That is, both traditional companies and “on demand” companies use apps and algorithms to manage workers. But there’s an important difference. Companies using the top-down scheduling approach adopted by traditional low-wage employers have used technology to amplify and enable all the worst features of the current system: shift assignment with minimal affordances for worker input, and limiting employees to part-time work to avoid triggering expensive health benefits. Cost optimization for the company, not benefit to the customer or the employee, is the guiding principle for the algorithm.

By contrast, Uber and Lyft expose data to the workers, not just the managers, letting them know about the timing and location of demand, and letting them choose when and how much they want to work. This gives the worker agency, and uses market mechanisms to get more workers available at periods of peak demand or at times or places where capacity is not normally available.