The companies communicated only gen

The companies communicated only general rules of assignment, e.g., “the closest drivers get assigned,” and this general understanding helped drivers create their work strategies. The lack of details of the assignment algorithm, however, seemed to foster drivers’ ambivalent, sometimes negative feelings toward the companies: “Uber is very close lipped about what actually happens right I mean they say ‘oh we route it to the closest driver’ or whatever but who really knows what’s going on behind the scene it’s up to whoever engineers their iPhone app (P4).” More knowledge more advantageOur findings suggest drivers benefited from deeper knowledge of the assignment algorithm. Drivers with more knowledge created workarounds to avoid undesirable assignments, whereas those with less knowledge rejectedundesirable assignments, lowering their acceptance rating, or unwillingly fulfilled the uneconomical rides. For example, P2 had knowledge that Lyft’s assignment algorithms take into consideration how long drivers have been online and that a driver’s radius for pickups will increase as they wait for passenger assignments. He used his knowledge to periodically turn on and off his driver application while at traffic signals, so that he did not get distant requests. However, this information was not publicly made available to all drivers, and in our interviews, Lyft drivers who did not have this knowledge attributed the distant assignment to the error of the assignment system, or drivers with higher ratings getting priority. These drivers could not create workaround strategies to avoid distant requests.