In the gig economy, everyone is a hustler | Hacker News Reader

In the gig economy, everyone is a hustler

thedailybeast.com

25 pointsquoderat18 comments

I greatly respect the writer of this article (Tina Brown), however the post left a bad taste in my mouth. I disagree that workers being independent is disempowering (she didn't say it explicitly, but she said people were struggling), or that it has to be annoying for the businesses employing them.

My unsubstantiated hunch is that she's writing this from a mildly older-industry perspective, and that those businesses and workers might be struggling more with this. I have many friends (in admittedly newer industries) who are thriving as independents. Not just financially, but the freedom and opportunity it gives them to travel and challenge themselves is great. Sometimes they take well paying gigs, sometimes they work for peanuts on crazy projects.

I guess I just disagree with the "attitude" of the article. That independence isn't something to "settle" for, but something to strive for. She writes like it's a result of a bad economy, but I think many kinds of work would be headed in this direction anyway, even if the economy were sailing.

How old are your friends who are thriving as independents? The "freedom and opportunity" are a great deal less glamorous for those in their late 40s who are just trying to raise kids and provide for the family...

You mean there are people who don't like freedom and opportunity? I am doing well working independently in my 20's, but I hope when I'm in my late 40's I still appreciate freedom and opportunity. I would think that new opportunities would be beneficial for me, my kids, and my family as well.

You mean there are people who don't like freedom and opportunity?

What do the words "freedom" and "opportunity" imply? The freedom to take interesting jobs for which you "get to" travel isn't much of an opportunity if your goal is to spend every night with your family.

Freedom != travelling and having a salaried job != being able to spend more time with family. For me, I have the _freedom_ to stay at home with my wife, and I see her and spend time with her at 2pm when she gets home from her job every day. I know others who work salaried jobs who get home at 2am.

You are implying that you appreciate the freedom and opportunity to succeed - of course, who wouldn't!

However, I don't know if you can separate that from the freedom and opportunity to fail (can you have good without evil?) How much are you factoring that into your calculations for your late 40's and beyond?

Let me try and make sense of this: freedom and opportunity to succeed is good, but entails possibility of failure, which is bad.

You're saying you don't want the freedom and opportunity to do either when in your late 40s and beyond? Or are you saying that you want to have the opportunity to succeed, but not to fail, when you're in your late 40s? Didn't you just say that's not possible? I'm confused...

I honestly don't know how I will think in 20 years - that obviously depends on what will happen between now and then.

What I'm trying to say is that as people get older and have a family to support, they might get more risk averse, and begin to prefer safer options (which likely involve less freedom and opportunity). The cost of failure then is much higher than the cost of failure now.

That independence isn't something to "settle" for, but something to strive for. She writes like it's a result of a bad economy, but I think many kinds of work would be headed in this direction anyway, even if the economy were sailing.

Well, yes, the implication of the article seems to be that this isn't something people are freely choosing, but rather that it's being forced on them by our current economic state. Whether that's borne out empirically is somewhat unclear, but by my own anecdotal (and thus virtually irrelevant) experience, most people like having some form of job security.

This article is terrible. They surveyed 500 people on the internet. Over a hundred people said they did some consulting work, so therefore America is a "Gigocracy". Seriously?

She makes it seem like a negative thing that people can't describe what they do with a simple sentence. As if everyone should say Hi, I'm Joe the Plumber or Bob the Butcher.

Then she describes the "penny-ante slog" of working three times as hard for less money without raises. From personal experience, I'm making twice as much money and work maybe half the amount of hours or less. When you start a new project or gig, you decide how much money it will cost, and if it's not worth it to you, then don't do the project. If you want a raise, then you raise your rates.

She makes it sound like everyone finds their gigs on Mechanical Turk.

Once again, a serious discussion of this topic would mention Coase's 'Theory of the Firm':

http://journal.dedasys.com/2009/01/14/the-gig-economy

Actually, my article isn't very serious either, but it does talk about one of the underlying reasons for the balance between contractors and others external to the firm, and employees.

Less pay? Please. If you get a good name when you start out gigs you want will come to you and you will earn much more after expenses than you did at a previous employer doing similar work.

Also this whole article reads like an overreaction. "Get Jim on this meeting" - Buffoon Boss "Jim's not in today" - on top of things clerk "Lets bring in Julie who knows nothing" etc...

My experience with gigs is that if you do your job well you'll make more $ and have more freedom.

In my experience, I did make slightly more, but I couldn't afford health insurance. If I had any kids, it would have been even worse.

That's why I believe that some form of nationalized health coverage will actually lead to far more entrepreneurship as many of these concerns evaporate -- especially for those with families to worry about.

You assume that nationalizing health insurance will lower the cost without having too large a negative effect on quality. Or, like most people who advocate nationalized things, you assume that people above you on the income scale will be subsidizing your consumption.

Not all of these things are necessarily true.

Nationalizing health insurance might improve quality; the quality of health care in the US is pretty appallingly bad, compared to, say, Argentina. I hear health care in nearly all the other OECD countries is also nationalized, lower in cost, and higher in quality than in the US, but I only have personal experience with health care in the US, Argentina, Canada, and the Federated States of Micronesia (where I can assure you that health care is terrible).

Admittedly the health care we've used so far here in Argentina hasn't been the public system, but I hear it's not that bad either.

I am not certain the writer understands the concept of a hustler.

Wow. This article seems to be able to be boiled down to, "Because people are fed up with poor pay or being overburdened in traditional 9-5 jobs, they are trying to get more freedom and happiness. And this is just RUINING all our bad business practices and making all these POOR MANAGERS frustrated."

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