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High Score, Low Pay: Why the Gig Economy Loves Gamification (theguardian.com)
Ostracus writes: Using ratings, competitions and bonuses to incentivise workers isn't new -- but as I found when I became a Lyft driver, the gig economy is taking it to another level. [...] The language of choice, freedom, and autonomy saturate discussions of ride hailing. "On-demand companies are pointing the way to a more promising future, where people have more freedom to choose when and where they work," Travis Kalanick, the founder and former CEO of Uber, wrote in October 2015. "Put simply" he continued, "the future of work is about independence and flexibility." In a certain sense, Kalanick is right. Unlike employees in a spatially fixed worksite (the factory, the office, the distribution centre), rideshare drivers are technically free to choose when they work, where they work and for how long. They are liberated from the constraining rhythms of conventional employment or shift work. But that apparent freedom poses a unique challenge to the platforms' need to provide reliable, "on demand" service to their riders -- and so a driver's freedom has to be aggressively, if subtly, managed. One of the main ways these companies have sought to do this is through the use of gamification.
Simply defined, gamification is the use of game elements -- point-scoring, levels, competition with others, measurable evidence of accomplishment, ratings and rules of play -- in non-game contexts. Games deliver an instantaneous, visceral experience of success and reward, and they are increasingly used in the workplace to promote emotional engagement with the work process, to increase workers' psychological investment in completing otherwise uninspiring tasks, and to influence, or "nudge," workers' behaviour. This is what my weekly feedback summary, my starred ratings and other gamified features of the Lyft app did. There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that gamifying business operations has real, quantifiable effects. Target, the US-based retail giant, reports that gamifying its in-store checkout process has resulted in lower customer wait times and shorter lines. During checkout, a cashier's screen flashes green if items are scanned at an "optimum rate." If the cashier goes too slowly, the screen flashes red. Scores are logged and cashiers are expected to maintain an 88% green rating. In online communities for Target employees, cashiers compare scores, share techniques, and bemoan the game's most challenging obstacles.
Simply defined, gamification is the use of game elements -- point-scoring, levels, competition with others, measurable evidence of accomplishment, ratings and rules of play -- in non-game contexts. Games deliver an instantaneous, visceral experience of success and reward, and they are increasingly used in the workplace to promote emotional engagement with the work process, to increase workers' psychological investment in completing otherwise uninspiring tasks, and to influence, or "nudge," workers' behaviour. This is what my weekly feedback summary, my starred ratings and other gamified features of the Lyft app did. There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that gamifying business operations has real, quantifiable effects. Target, the US-based retail giant, reports that gamifying its in-store checkout process has resulted in lower customer wait times and shorter lines. During checkout, a cashier's screen flashes green if items are scanned at an "optimum rate." If the cashier goes too slowly, the screen flashes red. Scores are logged and cashiers are expected to maintain an 88% green rating. In online communities for Target employees, cashiers compare scores, share techniques, and bemoan the game's most challenging obstacles.
there's a book about this phenomenon, called freakonomics. it has interesting economics questions like, "why do drug dealers live with their mums?", despite something like a 25% death rate, and the answer turns out to be that they earn LESS money than if they went and worked for macdonalds, but they are attracted to the POSSIBILITY of becoming the "Drug Overlord". the big boss.
also just as interestingly, the moment they get a serious girlfriend, the researcher found that they quit immediately and... went to work for macdonald's. which leaves me really, really concerned as to why and how lyft and uber drivers are being psychologicall hoodwinked....
You doing "gig economy" means you can't do anything better. Period.
Freedom of employment is an illusion when everyone is blacklisted based on corporate need.
Points and merits are cheaper than hard cash. Duh.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I think it's in Tom Sawyer - he gets the kids to paint a fence for him fer nowt by making them think it's a game.
Diddit-de-doo, Diddit-de-dooooo, Diddit-de-doo, Diddly diddly diddly diddly doo doo
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's not gamification, it's micromanagement. It's simply reminding employees that big brother is always watching and don't you dare let your performance flag. If it were not tracked... if management had the decency to let employees motivate themselves that wouldn't be a bad thing. This is evil.
The hidden costs, as rtb61 mentioned, are also real: burnout, high turnover, and theft. I would add to that a huge loss in self-motivated improvement and in innovation. If you boss is riding your tail not only will you do the bare minimum to keep him off but when you see something that can be done better you've already spent all your shits hating your boss and your job. You won't have any to spare for helping others, recommending changes, or other optional, beneficial behaviors.
What makes a game fun is that if you fail, you aren't fired. You can learn from your mistakes, you can take break if you have a hard day, etc. As soon as they say "cashiers are expected to maintain an 88% green rating" all the fun vanishes. Not just fun and games anymore.
The latter example with cashier work shows that gamification is fine, so long as the game goals are reasonably achievable and in alignment with the goals of the employees. I assume most of us want to do a meaningful work, but often the work is globally meaningful, but on a day-to-day level it can seem pointless, because the result is far removed from the worker. For example, programmers hate writing docs and tests, because those things will be used in the future by some unknown people. Even if the programmer can intellectually understand the significance of docs and tests, there is no emotional reward in doing those things, therefore it feels just pointless. No amount of pay raise can increase the meaningfulness of the work, but it can improve tolerance of the meaninglessness.
I am pretty sure this comment section will have ample of examples on how gamification is used to exploit people, so yeah, there are risks.
I'm happy with my salary as an on-site fix-it-all, but I'm much more happy with helping others and gaining their thanks and appreciation.
I do volunteer work as a skydiving instructor, where I earn nothing but the joy of seeing my studens progress and develop, and it's even more rewarding than my day job. If I could live comfortably without doing anything for a living, I'd still do these things for fun.
Money has no emotional reward for me, and those who gain emotional reward from money tend to get stuck in addictive behaviours.
The problem with games is that you can create perverse incentives. You couple the game success elements with actual work goals and assume that people motivated to win game points will also wind up achieving the work goals. But if the rewards are tied to the game success elements (points, stars, etc) people often find out how to earn these elements without achieving the work goals.
Only those who claim to be smart buy into gamification, while it really is dumbing you down or keeping you dumb, tedious, and an added layer of bloat and management that acts as a deflection of real issues.
In Spain there is a saying that "you don't play with your food"
And it's not refered to do dirty things when you eat, but "food" means here the enough money/resources that allows you to live as usual.
The people don't respond in the same way when "play" (it's no such important, A limited thing in time where you are sparing time) and "serious things".
Loose a job could mean very hard changes in your life. It's not a play, so make the same level of "pressure" could make the people too much competitive. And yes.. too much is bad. They could completely forget the group, the ethics and the long term planning.
Says the ignorant asshole who blames victims. Stop watching Fox News, it's rotting your brain! Then you'll have more time to work hard at informing yourself about systemic poverty, why it's a govt. policy decision, and why you should get up off your ass and do something about it instead of whining about millennials or whatever they decide to call each generation who've got it worse than the previous ones.
Most of the Uber / Lyft drivers I've ridden with over the years do it part-time when they feel like it to make some extra money. These people are absolutely not in bad financial straits -- there's even a large number of older, mostly-retired folks in there who drive to (in part) have something to do. Now, you might be able to make an argument that this negatively affects the traditional taxi industry (to which I say, it's about goddamn time), but the majority of drivers themselves are doing just fine.
If you want to read a tidy science fiction on the topic of automation, then I strongly recommend Manna. You can read the story for free at the author's website.
they're mules. They collect money and hand over drugs for the actual dealers. They're more like cashiers than dealers, hence the low pay.
As for why they pick being a mule over McDonald's, well, every work in fast food? It sucks and it's demeaning. But yeah, when they get a "serious" girlfriend they're stuck trying to earn as much money as they can since "serious girlfriend" in this context usually means pregnant....
Anyway I've never been a big fan of that book. It's the same one that said crime went down because we legalized abortion.
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And the accomplishments are measured in money earned. I do not need another metric.
The things we should really fear from tech are not direct future threats like "killer-AI", but very slow and deliberate enslavement through technology. Watched, monitored and measured every minute of the day for conformance, with slow exclusion or impoverishment hanging threateningly over us.
cashiers lieing to up sell extended warranty's is an bad thing.
That doesn't tip properly. If a driver is doing a great job most people will tip. Hell I am a cheap bastard but even I believe in tipping well for good service.
You do know there are other apps out there besides uber, competition works just fine. If you don't like Uber then don't use them, I have nothing against them but i prefer the other guys. If you don't have competition then there are other questions you should be asking.
Some executive needs to be taken 'round back and beaten. Severely.
How nice that Target's goal is to make the shopping experience as impersonal as possible. ``Don't engage the customer in idle chit chat, talk about the weather, etc... And definitely, don't make eye-contact... that'll slow down your scanning. You'll be penalized.'' Is this how you planned on winning back customers after releasing all that customer data a few years ago? Did you hire the asshat that developed the plan to limit poultry inspectors to only a second or so to inspect a chicken for signs of disease?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
If one can avoid paying their bills, then they can pick and choose, else homeless is unavoidable
Is that why every time I go to Target, the cashier spends 30 seconds collecting my purchases before scanning anything? Gamification is fucking poisonous.
This is what a slave-wage economy looks like. They obviously hate us for our freedumbs !
I drove for Lyft for a short period of time .. interesting to say the least.
At least they are relying on their drivers desire to do a better job by constantly sending text messages, emails, in app popups to try and get drivers to never decline a trip, and chastising them with "it's better for the community" messages when they don't take trips or their ratings go down.
That's all well and good,except it flies in the face of the reality of driving for them, that is, only accepting trips that are close, only working high demand areas, only working when there's a fare multiplier in effect.
e.g. what's good for the company isn't necessarily good for the driver .. she is not an employee, yet they expect her to act like one.
The OP was speaking from the driver's POV, not the rider
Somebody please tell me how to gamify dating. The methods I'm currently using aren't working, I never get a high score!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The driver I had a few weeks ago had an electric car, he only drives a peak price times and knows which parts of the city to hang out in. He tracks everything on his lap top in Google docs and shares it with his group of friends. He works a little more than 35 hours a week but that work starts the moment he leaves his home. He starts slightly earlier than most commuters and ends later but has two long breaks in the day and is home when his kids finish school. As a new immigrant to Canada his profit was over 5k/month.
Just look at what happened during the 2007 TARP program. The US government was bought off to take toxic assets off banks hands and hand them over to the tax payer. The loans to the banks were made a ridiculous rate. Basically, if you believe in capitalism, then the banks should have sold off stocks based on market demand. Not some artificial price agreed upon by bankers and government officials. Even the loans given to "help out delinquent" taxpayers were done not to keep the person in his home, but to keep the banks receiving cash flow. If the government was interested in helping out the people, then the loans should have gone to the individual, who might decide to dump his mortgage and pay rent elsewhere. The law is full of all sorts of deals where rich can take over property via "imminent domain" laws, but these don't work the other way around.
The same thing happens with bankruptcy court. Big companies with strong ties to government get time to reorganize their debts and get out of unfavorable contracts.
pay is so low and unpredictable, they must always be working
Please don't try to inject your MGTOW bullshit here. Thanks!
Sometimes it helps to avoid euphemisms, and this is one of those cases.
People tethered to remote machines for their instructions and having to prostutute their human-ness by being 'nice' to many random strangers are SERVANTS.If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's not a pony.
How about they start dropping some loot ? I've always said the carrot works better than the stick.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
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