joining DoorDash, Afshin has grown his career into becoming an engineering manager on the Ads Engineering team, where he's experienced a healthy blend of building things that didn't exist before, while also continuing to incrementally improve on what's been developed over the last 10 years.
"I've seen all sorts of engineers navigate their careers at DoorDash. And the beautiful thing about this company is that no one is blocking your growth," Afshin continues. "If you're looking for more opportunities, you want to work harder, you want to solve more problems, raise your hand. We move fast and the work is not easy. Your experience here is defined by how you leverage your time and skills."
Along with his role as an engineering manager, Afshin is a heavy proponent of the WeDash program, last year completing the most dashes in the company and earning company-wide recognition during an All Hands meeting with our DoorDash CEO and Co-Founder Tony Xu.
"You can't solve some of these problems unless you experience them, and I think a program like WeDash helps people who are building for all these legs in the marketplace," Afshin says. "From my perspective, it's just the mission and the vision of the company, right? If you are connecting the empowering communities, we are creating a better kind of life for our customers, for our dashers, and for our merchants. I really wanted to be connected to that. And I want to see how we are doing it on the ground and actually being connected with people."
Afshin spent 2022 dashing in San Francisco, New York, Northern Virginia, Washington, D.C. and when he traveled. He experienced big-city dashing to high rises and condominiums, delivering orders in the suburbs, and developed a greater appreciation for the job of merchants and dashers within the business.
"The whole dashing aspect of the marketplace is a key component of the business," Afshin says. "If you look at it from a pure business perspective, this is very important for us to test, understand what's working, and evaluate it to make it better. I think from the one percent better every day value, this is the kind of responsibility every single person in the company can contribute to. I strongly believe that it made a huge difference in my life doing the dashes. Being able to connect to people and understand and see their perspective."
Afshin says since his recognition, where he shared the importance of dashing, he's discussed dashing with other colleagues and continued to lead by example with his investment in the WeDash program.
