Oh, you flourishing gig economy, what are we going to do with you

I was on fieldnation for the past year. The key word here is "was" I am here to tell you about all the corks and nuances I discovered after completing 80 WOs

Fieldnation and work market are really the same thing in my opinion. Slightly different rules, but the same buyers.

First, the good

They let you have all the freedom a gig worker could ever dream of. Take a month off or work 20 hours a day, it is really up to you. No notice to give, no asking anyone for schedules. It is all up to you.

The pay can also be good, if this was all you were doing, $600-$1000 a week is not out of the question. If you are a skilled low voltage technician with a good bit of networking and host configuration knowledge.

It is also a good way to meet recurring buyers, if you impress buyers they can and have contacted me to work outside the platforms.

Now, why I "was" working on these platforms

The number one most horrible thing is the often total lack of humanity. What I mean is every single time you do a job, you are risking everything you have worked for. The rules of fieldnation are so strict, if you firesale one time, as everyone does occasionally, you can be banned forever.

This never happened to me. I actually didn't mind it, it forced me to adopt strategies that worked every time, but it leads into the real reason I have basically quit.

Stress

The amount of stress involved in lining up all these WOs, making sure you 100% will not have any issues, will never have to come back another time because you ran out of something. The talking to people who do not speak English. It is so taxing, I just hate it.

You are essentially on call 24/7 for no pay. If a WO comes up, you must apply or accept within 20 minutes to even have a chance of getting it.
They also have the "route" system. Where companies take and put you in a pool of literally 300 other techs and then they "route" them all the same WO at the same time. You must accept or decline these within 5 minutes or someone else will jump on it.

Often for routes you do not even get to read the statement of work. If you do, then by the time you hit accept it will be gone. Extremely frustrating.

So, there is the stress, there is also the distrust.

As I was saying, "if you firesale one time you can be banned" this ties into how literally no one you talk to will trust you to even be able to tie your shoes.

They will assume you are totally unqualified because, chances are the last 10 techs they had, were.

This creates two types of people:

The one who treats you like a baby and the one who looks for the slightest thing to yell LOOK, I TOLD EVERYONE THESE PEOPLE DON'T HAVE A CLUE.

Both are horrible to work for/ with.

Now let's get into actual scams.

This is the reason I have a 4.8 instead of a 5-star rating. Buyers will list a WO at an hourly rate, let's say $70 an hour, they will then say this job is going to take 4–6 hours. So, you think that is a good deal, I have no problem driving an hour for a job of that size.

Well, when you get there, it is blatantly obvious this job was never going to take more than an hour. So now you are left out to dry. You blocked off 6 hours because had you not, and it actually took that long, and you had booked something else, kiss your account goodbye.

The reason I dropped to 4.8 stars is because twice I was not having that. I just called the PM and said you need to let me expense an extra couple of hours, I drove an hour for a 20-minute job that you said was going to take all day.

Instead of telling me no, they just gave me bad ratings because that's fair, I guess.

Overall, I feel these platforms are more toxic than anything else.

A lot of the techs are not qualified, a lot of the buyers will take advantage of you. The only people raking it in are the companies running them and taking a % off the top of all transactions.

The literal destruction of American infrastructure

I said it, these platforms are devaluing American businesses. Don't believe me? Here are some of the racks I worked on over the past year.

There are many more than this, but you get the idea. I call it "ravaged by contractors".