Mamdani turns 'greedy algorithm' remark into midterm targeting of corporations

DoorDash owes 260,000 delivery drivers in $131.5 million settlement

Mamdani used a Tuesday press conference at City Hall to convert a recent remark by DoorDash Chief Executive Tony Xu about entrepreneurs needing to act like a “greedy algorithm” into the framing for the city’s $131.5 million settlement with the company over unpaid wages to its delivery workers. The mayor explained the term as a reference in computer science to “making optimal choices for the moment, without thought to the consequences.” DoorDash’s delivery workers had been the victims of such a mindset, he said. “Thousands of them have felt the human cost of the greedy algorithm,” Mamdani said.

DoorDash acknowledged the settlement in a posted statement, calling it an acknowledgment of “inadvertent errors.” “Simply put, we screwed up,” the statement said. “While these mistakes weren’t intentional, that doesn’t make them okay.”

The Wall Street Journal characterized Mamdani’s remarks as “calibrated to tap into the public’s growing unease with the influence of corporations and Big Tech, in particular, and the sense that they prize profits above all else.” The paper said the sentiment “helped power the 34-year-old Democratic socialist’s long-shot bid for mayor in the world’s center for capitalism, where even those earning seven-figure salaries can feel like they are struggling to keep up.” As the midterms approach, the paper added, Mamdani’s targeting of corporations and the ultrarich was “at the forefront of a progressive campaign to appeal to a broader swath of Americans frustrated by rising costs for groceries, health insurance and homeownership and unsettled by a sense that they have little say over large corporations that dominate their lives.”

Under the terms of the settlement, approximately 260,000 delivery drivers are expected to be contacted about repayment this fall, with about 12 percent of them owed $1,000 or more. The agreement requires DoorDash to provide worker-pay data to the city for three years so regulators can monitor for violations. The city is also developing software with outside nonprofits that will let delivery workers record their own pay data and submit it to dispute shortfalls directly — an app that Samuel A.A. Levine, commissioner of the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, said would end an “asymmetry” between companies that collect vast amounts of data and workers who believe they are not being paid what they are owed. “People are becoming a lot more cynical about the kind of rip-offs they’re facing,” Levine said. The department, which led the DoorDash investigation, is expected to play a central role in the Mamdani administration.

The DoorDash action is one of several corporate confrontations the Mamdani administration has pursued since taking office. His team has backed a bill that would require Amazon to hire delivery workers as direct employees rather than use subcontractors, and has moved to raise safety standards at the company’s warehouses. Amazon has fought the bill and said it might pull out of New York if required to obtain new operating licenses. Mamdani also provoked the city’s wealthiest residents earlier this year when he released a video promoting his new pied-à-terre tax that was filmed outside the luxury apartment of hedge-fund Chief Executive Ken Griffin. Griffin and other business leaders expressed outrage at the stunt, but Mamdani’s poll numbers have not suffered.

Progressive candidates around the country are attempting to harvest similar anti-corporate sentiment, the Wall Street Journal reported. After Abdul El-Sayed clinched the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in Michigan, he painted his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, as a “corporate sellout.” In Texas, James Talarico has made anti-corporate sentiment a centerpiece of his campaign to become the first Democrat elected to the Senate from the state since Lloyd Bentsen. “These are people who aren’t actually contributing anything—and they’re taking from all of us,” Talarico said of private-jet-riding chief executives on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

For Christian Rosa, 26, an IT worker in Brooklyn earning a $52,000 salary, frustration with corporate influence crystallized during President Trump’s inauguration, when he saw “tech oligarchs” given privilege of place for the ceremony. “That was a turning point,” Rosa said. “You see all this wealth but you don’t see the hardship that people are going through.” Rosa said he strains to make rent and struggles to afford health insurance. Rosa, who described himself as politically apathetic for much of his life, has since become an ardent supporter of Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America. Asked about his fondness for the mayor, Rosa replied: “You can see what Zohran’s done. He froze my f—ing rent.”

Mamdani’s political biography includes earlier confrontations with big tech. As a Democratic Socialists of America member in Queens, he supported 2019 protests that scuttled a deal to bring Amazon’s second headquarters to Long Island City — a deal then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other centrist Democrats had touted as a job-creating bonanza, but which the DSA and progressive allies argued that the tax breaks to lure Amazon were too generous and not worth the supposed benefits. As a state Assembly member, his signature achievement was winning relief for New York City taxi drivers whose medallions had collapsed in value because of the advent of ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft.

Now in City Hall, the Mamdani administration shows little sign of letting up on the economic message that helped elect it.

The Wall Street Journal situated the current moment in a longer arc, writing that bursts of public fury toward large American companies and the ultrarich date at least to the era of Standard Oil, with more recent episodes including the 1990s World Trade Organization protests and Occupy Wall Street. The latter, the paper wrote, set the stage for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s populist movement and the modern revival of the Democratic Socialists of America. Coloring the latest flare-up, the Journal added, is Big Tech’s growing reach into all corners of life — from Google’s 2004 initial public offering motto of “Don’t Be Evil” to this year, when the biggest stock-market debut is expected to come from AI giant Anthropic, where a former research engineer warned on X that its technology could cause the extinction of the human race. At a more prosaic level, the Journal wrote, software engineers and other tech workers who, until recently, seemed to have found an eddy of security in an uncertain economy now fret that AI will take their jobs, too.