
My father had one job, I've had six, my kids will have six at the same time - walterbell
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/29/future-of-work-gig-sharing-economy-juggling-jobs
======
andyjohnson0
If you have in-demand skills then maybe the 'gig' economy can be a nice place
to be: money and flexibility can create quite a nice lifestyle, if some
comments I read on HN are to be believed.

But for those not in the top-layer its going to be "welcome to the precariat"
[1]. Constant hustling, unpredictable income and housing, moving-on a lot,
fewer social ties. For those at the bottom it's zero-hour contracts driving
for Uber and stacking shelves at Amazon fulfilment centres.

Traditional full-time jobs provide a lot of the security necessary for long-
term commitments like raising children, educating them properly (so that they
in turn have sell-able skills), and engaging/participating in society. When
almost everyone is chasing the next contract to pay the rent, the result can
be a hollowed-out society where we all end-up poorer.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat)

~~~
mtbcoder
I often get the feeling that proponents of the gig economy underestimate just
how transient their "in-demand skills" really are. A person's in-demand skills
can only take them so far before someone else comes along with equal (or even
better skills) and undercuts the "top-layer". At which point, instead of
having the time to acquire new skills, the individual instead needs to devote
their time to the "constant hustle" of finding the next gig before their
reserves are depleted.

------
mhw
One problem I can see in all this is that the trust networks that the sharing
economy is built on are all (currently) privately owned and exploited, and
network effects mean that it is very difficult for any competitor to get
established in the same space because they have to establish their own
competitor trust network. As a result the tendency will be for there to be a
winner-takes-all outcome creating monopolies around the trust network in any
particular vertical. See Facebook (network of trust around friendship), Uber
(network of trust around giving/receiving transportation), Ebay
(buying/selling goods), AirBnB (giving/receiving accommodation), Twitter
(trusted sources of interesting opinions) etc. The only competitive strategy
that seems to be working at the moment is having a vertical that is
sufficiently different from the incumbent that you can attract existing users
of the incumbent's network to use yours in parallel.

I doubt this is an outcome that governments and society in general will find
acceptable when they start to recognise the pattern. Instead I wouldn't be
surprised if the second phase of this economy involves government regulation
of the trust networks, with them being extracted into some kind of trust
infrastructure on which a number of competitor service providers are allowed
to operate, or at least opened up so the trust network data has to be part of
the public commons. At the moment the trust networks are (rightly) seen by the
companies as being their most important asset - I think we'll eventually
realise that, in the sharing economy, trust is _so_ important that it cannot
be privately owned.

~~~
roymurdock
>The only competitive strategy that seems to be working at the moment is
having a vertical that is sufficiently different from the incumbent that you
can attract existing users of the incumbent's network to use yours in
parallel.

How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100
years? If you want to compete in the drinks market, you need to find a
different vertical (sports, energy, fruit, health, etc.) and build up your own
trusted brand.

I think we'll see the government slowly coming around to
endorse/oversee/standardize digital trust networks as they always have through
the FTC, FDA, FCC, etc. They've already started with Title II of HIPAA in an
attempt to regulate how data flows in the healthcare system so that patients
can trust healthcare providers.

But do we really need to oversee/nationalize a social network/content
aggregator such as Linkedin or Facebook?

~~~
CaptainZapp

      How is this any different than Coke building up a trusted brand over 100 years? 
    

Well, I can always quaff a Pepsi, quite irrespective of what my peers chose to
drink.

It doesn't work quite as well to use a different, say, social media platform,
when all my friends are on Facebook.

~~~
kedean
Not necessarily. Pepsi and Coke have both built quite legal relationships with
a number of institutions like universities and fast food chains with the
agreement that competitor products are not served. My university was a "pepsi
campus", you couldn't buy coke products anywhere on campus. This is why people
have to ask "do you serve coke or pepsi?" at restaurants. Of course this has
far fewer effects that social network tie-ins, but its not a new idea.

~~~
charlesarthur
"This is why people have to ask "do you serve coke or pepsi?" at restaurants."

OT, but this is why news anchors have to say "the obesity rate in the US has
risen to its highest level ever, scientists reported today."

~~~
hsod
Why? Because people drink soda at restaurants?

------
erikb
Yeah, I feel in general it develops in that way. More flexibility, less
specialization. But I don't think it's really good though.

If you have a core set of skills and tasks you can often work very efficient.
You know who to talk to, you know what to do, and if you spend time optimizing
your work process after some time your daily life also is not too stressful.
But if you always switch and hunt the opportunities you don't know much about
anything. You always have to continue hunting.

But on the positive side I think it will be an option, at least in a
foreseable future. Being flexible also means you cna say no to an opportunity
if it is too far away from what you are usually doing. Of course that also
requires more discipline than in the past.

Concerning money I think it depends on your talent/skills/education if it goes
up or down. Talent becomes more rare when people do more different tasks (e.g.
the "full stack devopser" can only know a little about web development,
because there are so many other things he needs to know). And higher
flexibility for employees means that companies have a harder time to keep
talent. Therefore pay must go up for talent. But someone who barely gets by
doing one job now has an even harder time doing 6 jobs at the same time, and
he has a harder time to hide due to more responsibility on his side, and last
but not least more flexibility also means companies don't need to keep you.
Below the tipping point money goes down.

If one likes that or not probably depends on if oneself is above or below that
tipping point. I can understand both sides here. No reason to discuss just the
negative side.

------
padobson
Capitalism is about the flow of capital. Most people don't have capital, so
they have to trade their labor for a small amount with people that do have
capital, who are only trading it to get more capital.

Articles like this assume that everything will change - except how capital
works.

Bitcoin. Crowdfunding. Distributed banking. Mass market barter transactions.

I can't help but think that centralized stores of capital (i.e. the top layer,
the rich, the capitalist, etc etc) are naturally going to become obsolete.

Unless, of course, they're kept alive by force.

~~~
pjc50
This is where "r > g" and Picketty's work is relevant. The rate of return on
capital matters. Centralised capital earning a return will always pull ahead
of small-scale capital unless there's enough regulatory and other handicapping
to the advantage of the small capital investment.

Can decentralised capital get a better rate of return than centralised
capital? If so, centralised capital can just invest in it. If not, you'll end
up paying your decentralised returns back and more in rent. Property is the
ultimate centralised store of capital.

~~~
padobson
_If not, you 'll end up paying your decentralised returns back and more in
rent. Property is the ultimate centralised store of capital._

I think this would assume that decentralized investments won't be able to
afford autonomous, off-the-grid living arrangements. There's still a whole lot
more land out there than we need. And it wouldn't need to support everyone,
just enough so that there's an alternative to keep rents from skyrocketing.

Anything else you pay for can be decentralized, as the article demonstrates.

~~~
pjc50
_There 's still a whole lot more land out there than we need_

You can't be serious - there isn't any _unowned_ land out there. Certainly not
in the western world. Sure, in the Americas you can squat on government land
for a while and hope nobody notices, but that involves being miles away from
anywhere and if you're off the grid it seriously hampers your earning
potential.

In the UK there is simply nowhere you can do this.

 _Anything else you pay for can be decentralized_

Microchip fabs?

~~~
padobson
_You can 't be serious - there isn't any unowned land out there._

You can buy land for less than $2,000 per acre in just about every inland
state in the US. A cursory glance at Zillow shows that even Rhode Island has
sub-$100k/acre available[1].

 _But that involves being miles away from anywhere and if you 're off the grid
it seriously hampers your earning potential._

I'll concede that we're not there yet, but technology makes off-the-grid
living and working more feasible all the time.

 _Microchip fabs?_

You mean like Intel? A company with 1800 owners?[2]

But without getting to boiled down in the minutia, my problem with Picketty is
that there's no reason that the "r" in "r > g" couldn't be distributed using
crowd-funding and decentralized currencies (and whatever _their_ successors
might be) by the natural flow of capital, rather than relying on the coercive
methods Picketty suggests.

[1][http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/RI/land_type/50_rid/2-_...](http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/RI/land_type/50_rid/2-_beds/0-540484_price/0-2000_mp/priced_sort/42.172564,-69.893646,41.026535,-72.557831_rect/8_zm/0_mmm/)
[2][http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/intc/ownership-
summary](http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/intc/ownership-summary)

------
zby
Maybe 'a job' is something that fitted a particular phase of our civilisation
development and it just will fade away? A hunter gatherer (I bring this as my
example - because as a species we spent most of our time in that phase) would
do many things - but we would not call them jobs.

~~~
gaius
_A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a
hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a
wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act
alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a
computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization
is for insects._ \-- Robert Heinlein

~~~
icebraining
Said by a character that lived to be 2000 years old :)

------
hellofunk
I believe that "spreading yourself too thin" is a real thing, and a real
disadvantage. In a theoretical world, you could have a specific specialization
that you used in isolation for many different jobs simultaneously, but in
reality, a "job" is about so much more than one individual skill. There is
onboarding, learning the people and environment and tools and product that you
work on, and a variety of other peripheral matters that require much of your
time and learning curve before you get to apply the skill you've been hired to
perform. And thus you end up with a lot of time spent on things that wouldn't
be an issue if you concentrated on one job at a time for a decent period of
time.

------
gambiting
Personal anecdote: my dad used to work in a coal mine during the day, then
drove a delivery truck in the evening, then during the weekend he worked at a
local cafeteria, selling ice cream. He always thought I was being lazy not
doing anything after coming home from my 9-5 job, and not having a second job
on the weekend was almost sacrilegious. My point is that some people don't see
the world the way this article describes them :P

------
thorin
Looking at a lot of job ads they want 5 developers for one job: sys admin,
dba, software dev, ui, design...

~~~
kbart
Don't be scared of _secondary_ requirements in ads as most often they don't
require expertise in the mentioned area. During job interviews, "database
specialist" "becomes" someone, who can write simple queries, "a web designer"
\- someone who can tinker CSS, "web development" \- update Wordpress page etc.

~~~
thorin
I'm down with that. It just annoys me that managers or often agents expect you
to be an expert. For instance i know oracle well and sql and pl/sql but i can
also do some java, C, python, DBA, web development etc. My next role is at a
startup and coming in as a data guy who will pick up some web services and
javascript work seems totally acceptable.

------
PhilWright
The statement “My father had one job in his lifetime, I will have six jobs in
my lifetime, and my children will have six jobs at the same time.” makes a
pithy statement but is generally not true.

My father had about 6 jobs in his working life. Looking at my uncles they
varied in the number of jobs but none of them had just one, over a working
life of more than 40 years each. Thinking wider still, I cannot think of a
single person in my parents generation that had just one job.

It might be that people average more jobs today than they did in the past.
Maybe you can project that forward and guess that a future generation will
average more. But to say 6 concurrently is wild speculation and hard for me to
take seriously.

There is no reason to think our children will have many concurrent jobs.
Certainly no more than people do today.

------
mark_l_watson
+1 for The Guardian article and this discussion thread. I see the automation
and replacement of jobs as one of the central problems.

I am mostly retired now so I spend more time mentoring (mostly) young people
on CS tech, job market, choosing a career path, etc. Two common lines of
dialog are what tech they have a passion for and the other is what tech is
least likely to be automated. I may be optimistic in that I hope that a life
process/system of continuous education and keeping in mind what types of work
help society the most will see the younger generations through some
'interesting' times.

------
amyjess
> it seems strange to me that we would always recommend to companies that
> their revenue streams are diverse, yet for individuals, the smallest and
> most fragile economic unit, we say: you must only do one thing all your
> life. What a crazy way to live; 87% of people in full-time employment are
> not passionate about what they do. When I look at this new way of work, I
> think of it as opt-in. It gives people economic agency, it puts them in
> charge. And it gives them flexibility. People love those things.

I don't think people love these things as much as they love security, at least
in the long term.

Every generation goes through this. Journalists act like Millennials are
special people who won't be held to a 9-to-5 job like everyone before them,
but they've made the same mistake as journalists who covered previous
generations. Before these "gig economy" Millennials, we had "hippie" Baby
Boomers and "slacker" Gen-Xers.

Young people of every generation are always going to say they don't want to
live a traditional life like their parents, that they're going to chase their
dreams and be genuinely different, and they join whatever the latest
counterculture is. But, ultimately, they come back.

The hippies of the '60s and '70s became the yuppies of the '80s and the soccer
moms of the '90s. Why? They want that sweet, sweet security. A boring job with
a steady paycheck and loads of benefits means you don't have to worry about
anything, as long as you come to work every day and don't spectacularly fuck
up at your job. If you're planning to start a family, then you need the
stability for your kids. If you're not, then the stability helps fund your
life so you can spend the weekend enjoying your hobbies instead of worrying
where your next meal is coming from.

Mark my words, in a decade the "gig economy" rumspringa will be over, and most
of those people who chose to bounce from gig to gig for "flexibility" will be
working in cube farms so their kids can have health insurance and go to good
schools (and those of us without kids will be doing the same thing so we can
indulge in expensive hobbies on evenings and weekends).

Oh, of course there will be holdouts, just like there are still hippies who
live on communes well into their 60s, but by and large the gig economy will
fade away once most of the original participants are out of their 20s, and pop
culture will treat the "aging Millenial hipster" as a joke just like the
"aging hippie" is treated now. And, of course, we'll see the beginnings of the
next rumspringa as the next generation of young people decide they don't want
to be like their parents... until they do.

~~~
maxxxxx
Let's hope the "gig economy" people will actually be able to get a safe
cubicle job in a decade. To me it looks like this option is systematically
being eroded. Pensions are gone and I think steady employment for good salary
will slowly go away too. And the node.js hotshots who think there will always
be high paying jobs for coders like them should have gone through 2000. The
fall can be quick and deep.

------
ChuckFrank
Strange that BlahBlah is made to seem so hot when ZimRide had to convert to
Lyft to make any headway. I wonder if ZimRide overstepped their transition, or
if BlahBlah executed better, or if Lyft is simply a richer pot.

What is interesting is that Lyft chases the taxis and BlahBlah chases the
trains, or the other way around, depending on your loyalties.

Still, as the old adage goes, lots of people do have the same ideas around the
same time. Winners are much more unique than that.

------
theworstshill
I wonder what the last human will think once s/he becomes automated out of
existence.

------
forgottenacc56
And their kids will have 36.

~~~
guard-of-terra
Or they won't have kids.

------
danieltillett
It is more likely your kids will have no job.

~~~
vmateixeira
That would be in a perfect world..

~~~
danieltillett
Assuming we have some sort of base income I agree.

~~~
csvan
Base income does not come out of nothing though. You need state income, which
depends on taxation, which depends on people working and consuming.

~~~
sgt101
Unless the state owns the means of production.

What if the future is red?

~~~
VLM
red doesn't sell well in the USA. We'll have full communism but we'll market
it as something else. Probably still calling it the "free market capitalism".
That's what we inaccurately call our current system and nobody blinks.

Most likely it'll roll out like public libraries / utilities. I already drive
on government owned streets kept safe by government paid cops and clean by
government paid trash pickup to visit the government owned library to use the
government owned photocopier when I need to do legacy media stuff. Not a huge
extension of the concept at the library to use the government owned 3d printer
to make stuff or the government owned protein sequencer to make me soylent-
tier food, maybe in 30 years.

~~~
geggam
All of those govt paid employees are paid by you... their employer.

Not the govt.

The govt owns nothing nor employees anyone.

~~~
dragonwriter
The government owns things and employs people as much as any corporation does,
and as much as the government exists at all.

~~~
geggam
The govt is a structure which answers to the people and is supposedly for the
betterment of the people. The government exists only because you consent to be
governed. At any given moment you can revoke that consent. This govt hasnt
been looking out for the peoples interests in a long time.

