ABSTRACT Platform work in general requires workers to apply specific strategies to stay afloat. In Poland, platform work is a complex system of mutual relations and interdependencies between transnational corporations, national regulators, service providers, intermediaries and platform workers. Based on thirty-one in-depth interviews with Uber drivers in Poland and two expert interviews with fleet partners, this article presents the working strategies adopted by platform workers and looks at how the historical experience of communism may shape responses to twenty-first-century global capitalism. The analysis shows that an adequate remuneration can only be made by adopting the strategy called kombinowanie , a combination of small cheating, fiddling and exploiting loopholes in the law.