| > People need to do more research when they think about taking on these gig economy jobs full time. I also think "they do" - but on the other hand, do not forget the human nature. No amount of researching, reading it or hearing it equals to living it yourself. Last year I accepted a semi-gig job - not in the current "gig economy" sense such as Uber - but I created a combination of working for a startup for preset amount of hours (less than 1/2 month, red flag 1), working for a post-paid client on-demand (this is cool, accept or reject any project as you wish), and working for a pre-paid client on-nonrejectable-demand (red flag 2). At first, it looked great, [the hour rate] x 160 hours = excellent monthly salary! But then you find out it isn't 160 hours, there's more. After putting in X billable hours of work, you have to issue invoices, study ever-changing laws, file taxes, yada-yada adding non-billable hours. And sometimes there aren't even those 160 hours, all three clients want their hours/projects/work packages in the same week and don't have any of the work for the rest of the month... And then, it also isn't a salary, it is a gross revenue. So subtract all the insurances, taxes (even those that employer pays in a standard employment), your own hardware, travel costs... ----- BUT!
Even with all the downsides, sleepless nights and opportunity costs, I would still choose to go through that again. It is like having a HDD crash or dating a borderline girlfriend. You can do all the research in the world and still think you are the special snowflake who don't need to back up your data or that you are the captain-save-a-girl who will magically erase all the psychological issues and self-harm behavior by the sheer power of your love (true story), only to find out that: - your HDD is suddenly not showing up in the system and you will spend 3 days of manually recovering and viewing each and every file through various obscure recovery tools; and you will ever since back up your data vigorously at geographically separated locations - the mirroring behavior and idealization/devaluation cycle is real and while one day you are the best mate in the world, the next day, while you are riding your oxytocin high, you are called the worst incompatible personality in the world, "never see me again", spend your night crying in the corner, only to be greeted with "sometimes I say things I don't mean, get back to me immediately, or I will kill myself" on the third day; and you will ever since bail out at any of the slightest sign of cluster B personality disorder. ---- I don't see accepting the "gig-economy" with low payout as not doing your research, but rather as a school fee for getting a valuable lesson in your life... You can tell that to people 100 times, but when they live it once, their eyes will open. |