The Shipt Calculator
Algorithmic management
What can I learn?
A worker-led study of the black-box pay algorithm used by the delivery company Shipt. Led by Willy Solis of the Gig Workers Collective, it crowdsourced and analysed data from over a hundred workers using a custom texting bot, finding that a pay-algorithm change cut wages for the majority while raising them for a minority.
Core insight
An algorithmic pay change is never neutral: it redistributes income and reshapes workers' agency and well-being, often without notice or explanation. Workers can document this themselves when no one else will.
How to use it in daily work
A vivid case study of grassroots algorithmic accountability — how ordinary workers, with simple tools, audited a system that was designed to be unreadable.
- Use the Shipt Calculator story to validate a gig worker's sense that "the app changed and my pay dropped" and to show it can be evidenced.
- Draw on it when explaining why transparency about pay algorithms matters and what collective action can uncover.