Kicking off a Gig Work Career: Unfolding a Career Learning Cycle of Gig Workers

We observe gig workers’ retrospective sense-making of their career development, from creating an account on online labor platforms to managing gigs successfully. Our data reveals that gig workers advance through three career stages in their initial career learning cycle. We identify each stage as characterized by stage-specific emotions and that they react with specific behaviors to gig work challenges. Gig work challenges that occur in the platform environment are namely the newbie challenge, the positioning and relational challenge, and the balancing challenge, which workers need to overcome in order to transition to the next stage. In line with contemporary career and protean career theory on career learning cycles, gig workers need to build a set of specialized skills and meta-competencies to be successfully navigate their careers. As an outcome of the here-described career learning cycle, gig workers develop an entrepreneurial identity aspiration, as they are empowered and can use the platform as a playground or stepping stone for entrepreneurial activities. Our paper, thus, develops an understanding of gig workers’ initial career learning cycle by examining the factors that enable gig workers to kick off a career and allow them to thrive and advance on the platforms professionally.