‘People always find loopholes’: Knowledge and worker agency under algorithmic management

This article examines how workers navigate algorithmic management (AM) through different forms of knowledge, engaging with narratives of complete algorithmic control and platform rhetoric of worker autonomy. Based on the concepts of metis (practical skills) and techne (technical expertise), we build a theoretical framework and draw on interviews with delivery couriers in Copenhagen, Denmark as a case for understanding how workers develop and deploy informal knowledge within AM work environments. Our findings reveal that the ‘cracks’ in AM systems, their technical limitations, and inability to account for real-world complexities create spaces for worker ‘loopholes’, which platforms then identify and close. This recursive relationship exemplifies what we term an epistemic paradox: the same technological systems that enable worker agency also facilitate new forms of control, which in turn generate new spaces for resistance.