Meaning Beyond Metrics: Gender and occupational identity on online care work platforms.

In understanding new algorithmic management techniques emerging in online labor platforms, sociologists and technology scholars in other fields have focused on the use of metrics and the impact of quantification on different parts of the labor process. However, these technological systems utilize multiple mechanisms to manage workers and match them with potential clients, including personal profiles, qualitative reviews, and on-platform communication systems. Using interviews and online ethnographic observations of care workers using online labor platforms to find work, this paper examines how this ecosystem of algorithmic management both transforms - and reinforces - the gendered construction of care work. However, these mechanisms do not have universal effects on the diverse population of workers that use these sites to find work. Workers' construct meaningful interactions with these technological systems differently depending on their occupational identities and experience. Experienced, professional care workers use the language of alienation and rationalization, while less experienced and casual care workers use narratives of entrepreneurship and efficiency to navigate the sites' requirements. This paper concludes by calling for a more ecological approach to understanding algorithmic management beyond metrics, and for the continuing importance of occupational cultures in an era of flexible and gig work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]