As you may have noticed, earlier this month I defended my PhD. But what was it about? My topic was algorithmic management. Specifically, I tried to answer the question: How does algorithmic management reshape the employment relationship? (TL;DR – see the picture at the end)

From yours truly and Pedro Mendonça: an interesting case on its own, but also important in light of EU and ILO recent decisions/recommendations regarding platform work. Hope you enjoy.

Et voila, for years after joining the EUI @eui-eu.bsky.social i went from #PhDoing to #PhDone! 🥳🤓😎

#PhDdefense update: it still sounds a bit unreal, but it seems this is really happening! It'll be on June 11, 16:30, in EUI's Teatro. Sadly, there will be no online transmission, but if you're in Florence, you are most welcome to join. For more details 👇 www.eui.eu/events?id=57...

In an unexpected piece of news, I was surprised by an e-mail from @wiley.com informing me that my article "Platform couriers' self-exploitation: The case study of Glovo" was among top-10 most cited articles published in 2023 in New Technology Work and Employment (@ntwejournal.bsky.social).

Et voilà, 1281 days after I began this journey called #PhD in the @eui-sps.bsky.social, the moment to submit the dissertation has come! Thanks to all those who, in way or another, made this possible 🫶 Time to get some of it published and look for a job (wink wink, recruiters).

Some things seem to insist on not changing

Excellent presentation by @t-vieira.bsky.social at CERIC Leeds! Watch out for all the amazing work he does 👏🏼🌟

Tomorrow 👇🏻

Interested in algorithmic management and occupational health? Next Wednesday, I’ll be in Leeds presenting my latest work - precisely on that topic - to members of CERIC. If you are interested to know more, you can join online. Details below.

On the 26th February, Tiago Vieira @t-vieira.bsky.social will be delivering a hybrid CERIC Seminar on "Empirical insights into the contested relation between Occupational Safety and Health and Algorithmic Management". For more info and (free!) tickets see www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/ceric-semi...

The AI Summit ends in rupture. AI accelerationists want pure expansion—more capital, energy, private infrastructure, no guard rails. Public interest camp supports labor, sustainability, shared data. safety, and oversight. The gap never looked wider. AI is in its empire era.

While i think that things can get worse if AfD gets to power it’s noteworthy that in Germany (as in several other countries where the far right is NOT in power) key defining democratic elements have been only selectively upheld. A university banning a UN rapporteur is just the most recent example.

Immeasurable, indeed. May Michael’s many talents and legacy pass on to present and future generations of sociologists.

Interesting example of people at once being anti-Trump for reconfiguring the American imperial interference, neocolonial machine and buying and amplifying the discourse of China as main threat to American security. The road to the much need true alternative to authoritarian neoliberalism is long!

Besides what really matters in all this, someone has to study the sudden and unexpected rise of a *what-goes-around-comes-around-baby morality of copyright* so cristal clear in the debates on DeepSeek!

Oh, now AI is bad, after all? Interesting times to be alive.

Imagine a world where you lost the possibility to change, to know and to be new things, to deviate from the mean of data points similar to you (including your past self) while having your every move and choice recorded to feed some weird entity’s database. Can’t wait not to get there.

Platform pardonism

Delighted to have presented and discussed my thesis on #algorithmicmanagement beyond platform work with the team of ⁦‪CoLABOR (colabor.pt) this morning in the sunny Lisbon. Plenty of thought-provoking questions and comments to keep improving and develop new ideas for once the PhD is PhDone!

I can already see how in a few years news headlines of “sucess stories” will be like “until the algorithm do us part” or “the children of the algorithm”. But i’m more convinced that a more realistic angle will probably be “the algorithm will tear us apart” 🙃

In 2025, I will - for the first time - (co-)teach a course at the University of Porto. The sessions under my direct responsibility will explore what AI is and how it is impacting contemporary societies. Centered on work relations, we will touch upon credit, welfare, police, justice and warfare, too.

I know it's not a *proper* landmark, but bear with me as I self-congratulate for finishing the first draft of my PhD thesis! 🥳 73626 words 7 chapters (5 of which empirical) 239 pages 397 works cited Time to touch the grass and dream of a world with only minor revisions.

The #PlatformWorkDirective is here and the clock is ticking for states to implement it. But will everything go smoothly? In this commentary, Pedro Mendonça and I offer our view. www.socialeurope.eu/eu-pushes-to...

Major victory for Spanish Government as Glovo says it will (finally) comply with the law and classify couriers as employees. A major worry now is what will happen to the undocumented workers that for years were the backbone of the company’s operation. Action needed! abcnews.go.com/Internationa...

Post-doc job market ads be like We expect: Expertise in Quali & Quanti methods Teaching experience Availability for large fieldwork periods far away That you teach, supervise theses, write up grants, take admin roles and publish papers We offer: Part-time contract for 1.5 years (not renewable)

AI-powered Jesus just dropped. Haters will say claims of turning water into wine are part of the hallucinations of LLMs. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

So, Uber wants to “uberize” some of its data work. Besides the obvious attempt to move further away from workers’ rights a la Amazon, I hope this backfires by creating spaces and incentives for coalitions across different occupations working for the company.

Here we go again. Adapting to survive. Interested to see how Uber will offload costs onto the burdens of others (mainly workers, of course) to keep itself alive in the Dutch market.

We've migrated on to Bluesky, so please follow us to hear the lastest from "New Technology, Work and Employment". Please repost so that people can find us and hear about the latest articles and news from the journal. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1468...

Please print this and post everywhere: real life complexity cannot be reduced to data points on a statistic model no matter how complex it is. Even if AI can help us shed light on trends and patterns they are not god-like answers to everything - probably to nothing in relation to human behavior.

Very soon we’ll see a chatbot interviewer interviewing a chatbot interviewee and whatever “data” comes out of that analyzed and written up in form of a publishable manuscript by an LLM. This will be called AI social fiction or algorithmic magic realism, but surely not science.

This is a great opportunity for feedback and for attending the broader conference without straining your already scarce budget. As someone who attended last year, I say: if you are eligible, go for it!

📣New paper out! How do digital platforms change when mandated to reclassify workers as employees? In our new research published in Socio-Economic Review, Pedro Mendonça and I examine how #Glovo, #UberEats, and #JustEat responded during the first year of the Spanish #LeyRider. (link at the bottom)