The Modern Workforce

by _nvs • 11 years ago

124 76 11 years ago

p0cket• 11 years ago

Great read. Although services like Uber and Lyft are getting more popular, I didn't know the freelance/part-time market as a whole was growing.

Delmania3• 11 years ago

In various business publications, it's referred to as the "sharing economy".

gaius4• 11 years ago

In the UK, "zero hours contracts".

whyaduck• 11 years ago

It's not a euphemism, it's a crowd-sourced renaming.

altcognito• 11 years ago

The statement:

The better our software gets, the more companies are able to hire. Good, well-paying, well-placed jobs results in happy people. That’s pretty rewarding, if you ask me.

is in direct conflict with what the market desires:

Market forces desire resources that labor that is mobile across the country, requires no long term commitment, has a low risk hiring and comes at minimum cost. I don't see how the market you are creating will serve labors need. Your goal is to turn labor pools into a commodity.

This is covered by the heading:

“You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone / For the times, they are a-changing” - Bob Dylan

But hey, you're touching lives.

gaius4• 11 years ago

Also see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9391711

steamy2• 11 years ago

It's been always like this for human labor throughout history and more specifically since the Agricultural Revolution. Human labor is always in surplus and this resource has been exploited by economic powers and interested parties in many ways from hardcore slavery to modern wage slavery but what changed recently was technology made it easier and more efficient to tap into this resource for anyone interested and thus this imbalance of power shifted in favor of the capitalists and business owners.

It seems that most of the gains that we take for granted like weekends and paid vacations and so and so forth that the labor movement acquired over the years since the advent of socialism are up for grabs and at risk of evaporating altogether.

sydneyliu• 11 years ago

"While HR SaaS is never sexy" <---I disagree

Splendor• 11 years ago

Sorry you're being downvoted. It might help if you explain why you disagree.

Flemlord• 11 years ago

We've been hiring recently and have been using RecruiterBox for resume tracking. It makes it easy to communicate with applicants, move them through our different stages of hiring and schedule things with the rest of the team. We absolutely love it.

doki_pen2• 11 years ago

Turning ordinary employees in to independent contractors is a disturbing trend that is eliminating traditional workers rights. Although some new companies have legitimate reasons for hiring contractors, for most it's not part of some new amazing model of labor, it's simply a way to save money. Usually it's illegal, but the IRS is being destroyed by budget cuts and can no longer enforce the law. Filing against your employer in these cases takes years to resolve. I guess if you believe in no protection of workers and mass exploitation of the working class, then it's a good thing. I personally think it's destroying a lot of markets. If people don't have any money they can't buy your shiny new product.

colechristensen• 11 years ago

It depends on the relationship, being an actual independent contractor is truly liberating. Choosing your own hours, working only on things you want to, setting your own salary based on how much you want to t work. There is real freedom in that as long as you get paid appropriately and actually get that freedom.

Companies wanting to save money on benefits while having 9-5 workers with no freedom of choice of when or how to work and no freedom to take other jobs? That's abuse of the system and illegal.

The difference is important.

SonicSoul• 11 years ago

Choosing your own hours, working only on things you want to, setting your own salary

you pretty much described the best case scenario here. On the contrary my dad was an independent contractor most of his life in construction (which was a also in a boom period making some people rich). For him this meant working 6-7 days / week (10-14 hrs), clipping coupons, and saving for a decade to buy a $70k house to avoid getting in debt. This while having sub-contractors working for him. He eventually did well (decades of hard work later) but I believe this situation is not so rosy for an average contractor unless you are at the top of your game in a very in demand industry

doki_pen2• 11 years ago

Yes, but when this article talks about the growing number of contract workers, that growing number is people doing regular jobs and being labelled contractors. I'm working right now, but feel free to google about this growing problem of workers being illegally mislabeled as contractors.

mhurron• 11 years ago

That's abuse of the system and illegal.

Everything is legal as long as you don't get caught, and it doesn't seem like anyone is interested in doing any catching.

jjoonathan3• 11 years ago

It depends on the relationship

No, it depends on leverage. If you've got the most leverage, the relationship will be pleasant. If you don't, the relationship will be abusive. Just like everything else in capitalism. Supply/demand balance and friction matter far more than how "nice" your customer/employer is.

The distinction is crucially important: if relationship quality were an independent variable, everyone would be able to find decent relationships by hopping between jobs every now and again. Unfortunately, that's not how it works. The market determines what employers can and can't get away with, so someone stuck in a crummy relationship is likely to find a bunch of equally crummy relationships when they go job shopping.

walshemj• 11 years ago

But most seem to be w2 who don't get the benefits of being independent or employed.

Like most things in employment crappy poor employers spoil it for the rest.

mtbcoder• 11 years ago

Choosing your own hours, working only on things you want to, setting your own salary based on how much you want to t work.

I've said this a few times before, but to pull this off takes a tremendous amount of work, effort and luck. Finding work and marketing yourself is another job in its own right that you have to do on top of existing client work. Furthermore, all of the risks that were once handled by the employer are now on the contractors shoulders. For most people, all this simply isn't realistic or sustainable.

eldavido2• 11 years ago

Right, except (1) it's your obligation to change the law as a voter and (2) profit-maximizing companies have every obligation to act in their shareholder's best interests, within the bounds of the law. So really, it's up to us as citizens to decide what's fair, and get the appropriate legislation passed to change it.

Delmania3• 11 years ago

With regards to (1), I'll leave this here: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

The vast majority of people who are effected by this in a negative fashion do not have the money needed to get their officials to listen.

benmathes2• 11 years ago

yeah... if I could vote for a candidate that would do anything _remotely_ like this, I would. But the primary filtering is how much money the candidate can raise. The candidates might not be corrupt, but the electoral system is corrupted.

lhc-• 11 years ago

Do they have an obligation to ignore the law because it's very difficult for citizens to enforce it? Because that's closer to what the parent is describing.

sliverstorm• 11 years ago

Laws don't help if industry has the power to hamstring the organization responsible for enforcing it.

(Assuming you accept the sinister premise that industry is behind defending of the IRS)

mattmanser• 11 years ago

What's a shareholder's best interest?

It's a meaningless phrase and simply an excuse for acting like a dick.

yequalsx• 11 years ago

I believe your position is overly simplistic. It is quite clear that the power structure of the country (U.S.A.) is not concentrated in the working class. It's not simply a matter of 'change the law as a voter'. Besides, voters do not change laws, the elected representatives do. They often renege on their promises.

(2) is what some of think is wrong with the country and capitalism (as it is popularly thought of). Such a belief leaves unresolved the issue of negative externalities. Indeed, the problem with a degradation of workers' rights is one such negative externality.

The capacity of the American worker to vote against their self interest is quite high. Should the trend continue long enough we may find ourselves unwittingly in a rather unpleasant society.

trhway2• 11 years ago

(2) profit-maximizing companies have every obligation to act in their shareholder's best interests, within the bounds of the law.

is profit-maximization a law? because i don't see why for example a company can't be formed for the purpose of "betterment of humanity" and if it earns some profit on the way - great - and if not - it is ok too. As long as shareholders agree to that, ie. buy shares of such a company.

benmathes2• 11 years ago

We'll probably have to go through a bunch of pain for this new working class until it gets so bad that the "union for mobile" is figured out and used to counterbalance the centralized power of the on-demand labor companies.

jsprogrammer• 11 years ago

Alternatively, someone could create a model to the centralized company that just exploits labor without sharing ownership.

steamy2• 11 years ago

The author is a shill for the capitalists and corporations and he's just trying to make a buck here glamorizing underemployment and selling poverty and desperation to the masses in the name of modernity and progress.

TeMPOraL2• 11 years ago

It took 200 years and a lot of bloodshed to establish those working rights. It's ironic how they're now being destroyed and workers themselves let this happen. I guess the social memory is capped at the timespan of two generations.

Florin_Andrei2• 11 years ago

It took 200 years and a lot of bloodshed to establish those working rights. It's ironic how they're now being destroyed and workers themselves let this happen.

Chain the bodies, and the slaves will fight you tooth and nail. Chain the minds, and they will defend their own servitude.

rogerbinns2• 11 years ago

The core underlying problem is traditional society benefits have been pushed onto employers in the US. This is absurd and hurts everyone. Employers don't have the same societal incentives, are less efficient at delivering them, it isn't part of their business anyway, and puts them in a position of power. Workers have a choice of not much of a safety net, or having to pick the least worst employers. If those benefits were moved back to being provided by society then it would raise the bar for all employers.

For example if paternity/maternity leave and income were society provided, then an employer could only be more generous. Even if they do nothing and fire the employees, at least those employees would get the leave and some income certainty. The same principle applies to healthcare, wages (compete with minimum wages/basic incomes etc) etc.

I think that instead of making more and more laws (each of which has more and more unintended consequences, loopholes, expenditures etc), go ahead and simplify. Treat everyone in society well, and make that treatment come from society, and not some idiotic stick poking at employers who have completely different incentives and competencies.

crpatino4• 11 years ago

The problem is that businesses want to both not pay direct benefits for their workers and not pay taxes to fund government controlled benefits.

How about having unions, guilds and professional organizations provide the social safety net you cherish so much in the abstract. I am sure there would be many problems but at least there would be no doubt where the funding would come. "You deal with one of us, you deal with all of us. And if you play dirty we will make sure you don't get the service we provide at ANY price on this side of bankruptcy"

Florin_Andrei2• 11 years ago

Usually it's illegal, but the IRS is being destroyed by budget cuts and can no longer enforce the law.

A civilization so small you can drown it in a bathtub.

bernardlunn• 11 years ago

Can we please call BS on the sharing economy name. It is is the "squeeze cash out of spare personal resources economy" (resources being time, car, house etc).

gaius4• 11 years ago

It's also the screw-your-neighbour economy. If your little AirBnB money-spinner increases wear-and-tear on the common areas of the building, it's the other tenants who will pick up the costs of the extra maintenance. In time it will come to be seen as profoundly anti-social. Not to mention, if you're running a business you should be paying business rates and taxes... Remind me where is the "sharing"?

yummyfajitas• 11 years ago

If I leave town and rent out my flat, wear and tear on the elevator goes up relative to me not leaving town?

trhway2• 11 years ago

pretty much agree with sentiments and don't like or use Uber/AirBNB, yet one can't not notice that "sharing" economy rise was caused in most part because of the practically unsolvable problems in "traditional" economy - people do want to stay in normal housing instead of hotel chicken coups in tourist "ghetto"s, people do need reliable transportation from point A to point B - the functionality which existing taxi system has failed spectacularly and it has no way of fixing it (when medallions hit $1M it is become crystal clear that all incumbents are in for continuation of business as usual and nobody is interested in change). Uber/AirBNB are basically classical showcases of dialectic in application to economy (people who had "marxism"/"materialism" in their curriculum would recognize it immediately).

Spooky23• 11 years ago

You get to share authentic experiences with your hotel guest neighbors! Think of the opportunity!

Uber and similar services raise it to another level. Things like auto liability insurance are very 20th century.

dnissley• 11 years ago

It's the externalization economy.

makeitsuckless• 11 years ago

Nah, that's another layer of the smokescreen. Lift the veil and you'll find an all out war against the rights of the "little people", be it consumer rights, labor rights, what have you.

The sharing economy is to ordinary people what strip mining is to nature.

Delmania3• 11 years ago

Ecclesiastes 1:9: What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

Uber, Lyft, and the whole "sharing economy" is nothing more than another iteration of line balancing. Retails centers do this during the holiday seasons by hiring temp workers and call centers are always doing this.

I'll agree normal HR is not well tuned for quickly hiring large amounts of people, so the Uber model of deploying an app, and letting people "hire themselves" is interesting case study in ways to quickly ramp up your operations, but the I think enough has been said about how this is essentially exploitation of workers.

mc32• 11 years ago

I think this is a double edged sword. On the one hand things/resources can be easily shared among many people. This is good, fewer resources into supporting a population. It also allows people who seek marginal income increase to do do on a part time basis.

This I not good if the economy evolves to make this marginal income system into the main and default way foe people to engage into the economy -"a race to the bottom". It also puts son pressure on producers who must now adapt to the new status where big ticket items can be shared among many (vehicles, mowers, etc). Perhaps a move to higher quality higher priced lower volume.

The labor unit granularity would make these workers, on average, less valuable. And the advantage goes to the educated, more skilled.

This devolution into a person to person economy where the main beneficiary is the "platform" will not bode well for the average person.

maceo• 11 years ago

Before the industrial revolution we had serfs and artisans. As the factories absorbed both the serfs and the artisans, the serfs saw it as an upgrade, while the artisans resented the new way of life. Through workplace organization, which usually involved serious risks, working conditions improved for everybody and reached a certain equilibrium by the 1950's.

The lessons learned through workplace struggles in the last 150 years have been forgotten. The notion that "you should feel lucky just to have a job" has such a firm grip on the imagination of the American worker, that we've lost all sense of class consciousness and are accepting a return to serfdom without even putting up a fight. Today you might be an engineer with a comfortable job, but the 'modern workplace' will soon eat you up just like it did the artisans.

The Luddites of industrial England were not afraid of new technology. They smashed machines in the workplace to gain a better bargaining position and prove a point to capital. And today, being against the sort of arrangement that's sprung up around the on-demand workforce doesn't mean that you're against technology. For me, it means that I am for respecting the dignity of the worker and ensuring that the sacrifices our forefathers made were not done in vain. If technology can develop within those constraints, I'm all for it. Otherwise, I say smash the machines.

cgag2• 11 years ago

Private companies have hired planes to drop bombs on striking working coal miners: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Blair_Mountain

People should take a look at the list of "Major armed conflicts in American labor union history" at the bottom of the page and get a feel for how many people died for the more comfortable version of wage-slavery we have to day.

Chinjut• 11 years ago

I'm likely in agreement with you on the politics of this discussion. However, I will note, pedantically, that "the only time people have been bombed in america" is not a great way of putting it, given, e.g., the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

philip1209• 11 years ago

Thanks for the StaffJoy shout-out, Jeremy!

We're finishing up our first week of deployment with a real workforce and finding that automated shift scheduling that better fits supply to labor demand can save about 10% on labor costs, which is a huge amount. Modern workforces get better margins through efficiency and automation, and that creates the opportunity for a new generation of mathematically-driven workforce management tools like OnFleet, Instacart, and AnalyticsMD.

We're entering alpha testing with customers in the bay in the next two weeks - if you're interested in trying our product, shoot me an email - philip at staffjoy.com.

The Modern Workforce

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