DoorDash boosts diversity, but not in tech roles

Almost 40% of DoorDash’s new U.S. hires last year were either Black or Latino, the company revealed Thursday in its 2021 diversity report. But few of those hires joined in technical roles, where DoorDash’s numbers lag behind companies like Uber and Lyft.

With the influx of underrepresented hires, DoorDash now says that 36% of its U.S. workforce is from an underrepresented background, a list that includes Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, multiracial, American Indian/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander employees.

But employees from underrepresented ethnic groups are still few and far between in director-level roles and above (11%) and technical positions. Underrepresented employees make up just 7% of DoorDash’s technical workforce, lagging behind Uber at 13% and 11.6% at Lyft. DoorDash said it plans to increase that 7% number to 10% by 2025, and to increase the percentage of underrepresented people in leadership roles to 20% by 2025.

DoorDash doesn’t break out the job functions of its new hires, but at Uber, Black employees made up the largest group of new hires for support roles last year. Almost 49% of new support hires at Uber identified as Black. (24.3% of Uber’s new hires in all roles last year were Black or Latino.)

DoorDash touted that 19% of its people managers are from underrepresented ethnic groups — an increase of six percentage points from 2020 — and 46% of its new hires were from underrepresented groups, a 12-percentage-point increase from the year before. The company didn’t list its attrition rate by race, but in its first ESG report released last month, DoorDash pointed to a 91% one-year retention rate associated with its diversity-focused Elevate leadership program.