Skip to main content

Behind the Gig economy.

The battle between push and pull is familiar to supply chains. For ages now, industries have produced goods they thought were relevant for the customer and then used networks of distributors and retailers to push these to the consumers. The apparent outcome of this is the massive scale of advertising that uses tactics to lure a customer base for the product. 
The shift to a pull-based supply chain seems more rational. One is where the production takes in the customer's demand before the show. Not only does that minimize the risk of product failure, but it also captures the market sentiment with greater accuracy. In other words, it caters to an existing demand rather than creating one for itself. This process is lean and profitable, except for a shortcoming; Production takes time.


During the early 90s, when the internet spread like wildfire, people almost immediately expected the internet business to take off. However, it was only after a decade and a massive dot com bubble that today, the technology is ripe for an indeed pull economic model. Now that our complete customer interaction has shifted to an online platform. It's worth the look at how services and products are planning to catch up.
Unlike the customer side, production is mainly a person-machine interaction; a gig economy exists in this niche. In some services like ride-sharing or beauty care, gig workers tend to do most of the jobs. Others, like parcel delivery, are part of the process.

The challenges in this sector are enormous. Since to maintain the level of customer service, gig workers must be in sync with machines. For an example of a 30 min pizza delivery model, roughly 60% of the time is given to the delivery personnel. This implies that the consumable takes less of the total process time than the logistics. Thus, over the past few years, executives have planned out incentives and pay structures that push the gig workers to toil in for those machine-like performances until they find a suitable machine to replace them. All of this makes a gig worker's job unhealthy and risky.

Given the plague of crippling unemployment economies, the gig sector has promising figures for the future. However, the nature of work is demanding and unforgiving. Given that tomorrow, millions will be gig workers, it's time legislation spare an eye to regulating corporations. The gig economy has actually helped many make a standard of living. Since gig workers tend to be from the lower strata of the employee, it is the only job available today for those without an education degree.
And that regulations would only push industries towards automation, making this scarier. It's tough to know when the quality of a job becomes a more pressing matter than having no job at all.


Popular posts from this blog

Election afterthoughts

The unfolding of the Indian election might have come as a surprise to many, for one is the BJP who steamrolled the campaign seasons with slogans of "400 par". While it remains 240 seats popular in a house of 520 members, a few stories should not go unnoticed. First, the BJP's popularity and the win for a third term is no ordinary feat. Only a few leaders of the past have managed such an elusive feat. This, indeed, is the trust that the brand Modi has built over the years. In politics, we often get acclimatized to the situations, in certain aspects too critical of it. When the young generation looked at Indira Gandhi's cabinet, they vowed never to again let such a solid mandate to a single party that its chief could declare an emergency, and no structures would be able to prevent that. This, however, ended up in fragmented colours in the Lok Sabha, the era of coalitions and surprise prime ministers. Needless to say, the horse-trading of MPs and the mindless corruption ...
dive in...

The Gems on Coursera

I found myself in a rare situation this April. Had things stuck to their schedule, I would have completed my graduation curriculum and would have been ticking off any college goer's dream check-list, which did include a few travel and adventure. But, the situation as of 2020 has a different story to tell. With no end to this quarantine insight, the check-list became an impossibility.  So I took the Coursera COVID offer for colleges and started my odyssey to various areas of studies, my mechanical engineering syllabi had prevented me from. So without much ado, here are the "Gems" on the courses platform, each one must give a shot at.  Model Thinking This course gives an unusual approach to what we have accepted as complex socio-political phenomena. With simple logical and mathematical principle, Prof. Scott E. Page recreates results which have puzzled global leaders. He argues that this approach to reality is a must for all in this 21st century, and I could not agree mo...
dive in...

Consulting Constulting

Consultants are the most rampant, yet the most sushed topic in corporate. There are enough consulting firms today, to make one wonder if we need so many of them. And if the conundrum of needing to hire consultants was not big enough, here comes the issue of what they actually do. Over the last few years, many in the media have reported consulting firms to have held too much power for far too long to have become corrupted. Firms have relied on shady practices to keep their business afloat and, on many occasions, have walked out without much consequences. However, I find the above conclusion misrepresenting, if not incorrect.  The need for consultants doesn't arise from corporate's need to implement change or resolve issues. Corporations today are locked in an environment of constant change, be it in business models, products or even markets. The law forbids two companies from coming together and promising on a "happy ever-after". The consequence of this is action and r...
dive in...