‘Can you explain this gap in your resume?’
-‘I was in Yale.’
‘Excellent, you’re hired!’
-‘Thanks, I really needed this yob.’
“We need you to be DEDICATED to the shitty gig we’re offering.”
My employment history is like 1-2 years for each role
Most of the time once a project is over it’s best for all parties to just hand over to more junior people and the seniors move on to other companies that need them
Did you work on Microsoft’s mail service?
Obviously not, that service has never seen a senior dev
Gig economy is a hoax, and freelance is the older version of that.
Disagree. Freelance was contracting. Defined terms, fair pay. It was a way for employers to save money by eliminating the middle man in a way that also benefited the lone business person.
Gig economy is the evil step child that removes all the benefits.
Freelancers do work on a contract that generally covers a period of time, similar to seasonal work.
Gig workers work for individual instances of work, like day laborers.
Gig workers take the concept of freelancing to the extreme.
A key difference is that freelancers typically get to set their own terms/rates, or at least get to negotiate them.
Gig workers don’t, and are generally treated quite poorly.
Not at hoax. I’m self-employed, gig economy freelancer, hopping between therapeutic roles, teaching jobs, admin tasks for training companies. Works very well for me.
Just because it’s often bad and can be exploited doesn’t mean there aren’t also good versions of it.
So you admit you are the exception, and gig work can be a hoax, where workers are cheated out of rights they would have in normal full time jobs.
So what exactly is your point? And where is the worker protection in gig work?
My point is that it is not a hoax, as previously claimed.
It can be exploited, sure. But not worthy of dismissing as always a hoax!
there isn’t. the only real protection is if you find your own clients and build your own relationships with them. but that’s so difficult these days that you might as well just get a regular job in the same field.
idk the “official” definitions, but imo the main difference between the gig economy and a freelance job is the gig economy happens through a platform that often exploits you. for example, for the previous user’s field, it would probably happen through fiverr, which takes 20%, actively pushes your competitors, and punishes for any attempt at communicating off-platform. for more “mainstream” gig work, you have platforms like uber and doordash, where everything is integrated so deeply that off-platform work might as well not exist.
part of the reason i think is that we just don’t have well-known platforms that aren’t exploiting both workers and clients, so both are having difficulties avoiding the exploiter in the middle.
Are you a freelancer or a gig worker? Cause those are two completely different things.
I’m both.
I take on various gig roles as a freelancer.