
Maybe the Gig Economy Isn’t Reshaping Work After All - oli5679
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/business/economy/work-gig-economy.html
======
mrtksn
When I first arrived in London my English was not good enough to speak on the
phone, I had no idea what the London job market for developers looked like, I
had no idea where should I live and where should I settle.

So for the first 3-4 months, I did some wine waiting as a gig(agency work, no
fixed place or hours. Like with Uber, you provide your own gear - like
uniforms, bottle openers etc.) at the finest, the most iconic places in
London. I worked at the Shard, I worked at the Cafe Royal, I worked at Four
Seasons in events where celebrities like Victoria Beckham or Prince Harry were
guests. I did my jubilee at BAFTA's after party, I was the wine waiter for the
award-winning team that made the Amy Winehouse documentary. That night I had a
chance to meet with pretty much every single celebrity(900+ guests from the
industry), I was a huge Breaking Bad fan and I had the chance to speak with
Walter White.

How to get into this gig business without ever working in this industry? 1 day
of training and boom, I'm a waiter at the fines restaurants in the world.

It was such an amazing experience but whoever imagines living like that
forever should have poor judgement. I was there to make some money until I get
a real job and open a bank account(really hard to do because of catch 22) and
most people who worked with me were either new arrivals like me or Australians
who came to the UK to experience Europe for a year or 2(They come just before
or after college with 2 year work visa, work for few months and travel
Europe).

The world is transforming, the employment contracts are not the driving force.
They are a reaction to the new needs. I think it's alright, an equilibrium
will be reached.

~~~
afarrell
> really hard to do because of catch 22

To expand on what mrtksn means: in the UK, it is difficult to get a bank
account without proof of address. It is also difficult to rent a flat without
a UK bank account. There are a few ways around this:

\- Have a friend put you on their water bill and use this as proof of address.
I suspect this is illegal.

\- Join a flatshare without getting on the lease, pay for your portion of the
rent with Transferwise or something, and have your flatmate put you on the
water bill. I sure hope this is legal.

\- Find a bank which is a bit lax about proof of address and is willing to
accept things like proof of employment. Lloyds used to do this, but I've heard
they no longer do.

~~~
stallmanite
Can anyone comment on why this is the case? It seems ridiculous on it's face.

~~~
dpwm
It's a UK thing -- everything has to not work in the most ridiculous way
possible.

This also applies to anti-money-laundering stuff: it's better to affect loads
of people really badly who are most certainly not money laundering as long as
it does not affect the people who are money laundering at scale.

That said, there are people who don't really understand that people on social
media paying you for access to your bank account are probably money
laundering.

This is in a country where it is perfectly permitted to open several stores of
the same chain of gambling establishments in the same street with fixed-odds
betting machines and no questions of where the large sums of cash being handed
over come from.

~~~
switch007
This is painfully accurate. Buying a house now involves proving that your
funds came from bona fide sources (i.e. that you are not a criminal), thanks
to new anti money laundering regulations.

------
everyone
For most people (not highly sought after programmers), its an erosion of what
paltry remnant of their workers rights remains.

Last time wealth inequality peaked, the robber barons had strike breakers and
whatnot. This time (with wealth inequality continuing to soar to historically
unprecedented heights) they have the 'gig economy'.

~~~
dandare
Did you even read the article? Gig economy isn't taking over, it slightly
declined from 2005.

~~~
losteric
Considering they drew parallels with strike breakers, I don't think that was
the point.

Many Americans are stuck with dead-end low-wage low/no-benefit part-time jobs
(plural) trying to make ends meet - the weak job market offers few
alternatives, while the gig economy (ubiquitous temp workers) stands as an
implicit threat against workers organizing.

~~~
ShabbosGoy
A dead-end job is still a job. Unemployment rates are historically low. In the
future, most people will become “gig” workers of some sort due to ubiquitous
automation.

~~~
Magmatic
Giving everyone a job is not, and should never be, the goal of a society. In
the early twentieth century American workers were killed fighting for the
right to support themselves working 40 hours a week but for much the
population that option has evaporated. I know people in the bay area working
70 hours a week at dead end jobs barely making ends meet; a fact I consider
unacceptable given the wealth they are surrounded by.

~~~
jimmywanger
> I know people in the bay area working 70 hours a week at dead end jobs
> barely making ends meet; a fact I consider unacceptable given the wealth
> they are surrounded by.

By what means is this unacceptable? "I find myself working 40 hours a week to
afford cable and a new iphone. I consider that unacceptable given the wealth I
am surrounded by."

Those two statements are qualitively equivalent. Because you move to a nicer
neighborhood, you shouldn't have to put up with things other people put up
with? Huh?

~~~
CamelCaseName
Working 70 hours is much more than 40. In the first case you're working to
survive and don't have any time outside of work to improve your situation.

~~~
jimmywanger
I'm pretty sure you own a cell phone and a laptop.

And most of your things are made by people working comparable hours for much
less money and a lower of standard of living. Yet you somehow find that
"acceptable" even though you're still complicit in their exploitation.

I fail to see why geographic proximity makes things less acceptable. If we
could ship the fruits of their labor from overseas, that would be ok?

------
lalos
It did reshape it. Turns out you can offload your costs to your 'employees'
that hardly will organize and project costs and earnings to the future (like a
competent business). I've talked with bunch of car sharing drivers who were
bamboozled with car loans, get hit by traffic infractions, costs of
maintenance and the list goes on and on. I feel that the gig economy preys on
people who have not developed that risk management and are lured by the
promise of easy money (make $500 this weekend). That can be verified by
reading on what kind of game theory the big companies investing in (how to
sweeten a deal, making people decide on the spot yes or no, etc). It's an
interesting state, but I hope they turn it around. There is potential.

~~~
nerdponx
Interesting that this thread and the "chatbots aren't so great after all"
thread hit the front page on the same day.

Anyone who actually thought people gave a shit about chatbots was either
deluded, a chatbot API salesman, or a manager/owner trying to cut costs by
downsizing their call/chat support center.

Anyone who actually thought the gig economy was helping anyone but business
owners was either deluded or a shill.

~~~
sotojuan
Or they did the Fiverr ads for the NYC subways. There’s one that makes fun of
people with white collar careers by calling them “chained down” and declaring
that working for Fiverr in the gig economy is better.

~~~
tmpz22
Saw this on the of a bus in SF and started laughing. Low pay contractor work
is the way to get unchained in SF? You won't even be able to make rent unless
you're in the top percentile.

~~~
robotbikes
I saw someone on fiverr offering to install Java on Ububtu Linux starting at
100$. That sounds about right. For the most part these sort of race to the
bottom gigs would only work if your cost of living were really low relative to
the $ amount. I did Amazon Turk work mainly out of curiosity/boredom, at one
point I transcribed a conference call for some UK non-profit. I think it paid
like 3-4$ and took me a few hours. I couldn't imagine actually living on that
but I'm sure Amazon made some profit.

~~~
gowld
Who is someone who needs Java on Linux, but can't find the download button on
Oracle's website, but can figure out how navigate the fiverr app/site?

------
danschumann
People(most people) like to do the same thing every day. Even me, I'm a
programmer and have different tasks, but I get most of my work through one
client. I would hate to be chasing down new clients all the time.

~~~
anyfoo
Is that true, do most people like doing the same thing every day? It certainly
is not true for me.

EDIT: A few repliers clarified that it's probably about the stable and
reliable income, and not about the nature of the work that's done every day. I
can agree with that!

~~~
volkk
i think OP meant more along the lines of: people like stability and ones with
families can't rely on an inconsistent income that the freelance world
generally provides. not actually doing the exact same thing everyday

------
lhorie
That's not really surprising at all. The article says the category of workers
in "gig" type of jobs went from 11% in 2005 to 10% in 2017. To change this
number above some level of statistical significance, people would have to move
away from salaried work to gig jobs en masse or vice-versa, but that's not
really how skillsets and careers work.

You don't wake up one day and say: "geez, I'm going to stop being a lawyer and
go drive for Uber to spend more time with my kids". It is much more likely
that a person flipping burgers somewhere might try being an Uber driver and
that an Uber driver somewhere else might get fed up and end up going back to
one of the low-skill alternatives (flipping burgers, retail, etc) at roughly
equal rates.

~~~
dv_dt
Or people generally don't choose gig work as a first choice, and tightening
unemployment has allowed them to get closer to their preferences.

------
oli5679
Reminds me of the economist Robert Solow's quip:

"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."

~~~
lkrubner
This is a good comment. It is interesting to consider how much rhetoric there
is about robots and AI and Machine Learning and how these technologies can
revolutionize work and lead to big productivity gains. And yet, in reality,
the economy shows no sign of this. Productivity growth was very strong in the
mid-20th century, but since 1973 productivity growth has been stagnant.

~~~
kjeetgill
I don't know much about the subject. How do we measure productivity? What
units do we use?

I ask because it _feels_ like everything has changed since 1973 at least. So
I'm curious where my intuition differs from reality.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> How do we measure productivity?_

Productivity as typically reported is a statistic called "Total Factor
Productivity" (TFP).

Here's how it's calculated:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_factor_productivity#Calc...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_factor_productivity#Calculation)

 _> What units do we use?_

TFP is unitless.

------
WheelsAtLarge
The reduction in jobs in the gig economy has to be a direct result of the
overall recovery of the economy. We are at a point where there are more jobs
than workers to fill the jobs. Why would anyone take a crap gig job if they
can get a steady paycheck? There are people that like the flexibility but the
pay sux and no benefits for most of those jobs. The gig economy job is the new
temp job. Just like temp jobs, they will start to increase as the economy
cools. But for now, there's little incentive to get one over one with a steady
paycheck.

~~~
mindcrime
_Why would anyone take a crap gig job if they can get a steady paycheck? There
are people that like the flexibility_

I think you're underestimating how important that flexibility is to a large
contingent of people. I have talked a lot of Uber/Lyft drivers and have heard
a ton of stories about how valuable that flexibility is. It's huge for
students who are in school, for people who already work another job but want
supplemental income, people who are mostly retired (or never worked) but have
some new expense come up (one lady I spoke to recently started driving for
Uber just to help pay for her daughter's upcoming wedding), people who are
pursuing careers in music or other artistic endeavors, entrepreneurs who need
a way to pay the rent while getting their business bootstrapped, etc.

For a lot of people in those situations, the control over their time really is
a crucial aspect of what makes Uber/Lyft desirable.

Granted, that's just one aspect of the gig economy, but it seems to be a big
one.

------
ourmandave
NPR covered this yesterday.

[https://www.npr.org/2018/06/07/617863204/one-
in-10-workers-a...](https://www.npr.org/2018/06/07/617863204/one-
in-10-workers-are-independent-contractors-labor-department-says)

One note from that story was they missed 25M low-income workers.

 _Jennifer Curry, a senior director at Samaschool, a San Francisco training
program for low-income contract workers, estimates the government left out 25
million to 30 million freelance or contract workers who do some part-time
work._

~~~
gthtjtkt
> estimates the government left out 25 million to 30 million freelance or
> contract workers who do some part-time work.

Aren't those exactly the type of workers that the NY Times article is talking
about? 25 million is about 16% of the total workforce.

So in reality the number of gig workers might have doubled to something around
20% (or higher)?

------
coldtea
Maybe wave after wave of market fads (like the "gig economy", "chatbots",
"voice everything") are just that, fads created to make some execs fatter.

I'd include all the hot air tech like AI, Big Data, and self-driving cars in
that (until proven otherwise)...

------
gorpomon
It's easy to get cynical about the gig economy. But I try and remember that
the original spirit of it has been largely successful. The promise of the app
economy was that you could take an idea like "I wish I could drive people
around for extra money" and make it real, and now it's only real, but for
people like my driving-averse mom it's revolutionary.

But distortions to the dream have come from all sides. Customers demand the
low cost, high quality service that independent contracts inherently don't
provide. Customers also fail to recognize that your driver is an independent
contractor, but they treat them like any service industry employee. Rideshare
companies actively decide to offload employment costs to drivers while
treating them just like employees. Drivers too violate the spirit of this
idea, many immediately turn it into a full-time gig without organizing larger
efforts to improve it. The spirit is that these gigs augment income, not
become a sole source of it.

But almost across the board, these are messaging problems, and we as a society
are really good at fixing messaging, despite how it feels at time. We are
living in a time of massive message correction, and millions of previously
marginalized people benefit.

Is the gig economy ideal? No. Eminently fixable? Yes.

~~~
themagician
That's completely revisionist history. No one was going around thinking, "I
wish I could drive people around for extra money." No one. You literally just
made that up. If you wanted to drive people around for money you became a taxi
driver or got a passenger carrier permit and became a private limo driver.
Back in 2008 no one was thinking about how great it would be to drive random
strangers around for minimum wage while assuming massive amounts of personal
liability and destroying their car in the process.

Uber started as a way to fill the downtime that professional drivers had
between clients and jobs. They said, "Hey, there is a workforce with 50% of it
s hours idle. I bet we can turn the into cash." It was a brilliant idea.
Airbnb started with a similar proposition. It was a derivative of couch
surfing—find some excess supply and monetize it. People are doing this for
free, I bet we can do it better and make a few bucks. And then in morphed into
the abomination we have today.

It wasn't until Lyft and the competitive market saw what was happening and
people thought, "What if we just ignore safety regulations and licensing by
declaring that we are in a new industry? There's money to be made there."
That's what the gig economy ended up being. It wasn't intentional. It was a
way to avoid COSTS by ignoring safety, training, benefits, licensing,
insurance, zoning and minimum wage laws. And that's where 90% of the value
comes from. If these companies had to play by the same rules as everyone else
they wouldn't exist because there wouldn't be enough money to be made.

~~~
tomjakubowski
> Uber started as a way to fill the downtime that professional drivers had
> between clients and jobs. They said, "Hey, there is a workforce with 50% of
> it's hours idle. I bet we can turn the into cash."

Yeah, black cars with chauffeur licenses only. I remember thinking "a cab to
the airport would be cheaper, but I'll pay a bit more to pamper myself -- I've
never been in a black car!" just before I ordered my first ever Uber in 2012.

UberX, with "normal people" picking you up in their personal cars, wasn't
until April 2013.

~~~
themagician
UberX actually didn't start with normal unlicensed, uninsured drivers. UberX
started as a "green" initiative. When UberX first started drivers still had to
have a passenger carrier permit (TCP sticker) and commercial driving
insurance. They just also had to have a Prius instead of a black car, and the
cost was a little bit less. I think it was $10 or $12 minimum instead of $15.
It wasn't until Lyft started by allowing any random person to drive at a much
lower cost that Uber pivoted and turned UberX into what it is today.

It never even occurred to Uber that it would be possible to let random,
uninsured people drivers others around for peanuts, or that people would be so
desperate for cash that they'd even be willing to do that. It was purely a
function of the financial collapse that made it possible.

------
rossdavidh
It seems to me that this article (and many others, and the underlying
statistics they report on) are lumping together a lot of different things
under the same label, that aren't all that similar. I am a contract
programmer, but my typical contract is 6-9 months in duration, and I get paid
well. Is that part of the "gig economy"? It's not much like driving for Uber,
I think, but it is neither part-time nor permanent employment, so it would
often get lumped in there. Some truck-drivers work on a per-gig basis, but
even though they are driving things for money it doesn't work all that much
like Uber, in terms of pay or how you get treated or what your leverage in the
market. I think the term "gig economy" is too broad to say anything meaningful
about.

------
madrox
I have no data for this, but I suspect an ethnographic study of gig workers
would find their behaviors mirror that of entrepreneurs. If true, you can
probably draw a lot of conclusions about gig work from all the other studies
done.

In short, I suspect gig work is much more mentally taxing than typical work,
since it isn't reliable or rooted in routine. I think that's why gig work is
estimated at roughly the same percentage of the population as entrepreneurs.

------
ferongr
The state has decided to regulate or even ban the "gig economy". The media is
just paving the way shaping the narrative.

------
BartBoch
I think the Gig Economy is supplementing regular economy, provides a good
chance for certain people to break off the 9-5 and gives more of a positive
social impact than a negative one.

~~~
paulie_a
While anecdotal and definitely not a high percentage, but I have met quite a
few Uber drivers that just like to stay active and meet people. They tend to
be the most interesting to chat with. They don't seem to be doing it for the
money, more so just to be out and about. Im sure the supplemental income is
helpful but it didn't seem like that was the primary reason.

Edit: Aditionally usually those have been the best drivers

------
m3kw9
If you look at Uber, it’s just one great app system away from taking over
another form of work which was taxi

------
DoreenMichele
If you read it closely, the article basically says "We don't really know what
is going on, in part because our survey isn't really designed to capture data
on the gig economy."

I have done gig work for over six years. At the moment, I am working more like
a traditional entrepreneur, but I can do that in part because I have the
security of gig work to fall back on if I can't drum up enough clients. If I
could get the kind of job I want, I would take it.

That last statement is a relatively recent development. I have health issues
and doing gig work made it possible for me to have some earned income under
really challenging circumstances where that really should not have been
possible. Being able to access earned income while I'll and homeless allowed
me to work on improving my health, allowed me to make working in my health a
priority in a way that regular employment would not have facilitated.

I think this is the real revolution that isn't being talked about. Having a
serious career requires you to have your act together in many important ways.
You need energy, mental focus, some idea of what you like doing and are good
at, etc. Gig work gives people options for muddling through or supplementing
your income during difficult transitions.

Some years ago, I read a comment that was an A-ha! moment for me. Instead of
attributing recessions to mysterious forces somewhere out there in the ether,
it attributed them to human nature. It suggested we get lazy and complacent
during good times, then work hard to get back on track after things start
coming apart at the seams.

I am sure there are also large scale forces impacting people, but I dropped
out of college in part because I knew people with college degrees and student
loans who were mooching off of relatives and delivering newspapers. I felt I
could deliver newspapers without a degree and would be better off for not
being saddled with debt. It was very clear to me at the age of 20 that the
"promise" I was hearing that a degree was a guaranteed ticket to a serious
career and the good life was a myth. There is more to career success than
getting X credential.

Large scale trends are not just the result of public policy at the federal
level or real world phenomenon like Peak Oil. They are also the cumulative
result of many individuals making choices.

The gig economy provides some fluidity and flexibility for workers who are
handicapped, have a health issue, are having trouble breaking into their
chosen career etc. Yes, I am aware that if gig work is all that is available,
this can be a serious problem. But, in the other hand, another observation
someone made that was an epiphany for me is that layoffs are part of the price
we pay for having stable corporate jobs for some. When there isn't enough work
to go around, someone gets shafted because of it. There is no magic way to
make that not happen.

I'm aware there are people being shafted here. I think in the US, they are
being shafted much more by our lack of universal health coverage than by gigs
lacking benefits per se.

Sort of rambly. I don't have a specific point per se. More like thinking out
loud, I guess.

------
uri93nd83
IMO it’s a perfect opportunity to get programs we should already have, like
universal healthcare, off the ground

The bemoaning by corporate media is hardly surprising. They want people to
stay in one place. It fits the meme they know

But to quite the late Anthony Bourdain, “Open your mind, get up off the couch,
move.”

Do we really need to babysit this much permanent infra that are massive office
buildings and shopping malls?

Surely we need spaces to work and trade physical goods, especially if we’re on
the g

I think this is the next step of globalization

Look at the Cold War era. Of course it made sense to hunker down. Where were
you going to go? Europe and Japan were bombed to hell. The USSR?

This is the last 60 years coming to an end

Time for new patterns around what work and life should look like

