Dismantling through Platforms:
A recent trend of design jobs advertising “happy to work with individuals seeking flexible hours” or “position offers flexibility for individuals returning to the profession” sounds as if the profession has suddenly found its conscience for returning mothers or egalitarian duty towards part time students and young entrepreneurs! On the contrary this is Deliveroo-Uber, Pay-as-you-Go, No-strings-Attached employment at its best. The success of Deliveroo and Uber has only demonstrated that labour market can be fragmented further where through a platform, an employer can hire almost on an hourly or weekly basis with each individual in direct competition with the other. Obviously, this trend of dismantling existing laws is registered strongest in “civilised” world where there are necessary legal and constitutional mechanisms / processes to check and assert social justice, not so much in places where hire and fire is an accepted law of the land.
A Platform has become the new guillotine (Focault, Discipline and Punish), an invisible mechanism that shifts the locus of the act from the doer to the machine. A symbol that represents market justice and assists in management of guilt / liability / accountability.
Contradictions in Relevance:
Now unfortunately this trend has aligned with my own rather strategic decision to not comply with bullshit and become self-employed. So as I continue my social experiment of living the dream of borderline zero-hours employee, I am forced with every passing day to think of being relevant for my employers. But interestingly if I am part of this Deliveroo-Design it is absolutely essential that
1) my employer is able to maintain me as dispensable / replaceable ie. Someone else should be able to pick where I left ie. My only contribution should ideally be restricted to time.
2) my employer is able to quantify my value purely based on time spent.
This is in contradiction to my inclination to make myself relevant through design and ingenuity, instead it places me and others like me in a position where we maintain relevance through hourly rate and speed.
Mitigation through Specialisations:
So to work around this, most people try to mitigate this erosion of hourly rate through specialisations. Specialisation through knowing tools or through knowing bureaucratic processes. Some invest time into accruing various alphabets after their names like Boy Scout Badges that will ensure the employer of their credentials. But believe it or not platforms catch-up and soon even if one can build a billion Revit families and have all the acronyms of professional excellence covered, someone will still be cheaper than you.
So when one of my employing practises started an enabling discussions on how “we” (their practise) could be more relevant, I brought up the possibility of specialisation and training the workforce to transition into more updated BIM tools.
Resistance through UnSpecialisation:
But it was only a matter of time when the conversation leaned towards someone else out there being cheaper (offices charging lower fees) or faster or socially /politically connected to the client. At that point a close friend retorted, no! we don’t specialise. Another joined in saying we could diversify. Ofcourse this was a special group of people who have consolidated together in one such office. Me joining them has been a conscious decision, even if it means being part of the informal labour market. Back to the conversation, slowly a possibility was formulated…we become unique and NOT specialised. Meaning, if we specialise we will still be a part of a labour pool that sits in some vague classification that says knowledge of Revit, experience of Planning process in UK etc. So in case one such individual leaves the company, the product will still get delivered uninfluenced by his / her presence or absence (dispensability), whereas if someone who uniquely engages with design leaves the company the output is influenced. There is a conspicuous change in what will be produced…so we diversify, we become even more aggressive with design, we blur boundaries between departments of urban design, architecture, graphics and interior design…we pick tools of sketching, historical data, arts, music and everything that has been marginalised by the present market of production of space…we become Platypus.
P.S despite the grim picture I build of my self-employed experience, it certainly is not as financially taxing as someone who works for Deliveroo or Uber. The pressure to innovate and be relevant is certainly not as acute as, if I were a musician playing in the tube with a 3 second window to make my pitch and come with a new tune the next day. Day to day life is not filled with as much insecurities as someone at the shopping tills who feels the wave of automation. Ofcourse not a day passes by when I don't feel a peculiar hint of angst with regards to the immediate future but for now I am protected by my privileges.
A recent trend of design jobs advertising “happy to work with individuals seeking flexible hours” or “position offers flexibility for individuals returning to the profession” sounds as if the profession has suddenly found its conscience for returning mothers or egalitarian duty towards part time students and young entrepreneurs! On the contrary this is Deliveroo-Uber, Pay-as-you-Go, No-strings-Attached employment at its best. The success of Deliveroo and Uber has only demonstrated that labour market can be fragmented further where through a platform, an employer can hire almost on an hourly or weekly basis with each individual in direct competition with the other. Obviously, this trend of dismantling existing laws is registered strongest in “civilised” world where there are necessary legal and constitutional mechanisms / processes to check and assert social justice, not so much in places where hire and fire is an accepted law of the land.
A Platform has become the new guillotine (Focault, Discipline and Punish), an invisible mechanism that shifts the locus of the act from the doer to the machine. A symbol that represents market justice and assists in management of guilt / liability / accountability.
Contradictions in Relevance:
Now unfortunately this trend has aligned with my own rather strategic decision to not comply with bullshit and become self-employed. So as I continue my social experiment of living the dream of borderline zero-hours employee, I am forced with every passing day to think of being relevant for my employers. But interestingly if I am part of this Deliveroo-Design it is absolutely essential that
1) my employer is able to maintain me as dispensable / replaceable ie. Someone else should be able to pick where I left ie. My only contribution should ideally be restricted to time.
2) my employer is able to quantify my value purely based on time spent.
This is in contradiction to my inclination to make myself relevant through design and ingenuity, instead it places me and others like me in a position where we maintain relevance through hourly rate and speed.
Mitigation through Specialisations:
So to work around this, most people try to mitigate this erosion of hourly rate through specialisations. Specialisation through knowing tools or through knowing bureaucratic processes. Some invest time into accruing various alphabets after their names like Boy Scout Badges that will ensure the employer of their credentials. But believe it or not platforms catch-up and soon even if one can build a billion Revit families and have all the acronyms of professional excellence covered, someone will still be cheaper than you.
So when one of my employing practises started an enabling discussions on how “we” (their practise) could be more relevant, I brought up the possibility of specialisation and training the workforce to transition into more updated BIM tools.
Resistance through UnSpecialisation:
But it was only a matter of time when the conversation leaned towards someone else out there being cheaper (offices charging lower fees) or faster or socially /politically connected to the client. At that point a close friend retorted, no! we don’t specialise. Another joined in saying we could diversify. Ofcourse this was a special group of people who have consolidated together in one such office. Me joining them has been a conscious decision, even if it means being part of the informal labour market. Back to the conversation, slowly a possibility was formulated…we become unique and NOT specialised. Meaning, if we specialise we will still be a part of a labour pool that sits in some vague classification that says knowledge of Revit, experience of Planning process in UK etc. So in case one such individual leaves the company, the product will still get delivered uninfluenced by his / her presence or absence (dispensability), whereas if someone who uniquely engages with design leaves the company the output is influenced. There is a conspicuous change in what will be produced…so we diversify, we become even more aggressive with design, we blur boundaries between departments of urban design, architecture, graphics and interior design…we pick tools of sketching, historical data, arts, music and everything that has been marginalised by the present market of production of space…we become Platypus.
P.S despite the grim picture I build of my self-employed experience, it certainly is not as financially taxing as someone who works for Deliveroo or Uber. The pressure to innovate and be relevant is certainly not as acute as, if I were a musician playing in the tube with a 3 second window to make my pitch and come with a new tune the next day. Day to day life is not filled with as much insecurities as someone at the shopping tills who feels the wave of automation. Ofcourse not a day passes by when I don't feel a peculiar hint of angst with regards to the immediate future but for now I am protected by my privileges.
