未来你可能会像Uber司机一样接单工作

As Uber has grown to become one of the world’s most valuable start-ups, its ambitions often seem limitless.

随着Uber成长为全世界最具价值的初创企业之一，其野心看起来也是永无止境的。

But of all the ways that Uber could change the world, the most far-reaching may be found closest at hand: your office. Uber, and more broadly the app-driven labor market it represents, is at the center of what could be a sea change in work, and in how people think about their jobs. You may not be contemplating becoming an Uber driver any time soon, but the Uberization of work may soon be coming to your chosen profession.

但是在所有Uber能改变世界的方式之中，影响最深远的却可能近在咫尺：你的办公室。Uber，以及更广义来说，它所代表的由应用软件驱动的劳动力市场，处于一个工作上的，及人们如何看待自己的工作的巨变的核心。你也许没有在近期内成为Uber司机的想法，但是你所选择的职业可能很快就会被Uber化。

Just as Uber is doing for taxis, new technologies have the potential to chop up a broad array of traditional jobs into discrete tasks that can be assigned to people just when they’re needed, with wages set by a dynamic measurement of supply and demand, and every worker’s performance constantly tracked, reviewed and subject to the sometimes harsh light of customer satisfaction. Uber and its ride-sharing competitors, including Lyft and Sidecar, are the boldest examples of this breed, which many in the tech industry see as a new kind of start-up — one whose primary mission is to efficiently allocate human beings and their possessions, rather than information.

就像Uber对出租车行业的影响一样，新兴科技拥有这样一个潜能——它可以把大量的传统工作分割成互相独立的任务，并在需要时将之分配出去。相应的报酬将由供需关系动态决定，而且每一位工作者的表现将被不断地追踪、评估并时不时受到严厉的顾客满意度监督。Uber以及它车辆共乘类的竞争对手，包括Lyft和Sidecar，是这类全新工作方式的最佳代表。科技界的很多人将它们视作一种新型的初创公司——他们的首要使命是高效地分配人以及他们的财产，而非信息。

Various companies are now trying to emulate Uber’s business model in other fields, from daily chores like grocery shopping and laundry to more upmarket products like legal services and even medicine.

从日常琐事如买杂货和洗衣服，到更高端的产品如法律服务甚至医药行业，许多不同行业的公司都在模仿Uber的商业模式。

“I do think we are defining a new category of work that isn’t full-time employment but is not running your own business either,” said Arun Sundararajan, a professor at New York University’s business school who has studied the rise of the so-called on-demand economy, and who is mainly optimistic about its prospects.

纽约大学商学院教授阿伦·桑达拉拉吉(Arun Sundararajan)说道，“我的确认为我们正在定义一种新型工作方式——它既非全职工作也不算是个体户”。他对按需经济的兴起展开研究，并对这种工作方式的前景比较乐观。

Uberization will have its benefits: Technology could make your work life more flexible, allowing you to fit your job, or perhaps multiple jobs, around your schedule, rather than vice versa. Even during a time of renewed job growth, Americans’ wages are stubbornly stagnant, and the on-demand economy may provide novel streams of income.

Uber化有它的好处：技术会让我们的工作生活更有弹性，让我们根据自己的时间来安排一个或多个工作，而不是根据工作来安排自己的时间。即便现在就业已经在重新增长，美国人的工资却依旧停滞不前，所以按需的经济模式也许能提供全新的收入来源。

“We may end up with a future in which a fraction of the work force would do a portfolio of things to generate an income — you could be an Uber driver, an Instacart shopper, an Airbnb host and a Taskrabbit,” Dr. Sundararajan said.

桑达拉拉吉博士说，“我们的未来可能会是这样的——一小部分劳动力会以做很多不同的工作为生：你可以做Uber司机，替Instacart买东西，在Airbnb上租房子以及在Taskrabbit上揽外包”。

But the rise of such work could also make your income less predictable and your long-term employment less secure. And it may relegate the idea of establishing a lifelong career to a distant memory.

但是这种工作方式的崛起可能会让收入更不可预测，也可能会让长期雇用更没有保障。而且它也许让人们忘记建立一个毕生的事业是一个什么样的概念。

“I think it’s nonsense, utter nonsense,” said Robert B. Reich, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley who was the secretary of labor during the Clinton administration. “This on-demand economy means a work life that is unpredictable, doesn’t pay very well and is terribly insecure.” After interviewing many workers in the on-demand world, Dr. Reich said he has concluded that “most would much rather have good, well-paying, regular jobs.”

“我认为这就是胡扯，纯粹是胡扯，”曾任克林顿政府劳工部部长，加州大学伯克利分校的经济学家罗伯特·B·赖希(Robert B. Reich)说。“这种按需型经济意味着你的工作生活会变得不可预测、低薪而且十分没有保障。”在采访过很多从事按需型工作的人之后，赖希博士得出的结论是“多数人都宁愿从事好的、高薪的普通工作”。

It is true that many of these start-ups are creating new opportunities for employment, which is a novel trend in tech, especially during an era in which we’re all fretting about robots stealing our jobs. Proponents of on-demand work point out that many of the tech giants that sprang up over the last decade minted billions in profits without hiring very many people; Facebook, for instance, serves more than a billion users, but employs only a few thousand highly skilled workers, most of them in California.

的确，很多这类初创公司都在创造新的就业机会。这是一个技术界的新趋势，尤其考虑到现在我们都在担心机器人会抢走我们的工作。按需工作的支持者们指出，很多在过去十年间崛起的科技巨头在没有雇佣很多人的情况下，创造了数十亿的利润；比如说，Facebook为十亿以上用户提供服务，但仅仅雇佣几千名技术水平很高的员工，而且多数在加利福尼亚。

To make the case that it is creating lots of new jobs, Uber recently provided some of its data on ridership to Alan B. Krueger, an economist at Princeton and a former chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Krueger’s report — which he said he was allowed to produce without interference from Uber — paints Uber as a force for good in the labor market.

为了展示出自己创造了很多新的就业机会，Uber最近向普林斯顿大学经济学家阿兰·B·克鲁格(Alan B. Krueger)提供了一些乘车数据。他同时也是奥巴马总统经济顾问委员会的前主席。不出所料，克鲁格博士的报告将Uber描绘成一股对劳动力市场有利的力量。克鲁格博士说他的报告的产生过程没有受到Uber的干扰。

Dr. Krueger found that at the end of 2014, Uber had 160,000 drivers regularly working for it in the United States. About 40,000 new drivers signed up in December alone, and the number of sign-ups was doubling every six months.

克鲁格博士发现在2014年末，Uber有16万名司机定期在美国工作。仅十二月份就有大约4万名司机加入Uber。而且每六个月新加入的司机数目就会翻番。

The report found that on average, Uber’s drivers worked fewer hours and earned more per hour than traditional taxi drivers, even when you account for their expenses. That conclusion, though, has raised fierce debate among economists, because it’s not clear how much Uber drivers really are paying in expenses. Drivers on the service use their own cars and pay for their gas; taxi drivers generally do not.

这份报告发现，即使减去他们的开销，Uber司机平均比出租车司机每小时赚得更多且工作时间更短。但是这个结论引起了经济学家之间激烈的争论，因为Uber司机的开销其实并不明确。此项服务的司机开自己的车，自付油费，而出租车司机则不然。

The key perk of an Uber job is flexibility. In most of Uber’s largest markets, a majority of its drivers work from one to 15 hours a week, while many traditional taxi drivers work full time. A survey of Uber drivers contained in the report found that most were already employed full or part time when they found Uber, and that earning an additional income on the side was a primary benefit of driving for Uber.

Uber的关键好处是灵活度。在大多数Uber最大的市场里，大部分司机的每周工作时长从一小时到十五小时不等，而许多传统出租车司机都是全天工作。报告中一份针对Uber司机的调查发现多数司机在加入Uber之前已经有全职或兼职的工作了，所以能赚点外快是开Uber的主要好处。

Dr. Krueger pointed out that Uber’s growth was disconnected to improvements in the broader labor market. “As the economy got stronger, Uber’s rate of growth increased,” he said. “So far, it’s not showing signs of limitations in terms of attracting enough drivers.”

克鲁格博士指出Uber的增长与劳动力市场的整体改善无关。他说，“随着经济增长，Uber增长率也有所增加。目前还没有出现吸引新司机的瓶颈”。

One criticism of Uber-like jobs is that because drivers aren’t technically employees but are instead independent contractors of Uber, they don’t enjoy the security and benefits of traditional jobs. The complication, here, though, is that most taxi drivers are also independent contractors, so the arrangement isn’t particularly novel in the ride business. And as on-demand jobs become more prevalent, guildlike professional groups are forming to provide benefits and support for workers.

一项对Uber式工作的批评是它的司机严格意义上说不是雇员而是独立的承包商，所以他们不享有传统工作的保障和待遇。可复杂的是，多数出租车司机也是独立的承包商，所以Uber的安排在租车行业并不算新奇。而且随着按需工作越来越普及，行会形式的组织也正在形成，来为人们提供相应待遇和支持。

The larger worry about on-demand jobs is not about benefits, but about a lack of agency — a future in which computers, rather than humans, determine what you do, when and for how much. The rise of Uber-like jobs is the logical culmination of an economic and tech system that holds efficiency as its paramount virtue.

关于按需工作，更大的担忧并非是待遇，而是缺乏管理机构——担忧在未来，电脑而非人决定你做什么、什么时候做、给你多少钱。Uber式工作的崛起是将效率奉若神明的经济和科技体系发展的合理结果。

“These services are successful because they are tapping into people’s available time more efficiently,” Dr. Sundararajan said. “You could say that people are monetizing their own downtime.”

“这些服务的成功之处在于他们可以更有效地利用人们的可用时间，”桑达拉拉吉博士说。“可以说人们在利用下班时间赚钱。”

Think about that for a second; isn’t “monetizing downtime” a hellish vision of the future of work?

稍等一下，难道“利用下班时间赚钱”不是极其糟糕的未来的工作方式吗？

“I’m glad if people like working for Uber, but those subjective feelings have got to be understood in the context of there being very few alternatives,” Dr. Reich said. “Can you imagine if this turns into a Mechanical Turk economy, where everyone is doing piecework at all odd hours, and no one knows when the next job will come, and how much it will pay? What kind of private lives can we possibly have, what kind of relationships, what kind of families?”

“如果人们喜欢为Uber工作的话，我当然很高兴了。但我们在理解这些主观感受时必须考虑到他们并没有什么其他的选择，”赖希博士说。“你能想象如果这变成一个土耳其人象棋傀儡(Mechanical Turk)型的经济吗——每个人都在零散时间做零碎工作，不知道什么时候会接到下一份工作，也不知道它的报酬会是多少？这样的话，我们还能有什么样的个人生活，什么样的人际关系，什么样的家庭？”

The on-demand economy may be better than the alternative of software automating all our work. But that isn’t necessarily much of a cause for celebration.

按需经济可能比把工作彻底软件自动化要强吧，但也不一定值得庆祝。