Slashdot Mirror
"Micro-Gig" Sites Undermining Workers Rights?
Mystakaphoros writes "An article in The Atlantic examines the effects sites like TaskRabbit, Fiverr, and Rev.com are having on employment and freelancing. (I would add Amazon's Mechanical Turk to the list as well.) As the article mentions, 'Work is being stripped down to the bone. It's as if we're eliminating the 'extraneous' parts of a worker's day — like lunch or bathroom breaks — and paying only for the minutes someone is actually in front of the computer or engaged in a task.' How many Slashdotters have used these sites, either to hire or work? What's been your experience?"
does this mean you can sue yourself for not providing a bathroom break or lunch?
Solidarity brother
Union Yes
When I put my car in for servicing etc I pay for parts and labour, and when I have workmen in at home to do something it's again parts and labour, so where's the difference?
What a fucking sense of entitlement.
It's a voluntary agreement.
If you don't like the terms, don't do work for places like that.
My lunch/breaks are unpaid anyway... so what are they stripping away here? But yeah, this amount of micro-managing and bean counting is counterproductive, and just adds a lot of stress and pressure. When they're able to detect it, maybe they'll streamline it further and pay you only for the time that your brain is focused on your work, and pay you based on the percentage of the focus as well.
Twinstiq, game news
Thanks for the info, Slashdot. If I can get an adequate salary working from home, I'm outta here.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
How is getting the right to bid whatever you want "undermining rights"?
Why is it that when illegal immigrants work for less than minimum wage, it is "essential to the economy" but micro-gigging is a threat to workers rights?
On the micro-gig sites, remember that you'll be competing with people who can live quite comfortably on $5/day. If you can live on that, more power to you. Otherwise, you'll want to find other ways to peddle your services.
Easy Online Role Playing Campaign Management
My wife did Mechanical Turk for a few weeks when out of work, and oh boy. The only way to make even minimum wage is to completely game the system. It is supposed to be self quality checking, but that doesn't really work. Her work (writing in this case) was so far above the norm (she did graduate college) that it was off the scales. The max she could make doing honest work was around $3-$4 per hour. Most workers there just spam the system trying to grab jobs that are we few cents more, cut and paste some garbage, rinse and repeat. In other words, you get what you pay for.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
What does the TaskRabbit Make?
Most of your TaskPrice goes directly to the TaskRabbit, who makes exactly what she bids. A small percentage goes to your service fee.
How's the Service Fee calculated?
20% of the TaskPrice on every completed Task is reserved for our Service Fee.
I guess 20% = "small percentage".
Ripoff.
I'd even go as far as saying it's a good thing in the long run.
For as long as I've been employed, I've always translated my salary to a "wage per hour of actual work". The wage also includes any benefits outside of the paycheck such as health plans, dental plans, pension programs, etc.
At the very least, it's the only way to truly compare job salaries. If you get a new job and lose 2 weeks of vacation per year that you had before, your annual income should be higher to maintain the same per-hour wage. Ideally, your per-hour wage should got up with every job change.
That being said, if I were to be unemployed, I would know exactly what to charge for micro-gig work to be on par with my previous job income. Difference is only I would chose when I take break and for how long.
Then again, some people don't like being in complete control and assume responsibility for their actions or inactions...
I make my living as a programmer for hire. Clients find me, ask for the moon, and I give it to them - but my hourly rate only reflects time on task. I don't charge my clients for trips to the water cooler. Unless I'm on site, I average about 6 hours a day. But this can be compensated by the fact you can adjust your own rates. For all the bitching about evil corporations, I'm surprised more people don't start their own S Corp and do this. It's a lot more responsibility, but you are the master of your own fate. (You are still responsible for your own fate when working for a business, but I suppose a lot of people don't see it that way) In fact, you may not even see corporations as all that evil when you're on the other end of the stick.
When I was between jobs a year or so ago, I gave this kind of work a try. It was so-so. Freelancing from these sites kind of stinks. Freelancing in general is hard enough, then add almost zero "personal" interaction unless you're on video chat, the standards of no health care or time off, no job security, etc. It's VERY hard to outbid some of the developing world workers on some sites, but folks I have done work for told me staight up that their experience was that they were 'mostly' getting what they paid for. It was only the occasional higher cost worker that didn't have the experience they claimed. And some of the customers I spoke with had dabbled in the super low priced bids, but they were all over the place in quality.
Until the lower paid workers of the developing world reach up, en masse, for more pay, first world folks will have this kind of experience going forward. And until something horrible like unionized IT (see recent stories about poor moral/stress/poor health/awful managers in general IT: aka IT folks treated like dirt) occur to level out bottom lines for requirements/pay/etc: welcome to the future.
AC
I think we're at the point now where if a job can be digitized and sent elsewhere then it will end up being done by the lowest-overall-cost person (for a given level of quality) regardless of where they are in the world.
So the only long-term way to make a living is to ensure that you're working on something specialized (so there's less competition), or that you're at the top of the skill heap (so you can charge more), or you're working on something that can't easily be sent elsewhere.
We're already seeing the Canadian east coast becoming a popular place to locate call centres for North American businesses because they speak good English, the cultural variations are minimal from the rest of North America, and there are fewer timezone issue to worry about (as opposed to India or China).
of the tech business. If you're worried about being stiffed or not having benefits, just don't do it. Though this sounds way too annoying to be successful. The 5er stuff might be OK. I'd pay someone $5 for a drawing of a monkey slapping Justin Beiber.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Many years ago I did a lot of work on ODesk, started out at about 5-10 dollars an hour, after about 2 months I was able to command $30 an hour easily based upon my high feedback and test scores. It was a pretty sweet gig. Not quite enough to support my family, but plenty as a side gig.
The idea that a salaried employee can have his employers (and optionally tax payers) by his balls and squeeze hard to get paid more is quaint, but doesn't apply in most of the real world. Most people in this world actually have to compete in order to make money. You know: bakers, electricians, computer consultants, personal trainers, hairdressers, etc. They work an hour, they get paid an hour. And if they don't work well, they lose customers.
The rise of the micro-gig is very much a sign of the wider deterioration of working conditions. Rights are part of the issue, but the other is that the pay per hour is often pitiful.
This is another consequence of the neoliberal strategy of keeping a persistent pool of unemployed people. Don't believe government propaganda about wanting everyone in work; full employment in the US and other Western democracies has not been a policy goal since the late 70's.
Put very very simply, If there are two people for one job, wages, rights and benefits go down. If there are two jobs for one person, they go up.
I actually tried writing articles for one of those big content aggregator sites a couple of years ago, only to stop once I realised I'd written an entire novella worth of content and in return was making about 10 cents per article per month. At that rate, 1 article that pay have taken two hours to write would have needed about a decade just to make $6 an hour.
I doubt other sites in a similar vein are much better.
I can't wait to receive my new ipad, it's almost that time of the month.
There is a solution
income and expense parity, globally.
Everyone living at 2nd world levels.
(except a very small, very privileged minority of 'owners')
it ain't pretty.. but that IS what free trade will end at eventually,
with pain, bloodshed, revolts, and agony on the way....
the only way to maintain the first world experience will directly conflict free trade.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
LAW? please provide a citation.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
phenomenon is just another symptom of the failure of modern capitalism in my opinion. although peculiar to the tech industry it seeks to turn a valuable service into a race to the bottom commodity at the expense of human beings much as in every other sector. Other examples are Wal-Mart, which touts health benefits to their full time employees while carefully ensuring nearly everyone is working only 38 hours. or general contractors in texas which skirt employment laws to deliver the lowest cost 3000 square foot new home at the expense of paid labor and federal social security taxes by classifying every parking lot central american nailswatter as a "private contractor." Or recruiters who somehow think that sub-sub-subcontracting their cold-calls to the lowest bidding third world country to successfully game their english language skills requirement will earn them more successful placements.
the free market as we know it. give'er another 20 years and the occupy protest will, if not already, become a staple of american life. people will only tolerate so much serfdom before someone loses a head.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The fallacy of the article is the fundamental assumption that the producer of work is only valid when controlled by the guiding hand of a company.
Workers rights exist to protect workers from abusive companies. But the case here doesn't even come close to rubbing up against that issue. The Gigers in these cases are able to work as much or as little as they please. No boss is standing behind them abusing them into performing more to justify management's salary or company profit margins.
Gigers will likely fall into two main groups:
A) Out of work and struggling to make ends meet.
This type is probably grateful for a way to make money in a world where there's currently no company to make him "a valuable asset and a productive member of society". No corporate overlord, no workers rights issues. If they dislike this type of work, they can continue seeking a job somewhere or they can learn to do without earning money for other people and keep making direct contacts for work.
B) People who do gigs on the side. Again, no right issues come up in this case. It's a totally voluntary way to make extra bucks.
I've used Fiverr to buy about 60 gigs now. In each case they were professional, quick and delivered exactly what they advertised. (in my case almost all were for artistic talent for personal and team building exercises). No company is offering me an equivalent service for less than an absurd amount of money which would have been a non-starter and caused me to engage in zero purchases. Their overhead for profit and management salaries is so high, they price themselves out of the market for what I need.
Instead of trying to demonize these companies, look at them as a means by which a lot of people are making ends meet while no company is willing to hire them. Life does not require anyone to work for a company. Sure they serve their purposes and for many scales and scopes of work, it takes a company to achieve success. I love the company that I work for. But I do not mistake that for believing that every person alive must either work for a company or earn nothing.
I'd rather look forward to a day when the gig market evolves and gig companies start offering discount benefit packages to Gigers who perform and produce well. What better way to hold onto good talent for your service.
Warning: Teh poster of this messaeg is lysdexic
We have hardly any left in this country as it is. Every year we strip away further at what used to be worker's rights. Every year we get closer to them having none left at all.
As we continue to empower the wealthiest at the expense of the least fortunate, we continue to step closer to delivering fascism for the people.
Not worth the effort.
I signed on to Amazon's Turk, spent an hour to make about $.018.
No thanks.
From the Tom Friedman book of that name. You are competing with the entire world's English speakers and internet users. Even if it costs them $5 a day to live versus $50 for you.
No one gets paid vacations, holidays, benefits, etc. an employer determines how much useful work they need and how much, including all the non pay expenses of an employee, they are willing to pay. That number can be divided by hours, weeks or fortnights but that just makes it seem you are getting all those benefits when unreality all they are dong is adjusting your rate to include all the"paid" non productive time. The real question is "can you make enough per gig to cover those expenses and to love in a lifestyle you desire?" Pay by gig merely represents a different way of looking at renumeration. The author clearly has a POV and thus frames the argument in as net that supports his POV. Nothing wrong with that but that does not mean his conclusions are correct and his points valid.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
yeah, pretty much. that's how supply & demand works.
That assumes a functional market.
The IT labor market is dysfunctional.
But no one believes it because everyone employed is cocky.
I'm employed and therefore I qualify and everyone who isn't employed is a screwup.
The system works!
I don't care WHAT you do, this what will happen:
You will be at your job working on whatever your working on. You'll see new technology coming along and you'll think "Gee, I better learn it!"
In meantime, you're working your 55+ hours a week with the too frequent 80 hour weeks because your employer refuses to hire an entry level kid to do your grunt work.You're tired. You have to keep up with your job. Take a class? Hardly! Study on your own? Too tired. You NEED to get away from the computer sometime!
Then the system your working on becomes a "Legacy" system and your company farms out the work to Elbonia. They then tell you that you can keep your job if you move to Elbonia and take an Elbonian level of salary - a 75% pay cut.
You think, "I got skills! Fuck'em!" and you turn them down; which is exactly what they thought you'd do.
So you enter the labor market. And you see that your skills are "obsolete". You take classes but to no avail because the employers want a few years of experience
You say, "You'll learn! On your own time and dime!'
They tell you that they need someone 'to hit the ground running!'
So you go on. And on. And on....
Now folks start wondering why a skilled IT person who "knows computers" is out of work. They think what's his problem? Is he a drunk? Obviously, there's something wrong.
You may not hear it often, but you get that feeling based on the way people react and questions they ask you and their tone. Like:
"Have you been looking for work all this time?!"
With a tone of NFW! No one with skills should have to look for work in IT! Can't happen.
Out of work == No good.
And you notice that all the folks who are working steadily are a bit younger.
You're told, "Well, older people want more money!"
You try to retort - like shouting in a hurricane - No! I'll take market rates!
But you're still told that you don't have the skills - I don't care what skills you have, you WILL be told that.
Then folks start reading about how Google just has young faces, about the H1-Bs, and other dysfunctional things that happen in the IT field. Then they say, "Have you considered leaving the field?"
"yes. But, when I try, I'm asked, 'Why do you want to leave such a lucrative career?!'"
Please shoot me.
When I as at IBM, I saw all these "old" mainframers being moved into the OS/2 area, and being young and arrogant thinking, "The poor out of date bastards! That'll NEVER happen to me!"
And it did.
Until the IT labor market stops being so dysfunctional - and the blame rests squarely on the employers - I tell folks, if you can, go to medical school./
But that won't last either .....
I talked to a lot of people who use rent-a-coders (not this site exactly) to build systems at super low cost. Like ~$10/hour per engineer, at the end of six months they have a barely functioning mess of spaghetti code that's basically worthless, and a service provider threatening to sue them if they don't pay for their hard work. Or even small tasks like "build a cron job that will ...." and then like three hours before the deadline they get an email from the winning bidder "what's cron?" And they give people hell if they give them a negative review.
I imagine it's the same for any task, the majority of people willing to accept $5 to design a "professional looking business card" or $20 to "paint a room" will end up producing something you won't want.
As we continue to empower the wealthiest at the expense of the least fortunate, we continue to step closer to delivering fascism for the people.
Now that you've delivered your pseudeponymous line, as you planning to retire this account? Or is this going to become a long-running, irrelevant cliche like William Jennings Bryan's Cross of Gold speech became? Because there's only so many ways for you to twist a topic to ensure that you can end up with some sort of tagline.
You've never encountered IT HR practices in the wild, have you?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
There are lots of reasons why you won't have equalized cost of living/standard of living worldwide:
Some spots are more desirable to live, so high demand will drive up the price (and thus cost of living) in that area.
Other places just naturally cost more to live there (for heating/cooling/water/etc.) and so the cost of living will be higher.
Resource-extraction based work (oil, natural gas, minerals, etc.) cannot be shipped elsewhere, so that will have a local impact on the standard/cost of living.
And even if the standard of living *were* equalized worldwide, what I describe is still a valid way to ensure that you are not "average" and thus can do _better_ than the overall standard of living.
Language and application support email lists.
I had a perl project, I monitored the perl dev list and then mentioned that I needed some one for a job and fully described the job.
I had 2 or 3 super high quality people reply off list and I selected one and everything went great and I had good support on that code for the life of the application.
I have done things like this on several occasions and it has never failed to work out well. And I feel like I support the community.
Unlike elance and odesk, which I did not have a lot of success with for the projects I wanted to do.
Wax on, wax off baby!
Welcome to another aspect of the Libertarian paradise.
The comparison with those occupations where you can see whether the worker is "goofing off or taking a dump" is inappropriate because your examples are all manual occupations, whereas programming is a mental activity.
Monitoring the eyes or fingers of a programmer is going to tell you very little, other than whether he's gone to sleep. A large part of the process of creating software involves no keyboard activity at all, but thinking or reading instead.
And while your manual laborer is clearly not working while taking a dump, the programmer who takes a dump while working on a project is 95% likely to be thinking about it while sitting on the throne. That's not a joke. The programmer's work follows him throughout meal breaks and even after official paid work hours are over. It's not directly comparable to manual labor.
And I experienced everything the GP posted.
I applied to a bank. I was told that because I didn't have industry experience, I wasn't qualified. I found out later that they received over a hundred resumes for the position (ALL with the skills) and they were looking for ways to cut the stack down - i.e. making certain skills a "need" to weed the pile down.
Maybe it is different in IT than in development-land
Development is a subset of IT professions.
Has anyone here used any of these? What are they good for?
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch10.htm ("The Length of the Working Day" in _Capital_ vol 1)
I worked at a call center during college. Your time was logged based on when your headset was turned on. When turned on, an automatic dialer connected you immediately to a live customer - there was no waiting for a dial tone between calls. As soon as one call ended another began instantly, which can be somewhat jarring on the first day. You could hit pause at any time but you would not be paid for those seconds. At least there were some mandatory short breaks though out the day, but I don't remember these being paid breaks.
Almost all the government in the 31 Sanctuary Cities in the U.S. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctuary_city -- which are called that because they do not enforce federal immigration laws not cooperate in the enforcement of federal immigration laws, some going as far as to make it illegal for an officer to check immigration status, or release prisoners without checking their status, is Democratic. This includes the Mayors of Salt Lake City, Utah, and both El Paso and Houston in Texas.
Currently, the Democrats benefit from the voter fraud, nominally through a misapplication of the 1973 Voting Rights Act, predominantly in Florida, but one in eight voting registrations are flawed and/or illegal , while the Republicans benefit from the below market labor costs, so neither party actually wants the practice of illegal immigration stopped. Here is the NY Times article on it from the Pew Center for the States: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/us/politics/us-voter-registration-rolls-are-in-disarray-pew-report-finds.html?_r=0
In Georgia, I've seen a sign posted in both mechanics shops and computer repair shops that reads something to the effect...
Service Rates
To Fix your Machine $25/hr
If you want to watch me work $50/hr
If I have to talk to you while you watch $100/hr
If you want me to explain to you what I'm doing while I talk to you while I fix your machine. $200/hr
I've seen the same sign in Utah and California.
"The Adobe Updater must update itself before it can check for updates. Would you like to update the Adobe Updater now?"
As a possible way to make extra money, I looked at these "micro-gig" sites. I saw immediately how little you'd get paid for your efforts, and discarded the entire idea at that point as it being just another scam. I didn't even believe you'd actually get paid, that they'd string you along until you'd had enough. Not much different in my eyes than any other "work at home" scam you see every day.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
As a economics student, one of our projects was to study the effect and economic impact of market places like taskrabbit fivver and the new one all my friends use called bizlifter.com. These actually have a positive net effect on the economy, due to the fact that they increase the percentage of individuals who can enter the small business market and become self employed. These technologies empower individuals to become self reliant rather than be slaves to corporate America. Isn't it a good thing if technology empowers individuals to become creators of there own independent product or service?
Why don't we pay managers for the time that they actually manage, or CEO's for the time they do CEO like functions? Corporate America can save a bundle.
You're employed at will. You have no less (or more) security than any other employee. I'm assuming you're paying out of pocket for insurance and hoping you don't get sick. That's the 'risk' most people are talking about. If you have a catastrophic medical issue you're going to end up on gov't health care or dead. There's no in between (if you think there is, you have no idea how the US health care system works). When guys like you have the shit hit the fan you don't just put a bullet in your heads, you do everything you can to hang on. Ayn Rand did it, and so will you.
Also, deductions are needed for a progressive tax system. If you care about anyone except yourself progressive tax systems are good. The rich pay more to maintain the society they're getting all that enjoyment out of.
Finally unless you're a billionaire or don't give a $h@t about your grandkids you care about a progressive society. The billionaires are coming for your money. You think they're going to tolerate your $100k/yr salary? Haven't you noticed the non-stop flood of new visa programs?
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we're saying that the wealthy should pay to maintain the society they live in and benefit handsomely from. But nice try there. Keep pushing that Fox news theft narrative. Because we all know the real problem isn't bankers and billionaires monopolizing all the wealth. No, it's a little black kid with a sandwich his mommy didn't pay for that brought the American Financial system to it's knees.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
all that money comes from .05% of Americans. I forget where the statistic came from. One of the liberal pundits noticed it. But basically all the money in politics comes from a fraction of a percent of Americans. They vet every single candidate. Nobody gets elected unless they want them to be.
Not saying to give up, but we need to start moving this country left and not stop. Left is the opposite of corporatism. Like it or not someone is going to have massive power over our lives. It's going to happen. Power tends to collect in one place. Wealth and privilege gets passed down, a bust comes and the ones with all the money from their dads buy up the property from those of us trying to survive. This happens every 10 to 15 years like clockwork. I'd rather the gov't have that power. If I give it to some random guy who's dad was in the right place at the right time I know I'm screwed. With gov't there's a chance, however small.
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Ironically, it was Nancy Reagan who said it best, "Just Say No!" Her husband may of sold out the middle-class, the unions, but he never intended to have people cut themselves off at the knees.
Net slaves of the world, unite!
My experience with micro-consultants contracted through these services, for short ( 1 week) stints has been positive, but substantial and well organized documentation must be provided to get a good result. I don't know if they are college grads, or still in high school. They are measured on their results.
What do they get for the time? I pay their firm about $600 per week for one J2EE developer. I don't know what % of that is their take home. But they are doing WELL today, compared to what's coming: IF my budget gets cut so hard I have to do more work through them, I'll start figuring out how to price at what the work is worth, instead of at whatever I need to just get it done. That means $600/week ($30,000 per year) will FALL, and probably to far less than whatever I can pay a China or India college hire who has credentials.
When that day comes, every executive will want justification for even HIRING a developer, anywhere, let alone in the US or the EU.
Not a good day to be a "coder".
Seriously -- it's in my other tab. I was finding some delays in the net, so I opened /. to see if AWS was being ddosd, but nothing came up. But *this* did. As an MT worker since 2009 -- but not using it extensively until last June, due to downsizing -- I can speak to the truly abysmal rate of pay available here. However, it *is* from home, and there is *always something* 24 hours a day, so as long as you are willing to dip in and out of the pool, you can generate a tiny flow of money -- better than nothing. I use HitsWorthTurkingFor, Mturk Forum, and -- of course -- the FireFox extension no good Turker is without, TurkOpticon. It's a living -- kind of, but not really. I've made $2.38 in the last hour. Meh.
She says she's actually gotten some good work for cheap - for side projects she's thought about trying out as potential startups, but were still in the "I don't know if it'll even work" phase, so she didn't really want to spend that much money, or that much of her own time. I'm not sure I'd ever want to make them part of an established business, but they seem great for PoC work.
And as she pointed out - while a couple bucks an hour is awful in the US, not everyone lives in the US. There are places where getting a couple bucks an hour would be fantastic.
Incidentally, she also found a graphic designer on one of those sites - I've seen the guy's work, and *that* guy I would totally hire all the time for anything. He's more than a couple bucks an hour (I think she said he charges 15), but considering in the US you'd have a hard time finding a graphic designer that's halfway-competent for under like 50...
Typically someone who says they do "IT" in the US means they are more on the hardware/software configuration side of things. You are correct, but I meant the colloquial version of "IT", just to clarify
Yes a UNION! Information Worker's should've already unionized. The problem, the millennials and even some older cats with idealistic Ayn Rand dreams of meritocracy and liberty.
The sites seem to get a lot of people from undeveloped countries doing work. I went looking for work on them, and found people asking for programs to be written which take hours and offering $10. I was surprised by the people taking up the offers for so little, but most of them resided in India, so maybe $10 is a lot for them. I saw someone asking for the equivalent of numerous books (about 15 books all up) to be written and offering $500 for it, and wanting it done in a week. It gave me the impression of a lot of the non-technical managers I used to work under who thought 1 program (of any size) always took one day to write.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)