Michael and Johnny look at the Gig Economy, its rise in prominence since the Great Recession, some of the main players, the laws and controversies of the industry, and the impact of COVID-19 on the industry. Michael is put in charge of AirBnB (reluctantly) and tasked with navigating its survival during a prolonged pandemic crisis. Finally, can the gig economy strike a balance between growth and ensuring workers are not exploited?
In the Pre-Show & News of the Week, we look at Zoom’s rivals going after it, Amazon’s white-collar and blue-collar employees starting to collaborate and protest, and Facebook investing into Jio.
Recorded Date: Sunday, April 26, 2020
Ideas of the Week:
- How to make virtual conferences more natural? Not have only one person speak at a time; have breakout rooms within the same call
- Surround Sound Audio (Dolby). Create a virtual “physical” table and apply locational surround sound to your conversation
Time Stamps
- @0:05:05 - New Rivals come for Zoom
- @0:13:20 - Amazon Workers Protest
- @0:20:30 - Facebook Invests in Jilo
- @0:25:43 - Main Topic: The Gig Economy
- @0:36:17 - The laws and controversies of the Gig Economy
- @0:47:56 - Covid-19 impact on the Gig Economy
- @0:54:09 - If you were the CEO of … Airbnb
- @0:59:52 - How can the gig economy strike a balance
- @1:03:01 - Ideas of the week
- @1:11:54 - Mixing the Kool-aid for the Gig Economy
Highlights
- Google & Facebook have billions of users while Zoom has hundreds of millions - Zoom’s user base is unlikely to be exclusive to itself - could Google, Facebook, Microsoft be treating video conferencing as a feature and not a product? A feature they can simply add to their already long list of features?
- Amazon has always been against its workers
- Amount of value that is added to me by a service makes me overlook the litany of problems that it has
- We still have ‘Uber for X’ Products in 2020
- Gig Economy Categories - Traditional gigs have gone online; New generation that allows people to monetize their unused resources (car, real estate, time) via smartphones - Specialists vs Odd Jobs
- Airbnb - the gig economy company for rich people
- Is there a single one of these gig economy companies that don’t have terrible controversies associated with them?
- Does AB5 actually apply to any big company that it was meant to apply to?
- How can I be a Product Manager for a product with a driver-side if I have never put myself in the shoes of a driver, especially when the barrier of entry to being an Uber driver is so low?
- Uber cares about the quality of your car more than the quality of you
- What would you do if you were the CEO of Airbnb and how would you survive a prolonged pandemic crisis?
- If it takes growing at all costs to survive in this space, then exploitation will continue
- Uber - Deliver essential items proving how critical we are as a transportation layer
