"Micro-Gig" Sites Undermining Workers Rights? 426
Mystakaphoros writes "An article in The Atlantic examines the effects sites like TaskRabbit, Fiverr, and Rev.com are having on employment and freelancing. (I would add Amazon's Mechanical Turk to the list as well.) As the article mentions, 'Work is being stripped down to the bone. It's as if we're eliminating the 'extraneous' parts of a worker's day — like lunch or bathroom breaks — and paying only for the minutes someone is actually in front of the computer or engaged in a task.' How many Slashdotters have used these sites, either to hire or work? What's been your experience?"
Age old "issue" (Score:2, Interesting)
When I put my car in for servicing etc I pay for parts and labour, and when I have workmen in at home to do something it's again parts and labour, so where's the difference?
Re:Age old "issue" (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference is that you expect to pay a mechanic or plumber $50 to $100 an hour... People on these sites expect to get code written for less than minimum wage.
I was on rent-a-coder for a while before they changed the name. And the expectations and offered pay were ridiculous.
It's how contract work works! (Score:3, Interesting)
I make my living as a programmer for hire. Clients find me, ask for the moon, and I give it to them - but my hourly rate only reflects time on task. I don't charge my clients for trips to the water cooler. Unless I'm on site, I average about 6 hours a day. But this can be compensated by the fact you can adjust your own rates. For all the bitching about evil corporations, I'm surprised more people don't start their own S Corp and do this. It's a lot more responsibility, but you are the master of your own fate. (You are still responsible for your own fate when working for a business, but I suppose a lot of people don't see it that way) In fact, you may not even see corporations as all that evil when you're on the other end of the stick.
Re:being your own boss (Score:2, Interesting)
The fallacy here... (Score:5, Interesting)
Workers rights exist to protect workers from abusive companies. But the case here doesn't even come close to rubbing up against that issue. The Gigers in these cases are able to work as much or as little as they please. No boss is standing behind them abusing them into performing more to justify management's salary or company profit margins.
Gigers will likely fall into two main groups:
A) Out of work and struggling to make ends meet.
This type is probably grateful for a way to make money in a world where there's currently no company to make him "a valuable asset and a productive member of society". No corporate overlord, no workers rights issues. If they dislike this type of work, they can continue seeking a job somewhere or they can learn to do without earning money for other people and keep making direct contacts for work.
B) People who do gigs on the side. Again, no right issues come up in this case. It's a totally voluntary way to make extra bucks.
I've used Fiverr to buy about 60 gigs now. In each case they were professional, quick and delivered exactly what they advertised. (in my case almost all were for artistic talent for personal and team building exercises). No company is offering me an equivalent service for less than an absurd amount of money which would have been a non-starter and caused me to engage in zero purchases. Their overhead for profit and management salaries is so high, they price themselves out of the market for what I need.
Instead of trying to demonize these companies, look at them as a means by which a lot of people are making ends meet while no company is willing to hire them. Life does not require anyone to work for a company. Sure they serve their purposes and for many scales and scopes of work, it takes a company to achieve success. I love the company that I work for. But I do not mistake that for believing that every person alive must either work for a company or earn nothing.
I'd rather look forward to a day when the gig market evolves and gig companies start offering discount benefit packages to Gigers who perform and produce well. What better way to hold onto good talent for your service.
Re:Who's *FORCING* you to work for those sites? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't always post anonymously, but when I do, its because I'm talking about something wrong that I see go on everyday where I work.
Dice is listing thousands of jobs which are open to the "right person" but not to everyone with the listed qualifications. In many cases, the companies posting these positions reject everyone that applies for them in order to justify hiring someone who needs a visa. A lack of qualified candidates for all the "open positions" in my department is used as a management excuse to extend work hours out beyond 50.
A headhunter I used to get temp-to-hire work through once told me that in many cases ads were an attempt to entice specific individuals to leave their position with a competitor, or a signal to said individual that they should quit their position and begin waiting for their no-compete to run out.
Point being, there are lots of reasons to advertise a job opening in the technical fields that have nothing to do with a position actually being open to all qualified comers.
Re:Age old "issue" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Functional market (Score:5, Interesting)
- Not an asshole (determined through about 20 minutes of conversation about personal life, history, etc.)
- Did not leave previous employer on bad terms (layoffs are fine. even if there were conflicts, it shows you are professional to not bash your old boss)
- Follows the developer community surrounding what they have experience in. An expert in Rails should know a bit about what is going on in the community with the release of Ruby 2.0, for example. A C# guy should have some opinions about the latest features in
- Must solve a few programming problems. Nothing Crazy. Things like "take this text file and print out all the word contained in it in order of frequency". I also tell them they are encouraged to use whatever language they are most comfortable with -- COBOL for all I care-- , they have unlimited time, don't have to get it 100% correct, and are encouraged to Google/ask me questions. 9/10 people still fail the damn things! These tests are merely to see if the person was completely lying about knowing how to code, not "write a recursive binary search using the observer pattern... in C".
TLDR: 1) have pulse 2) don't be an asshole 3) know basic procedural programming.... Those are pretty much the requirements to be a programmer at most places (not Google, or some tech startup. More like the local insurance company or bank, but hey, that should be fine if youre desperate). I do hear that IT is a tougher market right now, and I believe it, but on the development side it could not be easier. With your experience, you might want to consider a transition. Ex-sysops/network guys tend to make solid devs IME.
Re:Freelancing and Micro-gigs (Score:4, Interesting)
Because the added cost of living in a country that actually provides for the needs of the entire population raises the price of living.
If you want to help equalize the standard of living, you should select the vendor whose current standard of living is lowest.
Sure, it's easy to make that argument when you start conflating similar ideas, like the standard of living and the actual needs of the population. By rewarding the vendors (countries, establishments, etc) who don't implement programs that care for the actual needs of the population (like safety laws, environmental protection laws), they're have less pressure to actually implement those programs, even if they have the resources. After all, change takes work, and if you're already being rewarded ...