"Looks like you weren't at these previous companies for very long. Why is that?"
They didn't pay a living wage or give raises after a year. How are you different?
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2026
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I've had literally had to say this in interviews a couple of times since I was a contractor for most of my career.
I had an interviewer ask me about my gaps, specifically the 7 years I was in college, to which I said “I was in college, on the GI bill, and treated it like the job it was, because I was basically paid to maintain good grades.” And that wasn’t good enough, she asked of I was doing anything else at the same time. She pushed back about it, so I told her I was no longer interested and left.
It was contract work, like all my other work. It was for a year and they had the audacity to be upset that some of my prior contracts were 3-6 mths, even though I did all the legwork to find each position entirely on my own (so direct hire contract, not shitty staffing agencies)
I like only doing a job for 3-6 mths. It makes me happy to learn something new and stop before I get bored and burned out. Why a role that’s only a bit longer would be sus about it.. no idea.
‘Can you explain this gap in your resume?’
-‘I was in Yale.’
‘Excellent, you’re hired!’
-‘Thanks, I really needed this yob.’
"We need you to be DEDICATED to the shitty gig we're offering."
"No, we don't tell people about what the pay is until after they're hired. That way, we weed out the people who only care about money, instead of being a unique part of the team here at Small Dog Anal Gland Squeezers".
Gig economy is a hoax, and freelance is the older version of that.
How is freelancing a hoax? I can't be some miraculous exception who has been living comfortably as a freelancer for the last 15 years.
They're both euphemisms for worker exploitation.
That's a better way to put it. 👍
Disagree. Freelance was contracting. Defined terms, fair pay. It was a way for employers to save money by eliminating the middle man in a way that also benefited the lone business person.
Gig economy is the evil step child that removes all the benefits.
I could get behind the gig economy if it was FOSS and decentralized, maybe even connected to the Fediverse for professional networking.
Freelancers do work on a contract that generally covers a period of time, similar to seasonal work.
Gig workers work for individual instances of work, like day laborers.
Gig workers take the concept of freelancing to the extreme.
A key difference is that freelancers typically get to set their own terms/rates, or at least get to negotiate them.
Gig workers don’t, and are generally treated quite poorly.
Not at hoax. I'm self-employed, gig economy freelancer, hopping between therapeutic roles, teaching jobs, admin tasks for training companies. Works very well for me.
Just because it's often bad and can be exploited doesn't mean there aren't also good versions of it.
So you admit you are the exception, and gig work can be a hoax, where workers are cheated out of rights they would have in normal full time jobs.
So what exactly is your point? And where is the worker protection in gig work?
My point is that it is not a hoax, as previously claimed.
It can be exploited, sure. But not worthy of dismissing as always a hoax!
there isn't. the only real protection is if you find your own clients and build your own relationships with them. but that's so difficult these days that you might as well just get a regular job in the same field.
idk the "official" definitions, but imo the main difference between the gig economy and a freelance job is the gig economy happens through a platform that often exploits you. for example, for the previous user's field, it would probably happen through fiverr, which takes 20%, actively pushes your competitors, and punishes for any attempt at communicating off-platform. for more "mainstream" gig work, you have platforms like uber and doordash, where everything is integrated so deeply that off-platform work might as well not exist.
part of the reason i think is that we just don't have well-known platforms that aren't exploiting both workers and clients, so both are having difficulties avoiding the exploiter in the middle.
Are you a freelancer or a gig worker? Cause those are two completely different things.
I'm both.
I take on various gig roles as a freelancer.
My employment history is like 1-2 years for each role
Most of the time once a project is over it’s best for all parties to just hand over to more junior people and the seniors move on to other companies that need them
Did you work on Microsoft’s mail service?
Obviously not, that service has never seen a senior dev
This reminds me how the notion of "senior dev" in Tech Startups is somebody with 5 years experience.
Not that Microsoft has been a Startup for 30 years now, but I have the impression that such a view of were "seniority" starts in software engineering is a Silicon Valley thing.
This by the way, if it is indeed so, explains SO, SO many externally observable problems with most of their products and the frequent totally avoidable (if you have half way decent practices or even just the most basic software architecture in place) ridiculous outages.