What is the gig economy and what does it mean for our careers? Answers to these questions are being sought by Nikolai Dubinin, host of the Industry 4.0 YouTube channel.
This is not the first time in the history of mankind that a new technology is crowding out old businesses. The most famous example is Henry Ford’s creation of production based on the assembly line. Humanity then received a non-stop stream of mass product. Today, if you want to buy clothes, you will go to the store or to the website of this store, and not to the tailor, as it was before the assembly line.
So what is the gig economy and what does it have to do with it?
The gig economy is a piecework economy, a side job economy, or a freelance economy. It is profitable for companies to hire employees for one-time projects, and for a person not to sit all day in the office, but to receive payment for the amount of work done.
It looks like outsourcing, but it’s not quite it. The gig economy is the evolution of outsourcing. Digital technologies have replaced a person: no need to look for a taxi, call, find a courier or the same plumber through the housing office. All this is done by algorithms. And if you need a master, the program will find where it is closer or cheaper.
Chatbots in job search services help you find the best way to earn money – for example, an assistant at Avito Rabota. They are interested in the desired type of employment (work or part-time work), registration, age, gender and location. The algorithm analyzes all the data and, based on user behavior – that is, how similar users behave – suggests vacancies to which they applied. If we talk about temporary employment, then these are, as a rule, vacancies for taxi drivers, couriers, and cleaners. That is, the employer and the employee have something like a Tinder story: based on some parameters, a “match” happens. And then the company looks at whether its employee is satisfied with the quality of the work performed.
In addition to “routine” professions, new services provide an opportunity to earn extra money for highly qualified specialists with unique skills. For example, corporations and state-owned companies post their vacancies on the Professionals 4.0 platform. They are looking for talented professionals, each of which has its own rating and assessments on the platform based on the results of projects.
Who can become a “professional 4.0”:
- developers of various stacks;
- mobile developers;
- Data Scientist;
- business analytics;
- architects;
- designers;
- financiers;
- lawyers;
- journalists;
- engineers.
Many professionals agree that the gig economy is the future. For example, the head of Yandex.Services, Maxim Borisov, cites the following advantages of such a system:
Perhaps in the future, such on-demand services will have their own educational centers to prepare people of the required qualifications for themselves.
The development of such services will lead to the emergence of a more civilized market. Reduced job search time. Today, searching for a job in the mass market takes about 15 days: a person corresponds, goes to interviews, and draws up documents. But with the help of services like Avito Jobs, people can find work and part-time jobs in a matter of hours.
Subscribe also to the Trends Telegram channel and stay up to date with current trends and forecasts about the future of technology, economics, education and innovation.