Short-term fit, long-term trap: The career development lock of low-skilled gig workers

Abstract

Why do low-skilled gig workers remain stuck in work they originally intended as temporary? Although gig work is widely portrayed as flexible and temporary, our study shows that platforms can gradually trap workers in place. Drawing on grounded theory and fieldwork—including 70 interviews with 42 food delivery riders and 14 ride-hailing drivers, 30 hours of firsthand riding experience, and observations of online communities totalling 820 riders—this study develops a conceptual framework of career development lock, identifying four interrelated forms: lock-out, lock-in, lock-up, and lock-down. We find that career development lock stems from a structural conflict between workers’ long-term aspirations, grounded in a continuous temporal narrative, and platform algorithms’ need for flexible, on-demand labor that operates through a fragmented temporal logic. This conflict generates short-term person–career fit but long-term misfit. Under the structural constraints of algorithmic management, workers turn to adaptive self-exploitation, intensifying short-term fit while undermining long-term misfit, which ultimately traps them in their roles. The study advances understanding of non-linear careers in non-standard employment and reframes algorithmic control as a career-structuring force beyond a day-to-day control mechanism. It also offers practical implications for platforms and policymakers to prevent new forms of career entrapment in the gig economy.