Yes, we found this incredibly frustrating when trying to find a house cleaner. Everyone's optimizing to have the lowest bid for those sites that give you 4-5 quotes with little to differentiate them but price. There are people who could maybe offer better service for a higher price, but the gig sites totally optimize against that.[1]

[1] I'll plug the folks we ended up finding, who are awesome: https://www.maidsinblack.com.

> I think most of the other services offered this way can really be circumvented by differentiating yourself as better than the gig workers.

Do you have any evidence to back up this thought, or are you postulating that the world should be this way?

If you're looking for evidence to the contrary, the article on which you commented has some anecdotes about how it is no longer possible to circumvent these services.

>The title is pretty awful, but when the gig marketplace model devalues your work so much - why participate in it?

Because you need to put food on the table, and many industries and jobs are eroding and people are forced to go for desperate BS gigs.

Not everybody is a computer programmer having "offers" from "recruiters" and taking their pick. Or can even afford (or has the capacity) to go back to school.

> The title is pretty awful, but when the gig marketplace model devalues your work so much

Why do you say that? You said yourself the model these apps use "devalue[s] [their] work so much." Given these people were already poor before this model, and these apps devalue their work further, the title seems apt.

> but when the gig marketplace model devalues your work so much - why participate in it?

> I understand Uber & Lyft are the exception here, they really have tanked the finances of traditional cab drivers. On the other hand, I think most of the other services offered this way can really be circumvented by differentiating yourself as better than the gig workers.

Because you're forced participate, since that's where the employers for your profession are:

>> But this industry has, until recently, operated largely informally, with jobs secured by word-of-mouth. That’s changing, as employers are increasingly turning to Uber-like services to find nannies, housecleaners and other care workers.

>> ...

>> This was a common complaint among care workers we interviewed: that their industry is being flooded with people who are new to care work, who see it as supplementary income rather than as a profession and undercut their wages.

>> Another woman in Atlanta told us that her years of experience were devalued by parents who had access to a huge number of potential nannies. “It’s like, this is my bread and butter!” she said. “I’m not working for no nine, 10 dollars an hour. Those kind of people want to undermine your faith in your ability.”

There's also this part: "This was a common complaint among care workers we interviewed: that their industry is being flooded with people who are new to care work, who see it as supplementary income rather than as a profession and undercut their wages."