
High score, low pay: why the gig economy loves gamification - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/20/high-score-low-pay-gamification-lyft-uber-drivers-ride-hailing-gig-economy
======
mandelbrotwurst
Could complex gamification of payment structures amount to worker
misclassification?

i.e. if an Uber/Lyft driver must meet a complex set of job requirements in
order to earn a reasonable wage, e.g. driving at particular times, in
particular places, accepting certain minimum percentages of tasks assigned,
etc...

...might it not be more appropriate to call these folks employees than
contractors?

The counterargument could be that if they are allowed to participate in the
platform without "playing the games" so to speak, then they aren't "job
requirements", but if it's only possible to earn a reasonable wage by playing,
could it be argued that they should be considered as such?

EDIT: I see a couple of comments in this thread stating that they are
employees and not contractors however I believe that is not the case (i.e.
that Uber has fought to maintain the contractor classification and won so far)
?

EDIT2: Ah, I now see that there have been some recent court cases going the
other way, at least in California
([https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/1/17308178/uber-lyft-
drivers...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/1/17308178/uber-lyft-drivers-
california-court-classification-dynamex))...not sure if any change has
actually been effected yet?

~~~
clairity
yes, if payment is not tied directly to services rendered, it gets harder to
argue that the platform is simply a pass-through middleman to contractors.
this is related to a similar revenue recognition problem with uber pool/lyft
line, where recognizing the revenue up front makes the drivers seem less like
contractors and more like workers.

------
will_pseudonym
I hesitated in writing this comment as I can see that the majority of
commenters have a negative view of the 'gamification' presented by the
article, but I don't see this as inherently evil or immoral at all.

The 'gamification' described by the author in their driving for Lyft is simply
quantifying, tracking, and incentivizing performance at a given activity. It's
in the best interest of both the driver and the company to achieve a high
driver rating. Why wouldn't they track and display this statistic to the
drivers? It's in the best interest of the company for drivers to log more
rides, so they offer an optional incentive to complete x drives in y time. The
driver receives additional compensation that they wouldn't otherwise if they
achieve the goal. Both sides benefit.

The scary side of performance tracking comes when more and more is expected of
the worker, their performance being able to be measured accurately isn't the
issue. It's management's decision to get as much blood out of their workers as
possible.

~~~
maxxxxx
I bet Lyft gives the drivers only the information that's profitable for Lyft
and not the big picture. It's very one-sided.

------
seem_2211
I don't know if gamification is the enemy here. I don't think this would be an
issue if driver incomes hadn't taken such a massive hit in the past year or so
with Uber / Lyft.

I worked as a checkout operator at a supermarket for four years while in High
School / College and really enjoyed it - I used to play a game where I'd see
how many items I could scan per minute (we needed to do 15, my average was
between 22-25 from memory). I did the same thing when I worked a paper run
before that, challenging myself to see how quickly I could get it done.

Gamifying tedious activities is good and we should be doing more of it.

~~~
LeifCarrotson
There's a happy medium somewhere between gamification to make the somewhat
monotonous job of a checkout operator more enjoyable, and metrics-driven
employment where you're peeing in the corner of an Amazon warehouse because if
you drop below the equivalent of 22 items per minute you're fired without the
chance for appeal.

I agree that it's not the enemy, and can at times be a useful thing to have as
an ally within a healthy business relationship, but it _disproportionately_
gives ammunition to management strategies that don't respect the human.

------
ppeetteerr
Gamification is a new form of employee abuse that people haven't yet
recognized as abuse. It's only a matter of time before we all acknowledge it
and ban its use in a work setting.

~~~
clairity
please back up such a bold declaration with some rationale. any tool can be
taken too far and become abusive, but you've made no attempt to make that
connection.

humans are competitive (and also cooperative). we like to know how we are
doing, and gamification facilitates that while also relieving boredom from an
otherwise tedious task (something i do often just for myself).

~~~
rchaud
> humans are competitive (and also cooperative). we like to know how we are
> doing, and gamification facilitates that

That was already known via driver ratings. No one considered that
"gamification" because it's a basic KPI.

The "lab rat" aspect of this comes into play with some computer-generated BS
"challenge" like "“Complete 34 rides between the hours of 5am on Monday and
5am on Sunday to receive a $63 bonus.”

In videogames, this is called "grinding", aka gaining experience points doing
tedious, repetitive tasks, in order to proceed to the next experience level.
The difference is, video game players aren't doing something that requires the
same level of attention and duty of care as a car driver.

~~~
clairity
see, that's why i asked for details. your last point about safety is an
interesting wrinkle to consider.

but i view your example (a $63 bonus for 34 rides) to be more an incentive
than a gamification because it involves real money, not simply "meaningless"
points.

ratings are more akin to gamification in my view because (1) they're not
directly tied to an incentive, and (2) it takes advantage of our human nature
of wanting to do well, especially when it involves how other people view us.

------
vvilliam0
Decent read as the manipulative uses of game design are often overlooked.
Think about how "fun" it feels to scan your own items at the checkout and hear
those nice tones. Uber and Lyft drivers have Pavlovian response when they hear
a new ride beacon ready to accept.

~~~
wild_preference
It's bizarre when people suggest it's some sort of capitalist scam that we can
check ourselves out at the grocery store.

Surely all of the upsides of self-checkout have a higher weight than the
machine beeping at you.

Also, they beep because your attention is spent rotating each product to let
the scanner find the barcode, and you might not notice that it scanned
otherwise, and accidental multiple scans cost the customer money.

~~~
inostia
Self-checkout shifts the physical and mental labor traditionally done by a
worker onto the consumer to save money. Instead, I'm paying for the product
_and_ performing the labor traditionally done by someone else chiefly to save
the company money in labor costs. Opinions may vary about the convenience,
efficiency or "upsides" of that, but in a sense it is the quintessential
capitalist scam.

~~~
jrockway
Standing in line waiting for someone else to scan my groceries is just as much
of a waste of time.

The faster I can be out of there, the happier I am. And, less labor spent on
scanning items means the store can be open for longer hours, have more
organized shelves and be cleaner, etc. All in all, this is automation that
increases the efficiency of the operation. Yes, you pay some cost in that you
have to place your items into bags (with the current iteration of the
technology) but I think you the customer get something out of that work, even
if it's just a slightly lower rate of price increases.

It is time to think seriously about how we are going to deal with fewer jobs
available. Will the increased corporate profits that result be spent on giving
cashiers education to become knowledge workers to further increase these
profits and the efficiency of society? Will the money be fed into basic income
or public services, so that everyone in society will be taken care of even if
there are no low-skill jobs for them to do? We are already seeing what happens
when we don't think about these things in certain industries, and it's not
great. Someone will have to step up and say, we will be the country that takes
care of everyone, because the "work 8 hours a day and you get a house" era is
long over.

~~~
inostia
As I said,

> Opinions may vary about the convenience, efficiency or "upsides" of that

I highly doubt that the savings on labor cost will translate to "longer open
hours, more organized shelves and cleaner, etc", I would guess the savings
translate to more profit and more concentration of wealth at the top.

Look, I'm not so much of a luddite that I _refuse_ to use self-checkout lines,
I'm just realistic about what the motivations are: maximizing profit.

~~~
jrockway
I feel like the motivation of any business is to maximize profit. Even if
there is a side goal of improving society, in the end, you can't do that if
they turn off your electricity for non-payment.

------
sn41
Gamification is overt and transparent psychological manipulation. I had
friends in Sociology etc. who had to conform to elaborate ethics compliance
guidelines before launching surveys etc. Why is gamification not similarly
controlled?

~~~
clairity
as social animals, we manipulate each other constantly. all it takes is a
word, a grunt, a glance, a micro-aggression, even an unwitnessed action. are
you suggesting we regulate all human behavior?

~~~
intro-b
I'm sure you understand that there's a difference between normal, personal
human interactions, as you've just described, and a complex technological
system designed and implemented for use in a business setting?

~~~
clairity
yes, but the original question made a broad statement about regulating human
manipulation. my rebuttal was to ask where we draw the line.

note that historically we've allowed all kinds of manipulations (like
basically lying in advertisements, _caveat emptor_ ), in an abundance of
caution to avoid infringing our 1st amendment rights (in the US).

------
zackmorris
I'm becoming more and more convinced as time goes on that our new technologies
only look at one side of the equation: cost. They seem to be doing little or
nothing to increase incomes. So I must ask myself, are these really
technologies if they don't provide utility to all players?

Across almost all industries, people used to be able to provide for their
families, or at the very least support themselves on a 40 hour work week. Now
we have Uber and Lyft decreasing the cost of taxi rides to perhaps half their
previous levels. That's nice for clients, but they're also lowering wages to
perhaps half or even a quarter of their previous levels. That missing quarter
is where executive and corporate profits come from.

Is there a term for a company that focuses on incomes first? Is there a way to
program that into a corporate charter, to encourage gig companies like Upwork
to maximize incomes? Could we use private means to optimize the economy for
incomes?

For a lot of reasons, the federal government has been crippled in its ability
to do the simplest things like raise the minimum wage or even give unions
equal legal footing with corporations. That worked to pump debt into the
economy for a decade or three but now we're seeing strife in the forms of
increasing addiction, suicide rates, delayed marriage and childbirth, etc.
It's one thing to be against unions and another to be against the general
working population, which is what this wealth inequality is becoming. We're
reaching an endgame here that is not sustainable - that may lead to widespread
civil disobedience at the very least, and probably violence or even revolution
eventually. What can be done?

~~~
leetcrew
> Is there a term for a company that focuses on incomes first?

perhaps a worker coop? [0] such an organization is not explicitly focused on
maximizing worker incomes, but it seems like a likely outcome.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative)

------
Animats
China is going all-in on this with their social credit system. That's being
rolled out in Beijing. All Beijing residents will be judged on a point system
by the end of 2020.[1] "Those with better so-called social credit will get
'green channel' benefits while those who violate laws will find life more
difficult. Those deemed untrustworthy will be 'unable to move even a single
step.'"[2]

""For example, when we drive, now we always stop in front of crosswalks. If
you don't stop, you will lose your points."

[1]
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-21/beijing-t...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-21/beijing-
to-judge-every-resident-based-on-behavior-by-end-of-2020) [2]
[http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-06/06/c_137235486.htm](http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-06/06/c_137235486.htm)

------
kirykl
Gamification reaches beyond the gig economy.

Things like home grown versions of Shark Tank or other judging-panel game
shows are becomming pretty common in companies

~~~
hnuser355
That’s interesting. Perhaps the intention is to completely ruin the employee’s
dignity and will (and render them more compliant) by forcing them to beg
several fat middle managers for the privilege of doing their own job.

------
Animats
Ah. Now we understand what "agile" is really about.

------
miguelmota
There's nothing particularly wrong with incentives via gamification to retain
and encourage usage of their platform. Drivers drive more, riders have more
rides, Uber and Lyft make money, drivers sign up more drivers for rewards.
It's a classic viral loop

------
foxhop
Seems like Ebay was one of the original online "gamifiers" which used seller
and buyer ratings to elevate the overall quality of the "service workers" on
their platform.

Amazon followed suite.

I wonder if we should consider both as part or as leaders in the "gig
economy".

I think if we can build a proper network we can make local economies complete
with the global giants by using gamification. Nudge consumers of products or
services to buy local with a sort of consumer rating or something.

4.75 stars means they get get deeper local discounts, etc. Local network
marketing.

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sharemywin
I don't understand why drivers can't charge different rates.

~~~
naeemtee
Tried something similar recently (contentfly.co) where we have writers set a
minimum rate and the market anchors around that.

It’s been pretty interesting.... the rates have gone up but not as high as we
thought.

~~~
dredmorbius
Any further info on that?

------
api
Isn't money a form of gamification, especially once you get beyond the most
straightforward types of transactions and economic relationships?

Wall St is full of click farms where people grind for gold and hidden power
ups.

What we may be seeing is more like an explosion of alternative currencies. I'm
not saying this is good. These are mostly "company tokens" or domain specific
lock-in tokens that are not fungible.

~~~
thephyber
I don't know about "company tokens" \-- that reminds me of "company towns" of
the early industrial revolution era where workers weren't paid in fungible
currency, but in company vouchers.

That said, I think most of the commenters here don't recognize how many of the
gamification mechanics[1] have long been built into office work. "Employee of
the month" plaque = leaderboard. Sales team progress bars. Perks like corner
offices with great views for the most valuable employees.

[1] [https://www.gamified.uk/user-types/gamification-mechanics-
el...](https://www.gamified.uk/user-types/gamification-mechanics-elements/)

