Before places like Upwork you might have to found a consultancy and pay staff to manage the overhead and spend more time sourcing contracts where as Upwork handles that overhead and takes a cut, which is lower than having staff or doing it yourself. That's why people are driven to these platforms.
I'd argue that as anyone that is skilled labor, like the author, has the option of moving off of Upwork and doing things the old fashioned way even though it is more costly and laborious, whereas a gig worker, as I think of them, does not have the option at all. So while I don't think it's all the way there since a skilled worker has more leverage and optionality I admit that Upwork here still does have much too much power and is partly gigafying/commoditizing this work.
> skilled labor
tangent: i'm curious what you think about this:
https://twitter.com/arne__ness/status/1478805922306744320
https://twitter.com/faithfxl_wyfe/status/1478998605935558657
author is not a dev.
> Upwork provides a platform to get contracts but it's not quite the same as the auto priced marketplaces like Uber, Lyft, Doordash etc.
yes this is a great point that makes me reflect on the term 'gig', thanks for sharing it.
if the author was a dev contractor who was contracting through UpWork, i would agree completely with your statement about 'gigifying'. since he's not, i'd argue that this non-dev work is still part of the gigification because 1.) it's part of the shift where more and more administrative and creative labor, which was formerly structured as full-time (and in Europe, unionized) jobs, is being atomized and increasingly mediated through faceless unaccountable corporate platforms (where labor rights are shit on, exactly like in author's story), and 2.) one's reputation is stuck/held hostage on a third party platform (where things like author's story happen often [1]) who can essentially ban you and erase you (and your reputation/testimonials/positive feedback) anytime.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=upwork+banned+site:www.reddi...