#the heydays were fueled by trying to maximize usage at the cost of throwing tons of investor money around to get a big IPO

[21st-century-minutiae]

Doordash is a service where individuals order groceries or other goods through a third party to be delivered by other users. There are a number or services that work on this business model.

This is an example of the gig economy. Legally speaking, the delivery people are also users, not employees, and doordash acts as a service to match customers and delivery people. This allows companies like doordash to avoid a very large amount of employee protections. Nominally, as has been argued in court, the benefit to the gig worker is that, not being an employee, they have the ability to set their own hours and turn down jobs. Practically speaking, the power disparity is such that the minimal benefits are vastly outweighed by the loss in protections. Many gig workers rely on gig work to pay bills and afford the cost of living, making it effectively a second or third job. But the pay, to be competitive to the users and accounting for the third party's profit margins above and beyond the first party product provider (i.e. the grocery store), means that the delivery people are paid very little.

When accounting for the cost of driving between gas and maintenance costs, it is very easy for gig workers to actually lose money over the course of participating.