Gigged Page 2

  If SXSW was the high school prom of the startup world, TechCrunch was its cheerleader. The tech blog trumpeted each “Uber for X” app’s arrival with headlines such as:

  POSTMATES AIMS TO BE THE UBER OF PACKAGES—AND MORE

  WOULD YOU USE AN UBER FOR LAWNCARE?

  BLACKJET, THE UBER OF PRIVATE JETS, RELEASES ITS IPHONE APP

  SO I FLEW IN AN “UBER FOR TINY PLANES”

  MEET STAT, THE STARTUP THAT WANTS TO BE UBER FOR MEDICAL TRANSPORT

  Startups made Uber for food. Uber for alcohol. Uber for cleaning. Uber for courier services. Uber for massages. Uber for grocery shopping. Uber for car washes. Even Uber for weed. Uber itself hinted that it would take its business model far beyond transportation: “Uber is a cross between lifestyle and logistics,” Uber CEO Travis Kalanick told Bloomberg. “Lifestyle is gimme what I want and give it to me right now and logistics is physically delivering it to the person that wants it … once you’re delivering cars in five minutes, there’s a lot of things you can deliver in 5 minutes.”11 The presumption was that because Uber’s business model worked for calling cars, it could work for any other service, too.

  By the end of 2013, 13 startups that described themselves as “Uber for” something had raised venture capital, according to TechCrunch’s funding database. And by 2014, New York Magazine would count an astounding number of “Uber for X” startups—14 separate companies—in the laundry category alone.

  Eventually the true independence of the micro-entrepreneurs these businesses relied upon would be challenged in court; workers who felt exploited rather than emancipated by on-demand labor would complicate an otherwise utopian narrative; and what became known as the “gig economy” would attract attention to the ways in which the rest of the economy was unprepared for the future of work.

  But at the height of “Uber for X,” few people in the startup world batted an eye. As the then-CEO of the odd job–marketplace TaskRabbit put it, the gig economy was on track to “revolutionize the world’s labor force.”12

  CHAPTER 2

  NO SHIFTS. NO BOSS. NO LIMITS.

  By the end of 2014, Uber had launched in Paris, Sydney, and London, and its momentum was so strong that Fast Company ran a story headlined “How Uber Conquered the World.”1 The five-year-old startup was launching in a new city nearly every other day. Not just in global cities, but in Flint, Michigan; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Salt Lake City, Utah—places where cabs have never been prevalent.

  Because Uber had few brick-and-mortar offices and no cars, what it launched in each city was essentially a marketing campaign that targeted two distinct audiences: drivers and riders. To the latter, Uber offered free rides—as many as a full two weeks-worth in Kansas City, Missouri, and up to 20 rides in Salt Lake City, Utah—and it partnered with local celebrities, in one case inviting Brandon Knight, a basketball star in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to take the first ride in that city.

  To drivers, it sold an idea that was even more powerful than free stuff, which it summarized on a billboard strategically posted near the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s office in New York City: “No shifts. No boss. No limits.”

  These six words embodied the basic pitch with which virtually every gig economy company would lure workers in the years that followed. Freedom from the tyranny of the punch clock, the autocratic boss, the finite wages and limited opportunities of the 9-to-5 job. Driving for Uber meant that you were free. Not only free, but an entrepreneur.

  The company didn’t rely merely on billboards to spread the message. It set up an affiliate marketing program. Drivers earned a bonus, usually around $200, if they recruited a friend, a bonus structure that would soon become standard elsewhere in the gig economy.2 For some, these bonuses were another appealing aspect of the job. Workers could use them to simultaneously supplement their income from fares and position themselves to others as small business owners, entrepreneurs, and members of the tech class. For a nominal cost, Uber had created a remarkably enthusiastic salesforce.

  That’s how Mamdooh Husein became an Uber driver.

  A 28-year-old waiter in Kansas City whose mother and everyone else calls “Abe,” he was initially skeptical when one of his coworkers told him about the ride-hailing app. Abe had lived in Kansas City for most of his life, and he had never once had an occasion to take a cab. He couldn’t see how what was essentially a taxi business could work in the city, or how his friend could make the $500 per weekend in profits that he’d reported. He wanted a demonstration.

  After work, Abe and his de facto recruiter drove to Kansas City’s main street—a modern downtown strip that looks like an outdoor shopping mall—and turned on the Uber app. Almost immediately, Uber started routing jobs to the phone, pinging as though golden coins were being collected in a video game.

  Maybe Uber wasn’t a scam after all, thought Abe. He would know, as he had fallen for scams before. Most recently, he’d spent thousands of dollars on a pyramid scheme that had promised to help him become a millionaire.

  In 2009, he joined a club created by Kevin Trudeau, a famous TV pitchman and the author of a series of books that includes Natural Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About and Recession Cures “They” Don’t Want You to Know About (there were “debt cures,” “free money,” and a “weight loss cure” that “they” didn’t want you to know about, too). The Trudeau secret that ultimately sent Abe into a financial tailspin was a 14-CD audio lecture called Your Wish Is Your Command: How Anyone Can Make Millions.3

  Trudeau advised listeners that they could become millionaires by joining an elite network of individuals that Abe believed included the president of the United States. It bore an impressive name with an intoxicating acronym—the Global Information Network (GIN). At the top of GIN, Trudeau explained, were people in the “inside circle” who ran the show. At the bottom were lowly non-millionaires, those paying to gather the information they needed to advance through “levels.” Advancing through these levels, of course, required recruiting others to the club. And recruiting others to the club involved selling them “tools,” mostly audiobooks, to educate them about GIN and the law of attraction.

  Abe didn’t have a girlfriend or many close friends. He’d been raised by a Muslim stepfather and a Christian mother, and he had, on his stepfather’s insistence, been strictly religious growing up—fasting (or at least pretending to fast) during Ramadan and getting up early to pray. Since rejecting Islam, he had spent less time with his parents. The house Abe lived in, which he told me he had purchased after saving for years, felt almost as empty as his life. It contained little furniture, aside from an elaborate security setup (“I live in the hood,” Abe said). He was frugal to the point that he slept on an air mattress.

  GIN fed Abe’s ambition and told him that he could be rich and important, without laboring through new education or taking orders from managers who made him feel small. Among its lessons, it advised listeners to follow the “law of attraction,” which involved the same philosophy promoted by the mega-bestseller The Secret: that thinking positive or negative thoughts brings positive or negative experiences into one’s life. That by believing something, you make it happen.

  Abe strove obsessively to join GIN’s inside circle. To make it look like he’d met his goal, he signed up fake people, paying special “reduced” promotion fees of $150 on their behalf.

  The inner circle, though, never materialized. As one judge would eventually put it, Trudeau was “deceitful to the core.”4 False claims he made while marketing another best-selling book, The Weight Loss Cure “They” Don’t Want You to Know About, which encouraged readers to eat just 500 calories per day, would ultimately result in a $37 million penalty from the FTC and a ten-year prison sentence. GIN, it would eventually be revealed, was a $110 million pyramid scheme that had scammed 35,000 members.

  After GIN, Abe found himself deeper in debt. By his own estimation, he hadn’t paid back any credit in ten years. In the years after he joined the club, he was sued
for debt. He failed to pay his taxes, and a lien was placed on his house. All of which helps explain why he was cautious about new business opportunities.

  The Uber pitch felt disturbingly familiar to Abe. The company’s marketing suggested that he could become financially independent—an entrepreneur rather than a mere worker—and induced him to recruit friends.

  Uber had created a Delaware-based subsidiary for subprime auto loans, Xchange Leasing, which in 2015 advertised “ALL CREDIT LEVELS ARE ELIGIBLE TO APPLY,” in all caps. After drivers signed up, the company would deduct their weekly car payments directly from their Uber earnings.5 In New York, Uber for years referred drivers to dealers who offered similar subprime loans (the company has since shut down Xchange Leasing and ended its subprime car leasing program in New York).6 As it recruited new drivers, the startup could sound a lot like a persistent pitchman for these financing options. A potential driver who had submitted his phone number to Uber could, for instance, expect a string of text messages like this real example from New York City:

  Monday 8:28 AM

  Get started this week! Your next step is to make an appointment to visit the Uber office. Earn $6,000 in your first month—GUARANTEED.

  Monday 12:09 PM

  Still need a wheelchair accessible vehicle (WAV) class before renewing your license? Schedule a FREE morning, afternoon, or evening class.

  Tuesday 9:51 AM

  New/Used vehicles for rent & lease-to-own from Fast Track Leasing! NEW SPECIAL OFFERS.

  Wednesday 8:02 AM

  Your next step is to make an appointment to visit the Uber office. Get started today & earn $6,000 in your first month—GUARANTEED.

  Thursday 9:25 AM

  Ready to start driving? Come visit us at our new location to get started!

  Friday 8:02 AM

  There is no better time to start driving! Make $6k in your first month—GUARANTEED.

  Friday 11:23 AM

  Get started this weekend! Book a rental with Buggy TLC Rentals this weekend & get $50 off your 1st week from Buggy.

  Uber pitched aggressively, set lofty expectations, and encouraged drivers to invest money in renting or leasing a car up to its standards. It made promises that were sometimes hard to believe. But as Abe drove around Kansas City with his coworker, and the app continued to ping with real ride requests from real people, he started to believe that it really was a great opportunity.

  “I started seeing pings left and right,” Abe remembers. “I started saying, wow, there are a lot of people who use the service. Maybe there is some money to be made.” Later that week, Abe signed up.

  * * *

  People have long dreamed of escaping the rigidity and conformity of their jobs. But the pitch that Uber used to recruit drivers—independence, flexibility, and freedom—seemed especially well suited to the preferences of a new demographic that had become the object of fascination, even obsession, for virtually every marketer, trend spotter, and sociologist concerned with generational shifts: the millennial.

  Survey-taking millennials have ranked personal development and flexibility above cash bonuses; stated higher expectations for working their own hours; and have rated work-life balance as more essential than any other job quality, including positive work environment, job security, and interesting work.

  These types of findings (often best read in the voice David Attenborough uses to narrate wildlife documentaries) have led to widespread accusations that millennials (“a fascinating species”) are conspiring to upend the workplace: “The 9 to 5 job may soon be a relic of the past, if Millennials have their way,” begins one column from Forbes.7 Another, from the New York Times, asks, “Are millennials—those born from roughly 1980 to 2000—about to fundamentally change companies for the better? Yes, if companies dare to listen.”8 The Washington Post framed the same idea a bit more cynically: “This pampered, over-praised, relentlessly self-confident generation … is flooding the workplace,” its columnist wrote. “They’ll make up 75 percent of the American workforce by 2025—and they’re trying to change everything.”9

  But the survey results that suggested millennials thought about work in a drastically different way than their parents weren’t exactly a mystery. Let’s pretend you’re a millennial (unless you are, like the largest segment of the American workforce, actually a millennial, in which case you can just be yourself).10 Now, do you like flexibility and freedom at work?

  You do! It’s not exactly a shocking result. But compared to previous generations of young people who might have also desired more independence, you, a millennial with professional skills, can more easily discard your full-time, traditional job—thanks to the internet.

  There’s a classic economic explanation for this:11 People decide to join law firms, medical practices, and other companies, rather than sell their skills directly, when the cost of doing business—making sales, handling finances, communicating with customers—is higher than the bump in pay they might receive by striking out on their own. With the internet, many of these costs have become lower or even disappeared. Few people need a receptionist if they have voicemail and an email inbox (and those who do can hire a virtual personal assistant for around $5 an hour). Software programs handle bookkeeping, and for many professionals, working online negates the need to rent an office.

  Earning an income without a traditional job simply doesn’t require as big an investment as it once did. And as gig economy platforms began to focus on all sorts of white-collar professions, they helped clear one of the last big obstacles to working independently: a way to find work. The idea of independent work is appealing whether you are young or old, and though the gig economy is often portrayed as an invention of the young, both demographics joined. Between 46% and 60% of young people in Europe and the United States do some type of independent work, but they make up only about a quarter of the independent workforce.12

  Curtis Larson, a 24-year-old programmer living in New York City, is one of them.

  Before Curtis joined the gig economy, he walked each morning from his apartment to a traditional desk job. It was a good job, located in a high-rise skyscraper, that he’d been happy to line up before graduating from college in 2013, two years prior. But he couldn’t stand it.

  On a typical day, he finished his work within two or three hours. And then he spent the rest of the day desperately searching for something else—anything else—to do. His company wanted him present in the office but didn’t provide enough work to fill the time.

  At first, he proposed additional work projects. But it would take days for teams and supervisors to sign off on them, and even then, they’d usually be rejected. So he resorted to spending most of the hours between lunch and five o’clock reading every article on the tech forum Hacker News and watching Twitch, a website that broadcasts live feeds of other people playing video games. Less than two years into his professional career, Curtis was bored out of his mind and wasting a large part of his waking time.

  One freezing January night, on his walk home, he decided he’d had enough of corporate employment. That night, he set his alarm for 6:45 a.m., three hours before his workday started. When it buzzed the next morning, he carried his laptop computer to a nearby Starbucks, where he began working on a website he called “Crontent.” The site would aggregate social media posts from Twitter, Facebook, and other networks into a single daily digest, so that a user could see all of the important news their friends had posted in one place. Its name was a play on the words “content” and “cron,” the technical term for a programmed task that automatically repeats every day.

  It was a terrible name. Most people who weren’t programmers wouldn’t get the joke. But that wasn’t a problem, because Curtis didn’t really plan for Crontent to have users. He hated selling, marketing, and advertising, which was part of what had made coding attractive in the first place. By building Crontent, he hoped to demonstrate to startups that he had serious skills.

  After his morning Starbucks stop,
he went to his day job. There, after finishing his work for the day, he scanned TechCrunch and Hacker News for startups that might have use for his abilities. This became his daily routine.

  Weeks later, during this daily scan, a different kind of startup caught his eye. “Help build the world’s engineering department,” it advertised on its website.

  He looked more closely. It seemed the site, called Gigster, wasn’t looking for employees to help build the world’s biggest engineering department. Instead, it wanted independent contractors, or “remote talent,” who could work on their own schedules. “The nature of work is changing,” the promo text read. “In the future, companies will leverage remote talent.”13

  While almost anyone could drive a car for Uber, Gigster had applied the gig economy strategy to software development, an area of expertise notoriously scarce. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by 2020, there will be 1.4 million computer science jobs, but only 400,000 computer science graduates to fill them.14 Which is why mere interns at companies like Facebook and Google make a higher wage than the average American worker.15

  Gigster was successful partly because it was so expensive for companies to hire developers as full-time employees. It provided companies with a staff that they could pay per project, without worrying about building out elaborate perks like free meals and on-site dry cleaning that had become standard on tech company campuses.

  Curtis had worked as “remote talent” once before, though he thought of the work as “freelance,” which sounded less grand. During the summer before he left for university, he’d designed websites in his hometown on the eastern shore of Maryland. But that had been a way to make tuition money—he had never considered freelancing to be a career. He’d always imagined that he’d get a full-time job after college. Still, he was just bored enough to give Gigster a shot.