The gig economy; where do I sign up?
I’ve been spending a lot of time on LinkedIn lately, partly because I became unemployed in January and would like to find some regular work; alongside a general hope of also generating some work as a freelancer.
Anyway, there is a lot of stuff on LinkedIn, as well as a lot of nonsense posting, which I’ve already taken to like a duck to water, writing my own articles about podcasting this, recycling that. It’s a pretty good place to engage in this sort of stuff.
But find a job?
That, I’m not so sure.
I saw something about the gig economy the other day, a little promo video, and all I thought was, oh my god, what is this bullshit?
Okay, I accept that this is the new economy; the way of the future. Screw yourself out of a stable income? Aid and abet billion dollar tech companies who show their true colours through creative tax avoidance (the delicious double Irish with dutch sandwich). Fantastic; it’s a bright future 😎
And of course I’m sneering and being a general smartarse because I am on the outside, and it’s easy for me to sneer and be a smartarse from the outside. If I was actually one of the more successful participants of this new economy then I would be making money, feeling grateful for it — and maybe even joining in the call for abandoning traditional models of work, where employers generally reward you with a vague impression of job security for making them look rosy at the AGM.
But I’m not . . . I’m a cynical shit without a job.
My general feeling now, growing over many months, is that corporations are using much of this bullshit tech-speak (as in ‘lean and agile’ – the most evil catch-cry of them all!) not only to appear relevant and modern, keeping up with the new giants, but also to normalize the ability to downsize in tough times their less glamorous employees without a right of reply — and then onboard (LinkedIn taught me that) a bunch of newbies when the cream starts rolling back in again; meanwhile, keeping their own jobs where it doesn’t make a bugger of difference if they are permanent or not because the bank will give them a home loan anyway, as long as they utter the right sequence of magical letters: C . . . E . . . Ohhhhhh (some reverb there!)
Anyway, the point of this article was to share a little story with you that I might actually now put up in my next post.
Consider this to be a bitter preamble.