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Some influencer here in Norway tried to work for a food-delivery service, called Wolt. His workday lasted 9.5 hrs, and he made 1607 NOK, and had 784 NOK in cost
by TrackerFF 2y ago
Some influencer here in Norway tried to work for a food-delivery service, called Wolt. His workday lasted 9.5 hrs, and he made 1607 NOK, and had 784 NOK in costs related to his car (fuel, toll), or 823 NOK before taxes. That's 86 NOK / hr., before taxes, or roughly $7.7 in USD (1 USD = 11.15). A full work-year here is 1950 hours, so if he consistently made that, it would put him around 167k NOK / year.
In comparison, median salary in Norway is is around 608k - so he made over 3.5x less than the median salary. It should be noted that salaries in Norway are very much centered around the mean, with not a whole lot of variance. The lowest paid workers, like cleaners, call center workers, etc. will make maybe 300k - 400k, while higher paid workers like engineers, lawyers, dentists, GPs, etc. will make 1.5x-3x the median or mean salary.
In any case, gig workers seem to earn a horrible salary
He'd live in poverty on a salary like that, and likely be better off by claiming welfare money.
- paulddraper 2y agoYeah the math is really important. Whether a magician at kids birthday parties, or food delivery, or hanging sheetrock you need to figure out how much you’re actually going to make.
- micromacrofoot 2y agothat's what they're counting on: people don't do the math - if the advertised salary was accurate minus costs i'd be surprised if they could stay in business
- piyuv 2y agoMaking videos about working at Wolt earns more money than actually working at Wolt
- chneu 2y agoI've had a ton of friends and coworkers do Lift/Uber/Dash and nobody I know actually makes a serious profit once they account for maintenance, consumables, fuel, healthcare, etc. The companies know this. They "dynamically" change the payout rate so nobody can actually make real money. This is in the US where these companies have been caught using "dynamic" pricing to screw everyone over.
- themaninthedark 2y agoIt was always like that, however the marketing was great. Even here you had people arguing how it was better than a regular job since you can make your own hours. Only, your not going to be making money doing food delivery when people are sleeping. Most money for driving people around will be either at rush hour or a weekend evening. So you're not making your own hours you are working hours set by "the market".
- chii 2y agoYou do make your own hours, because you have the choice to not work when there's work presented to you. This is not possible in a full time position, nor is it possible in a casual setting (for example, there might be set schedules in a casual work position). So gig work does give you the choice to make your own hours, because you're choosing to accept (or decline) when work is available, and there's (apparently) no penalty for declining. Now, of course, there's better versions of "making your own hours" - like those consultant contracts that don't stipulate time, but output by deadline. You get to choose _when_ to work, as well as how much, as long as you deliver. But just because there's a better version of something, doesn't invalidate the slightly less better version of the same thing.
- monkaiju 2y agoDoes it count as "picking your own hours" if you can't make any money regardless of how many you pick?
- edoceo 2y agoI does, and it's still crappy choice. The lag hours are now absorbed by the employee rather than the corporate. Externalise the costs, call it your profit and boom - it's capitalism baby.
- chii 2y agoif a small business owner (say, a coffee shop) doesn't make money, does it still count as picking your own hours?
- edoceo 2y agoI love HN posts with lots of numbers like this. And we can do searches and see its not far off from quick queries. Is that data+driven? Any case,) rooting conversation (especially these days) in ~verifiable data is important for good discourse.