On Tuesday, May 3, Tasker Analytics launched. It had been announced on April 6, but we had to wait until this month to see it for ourselves. For some, it was just another thing, and not worth attention. For those that paid attention it was… not quite clear what it meant, if it was credible, and how to use it.
For myself, I was immediately annoyed, because … it was wrong. The number of Tasks Completed in the past 30 Days was simply incorrect. I reached out to James, Tasker Program Success Manager, and learned… his backend view showed something different — and also wrong. Within an hour or so, he suggested the issue was … Analytics was only counting tasks where the Invitation Date was within the past 30 days. So a Tasks completed on in the past 30 days, but where the initial client contact was more than 30 days ago, weren’t being counted.
Having been responsible for such analytics in prior corporate life, I understand how this sort of error can occur. Nonetheless, it IS an error — the data just doesn’t match how it’s labeled and described. And that such a fundamental error could occur on such a significant feature launch…. just boggled my mind.
So…. I felt a need to speak up. And to find a way to be heard. And, posting this fake TR Task Incident Email to LinkedIn sure did work. My LinkedIn account had only around ~650 followers when I posted. But by tagging the executives at TR…. my post has reached over 6,000 impressions in 5 days, and got a timely, if still pretty vacuous, response from TR.
But, it’s clear that, at some level, the executives and employees at TaskRabbit do care about how Taskers view them and their work. Dozens of TR employees viewed the posts; some clicked through to my profile, including mid-to-senior level employees who likely had a role in Analytics.
Personally, I have an optimistic and generous view of our fellow humans. I believe folks are doing the best they can, and that they generally have good intentions. So providing feedback, attempting to engage and explain the frustrations, confusion and disappointment, can and should — certainly at the start — remember that their are humans doing the work that frustrates us.
My goal for this blog and this hashtag, and my personal commitment, is to seek improvements in how TaskRabbit understands Taskers and our needs, desires, and frustrations with the platform. And, yea, there will be room for calling things out and a little #PokeTheRabbit on the more egregious corporatist, profit-taking actions that come at the expense of those of use seeking to use it to make a meaningful income — words the current CEO used as recently as February 2022. But the goals is to find common ground — TaskRabbit today is the best platform in the gig economy for gig workers, and keeping it that way is the goal, which certainly should be common ground.