the.com/piecework
You get paid per unit, so the clock stops mattering and the pile starts talking.
means Work that pays a fixed rate per item made or task completed, rather than by the hour.
from Straightforward English compound — 'piece' meaning an individual item or unit of output, plus 'work.' It dates back to older trade and manufacturing economies where tailors, weavers, and factory laborers were paid 'by the piece' rather than by the day, a wage system that spread widely with industrial-era manufacturing, where owners found that paying per unit, rather than per hour, pushed workers to produce faster.
- origin
- predates hourly wages by centuries
- logic
- faster hands literally mean fatter paychecks
- downside
- breaks and bathroom trips cost you money
- modern form
- gig apps just renamed it per-task pay