[ptero]

The person described is a "senior business analyst", reportedly making good money, but decides to work on MTurk, doing menial tasks, to help offset extra costs (diapers, etc.) of a baby that was born. This sounds insane to me. Almost anything else sounds better: reduce expenses, figure out if he can get more responsibilities and a raise, even get a low % credit to pay for those diapers for a year, etc. . Is this just me? This is an honest question.

[DoreenMichele]

I guess the article doesn't say it well, but this can be done in small scraps of time from wherever you currently are under circumstances where making money with a "regular job" would not be possible. If you make, say, an extra $5/day on what used to be your smoke breaks and lunch hour at work for an 8-5 job, you have an extra $180 or so a month without any additional overhead (for uniforms, whatever), scheduling conflicts from a second job, additional time taken away from family, etc.

Mechanical Turk generally sucks as a substitute for a regular job, but can make sense as supplemental income, even at nominally very low hourly pay. If you work 8 hours at $10/hour but have a 30 minute commute, you are really getting $80 for 9 hours of your time. That actually puts you below $9/hour to think of it that way.

If you do freelance work, iirc, freelancers chase their pay about 40% of the time. That also drives their real wages down. Plus, there is time involved in getting each assignment.

I have read that you can expect to do one unbillable hour for every billable hour, so you need to charge at least twice as much to make the same wage. Plus, for jobs with benefits, roughly half your compensation can be in the form of benefits.

So freelancers should charge four times as much as the hourly rate they would accept at a salaried job with benefits.

But if you already have benefits and just want to supplement your income, you can accept half as much. If you can eliminate some of the time burden of freelancing, you can halve it again.

Looked at that way, $2/hour is potentially the equivalent of $8/hour as supplemental income. And you can fit it in to otherwise useless scraps of time.

[ptero]

Fair enough, but there are risks there, too. Not claiming that it is necessarily the case, but when one has a fixed income job and a variable income one, effort and attention tends to skew to a variable one (you get soame $$ from the other one regardless). So your main job (promotions, etc.) can suffer.

And for a long game one will likely get much further by investing in primary job or developing new skills (teaching math to kids, home improvements, whatever) that gets them out of competing with millions of unskilled, low wage participants in MTurk.

I view MTurk as temporary fix for desperate times only. My 2c.

[ABCLAW]

"Looked at that way, $2/hour is potentially the equivalent of $8/hour as supplemental income. And you can fit it in to otherwise useless scraps of time."

No. $2/hr is potentially the same as freelancing at $8/hr under your comparison.

That's completely different. Because no one freelances at $8/hr.

[DoreenMichele]

I don't do Mechanical Turk, but I've worked online for years and had a corporate job previously.

I made about $100/day at my corporate job and at least $20/day went towards costs involved in having the job. I don't have that kind of overhead with the work I do currently.

Freelancers don't charge $8/hour, but it's not at all hard to google up "client from hell" stories where they spent so many hours trying to get their pay that it was only like $2/hour by the time they were done or they didn't get paid at all etc.

I don't really want to argue this. Someone asked a question and I answered it based on first-hand experience making often nominally low hourly pay. And now people are nitpicking my reply, presumably because they've got relatively cushy lives and this type of assessment is alien to their experience.

If you make $100/hr at a salaried position, like a lot of programmers do, you probably don't need to think too hard about "But after my commute, etc, what's my real hourly wage?" If you make a lot less than that and want to survive, you absolutely need to think about "But what am I really making after x, y and z?" And the counterintuitive answer turns out to be that a nominally low hourly rate without a whole lot of unbillable time burden, like a commute or chasing your pay or looking for work, can be far better in real terms than a nominally higher hourly rate with a lot of hidden time burden or other costs.

Something I wrote a while back:

http://writepay.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-value-of-not-chasin...

If your life works just fine, good for you. But there are clearly many people willing to work for Mechanical Turk for nominally low wages. I'm sure every single one of them would love to have a higher hourly wage. I'm just trying to cast a little light on why people do this.

Everyone on HN can sneer at it all they want as stupid and not making sense etc. That doesn't change the fact that lots of people are working for nominally low pay via various online services. At best, it will just discourage me and others like me from bothering to answer questions here about it.

[wccrawford]

No, but there are plenty of people who sell hand-made crafts that end up only getting that much in the end.

The difference (IMO) is that the hand-made crafts are a labor of love, and the M Turk stuff is just labor.

[JamesBarney]

I've only ever freelanced as a developer but you could never charge 4x your billable rate. Good Sr. Devs make ~140k with benefits and there is no way you could charge out at 280/hr without a very sophisticated business model.

I could see how this could be different at lower hourly rates though. Clients are less likely to pay, they are less price sensitive to 16-32$/hr.

[DoreenMichele]

Yeah, I hear that "4x as much" figure a lot but few people seem to actually charge that. Instead, what actually happens for most people is that (for example) they are covered under their spouse's healthcare policy, so they don't need to cover the cost of benefits.

Historically, a full-time job with benefits was designed to be held by a married man who was worth that kind of compensation because he gave his all at work, went home, collapsed into a chair and said "Woman, get me a beer!" and "What's for dinner?" Then he slept like the dead.

Research shows women with children typically cannot give their all to a job like that. They get stuck in Pink Collar jobs that preserve time and energy for the "second shift" of cooking dinner, doing housework, etc. They need to be able to get up in the middle of the night if their kid is sick and so forth.

People are marrying later, having fewer kids and so on. I routinely see comments online about the downsides to that, for example how it's impossible to work full-time and cook from scratch to feed yourself properly as a single person. Cooking for one is too time consuming and labor intensive. Home cooking makes the most sense when one person is cooking for an entire family. This leaves a lot of people living on takeout and the like, which amounts to overpriced junk food in most cases.

Employers need to get enough value out of the transaction to make their business viable. They can't pay a living wage with benefits out of the goodness of their hearts. And we no longer de facto expect the wife's labor in taking care of her man to be a hidden part of the deal for ensuring that the employer gets enough value out of the deal.

I think these social changes are major driving factors in the gig economy trend. It puts the onus on the worker to figure out how to accomplish enough to pay their bills at a price that makes sense to the employer.

And part of the answer is that supplementing your income with low paid, small tasks using scraps of time that you previously could not have used to try to make money helps that equation make sense for both parties.

[GordonS]

> If you make, say, an extra $5/day on what used to be your smoke breaks

Surely a better way would be to stop smoking?

[DoreenMichele]

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I've done it thousands of times. -- Mark Twain

(Also, I don't know where my 3am mental math went wrong, but $5/day is not $180/mo.)

[oflordal]

If you think it is fun, having a hobby (mturk) that is a small net positive can save you a lot of money compared to having a hobby which is a net loss (most hobbies).

[cies]

> If you think it is fun [...] (mturk)

If this was generally perceived as fun, then Amazon would charge money for you to "play" mturk. The fact mturk work pays tells me that mturk is pretty much nobody's hobby.

[phalangion]

The "fun" may be to earn a little extra money doing menial tasks. Just the other day there was a discussion here about EVE online and how much menial management is needed in the game to set up for a small amount of fun PvP combat time. What's the difference between that and doing some mindless menial tasks for a couple extra bucks to go out on the weekend?

[cies]

> The "fun" may be to earn a little extra money doing menial tasks.

That the pay is fun (or enables fun) does not make the work fun. Here mturk was named a potential "hobby", that's just ridiculous to me.

> Just the other day there was a discussion here about EVE online and how much menial management is needed in the game to set up for a small amount of fun PvP combat time. What's the difference between that and doing some mindless menial tasks for a couple extra bucks to go out on the weekend?

You could argue that EVE setup is "work" required to enable some "fun" play. I don't think anyone would consider EVE setup (just the setup) as a hobby.

[phalangion]

Some people's "hobby" is couponing. I doubt they consider the act of digging through papers to find and cut out coupons to be fun, but the act as a whole is. But I guess if you define a hobby strictly as something you do not for pay, you're correct. If you define it more broadly as something you do during non-work time, then it fits.

[austhrow743]

I don't think you can separate the setup from the work so easily. I highly doubt if you just had the "fun" play then it'd be a successful game. There are plenty of action packed alternatives if you just want the battle part all the time.

People like grinding. Just not when they have to accept that they're grinding for the sake of grinding. There needs to be an upcoming battle or achievement or texture pack unlock or a few extra bucks in the bank in order for them to get their "I'm being productive" kick every time they complete one of their many short, simple, well defined grind tasks. Just a continuous stream of little wins.

[matz1]

Different strokes for different folks

[cies]

Yes. Though theme parks change at the door yet software shops pay programmers to come in each day.

There is clearly a patter here.

[segmondy]

Programming is fun for programmers, we don't get charged to play with computers. :)

[chuckgreenman]

Programming is fun for 15 minutes out of each hour, the other 45 are pretty frustrating.

[tombert]

I think I know what you're getting at. Where I work, you could almost set your watch on the almost-once-per-minute frequency of someone yelling "fuck" or "shit" because they're annoyed at something in code (I'm no exception to this), but I think it's safe to say that the 45 minutes of frustration are worth it for the 15 minutes of "I'm the coolest person ever!".

[cies]

> Programming is fun for programmers

Bull. If this was true trey would line up to join our company and I could charge them at the door for working with us.

Some programming is fun. Sure. Many part of my work are fun. But I'd rather do other things with my life if money was not an issue.

[tombert]

I agree. I think I have a pretty decent job, but if they stopped paying me I wouldn't show up "just for fun".

Programming on stuff I care about is fun, and for some beautiful moments at work there is overlap of "stuff I care about" and "stuff that is valuable to the business", but most of the time the work is "meh" and I mostly view it as "this is much better to me than most other jobs would be for me".

[zachsnow]

Why would they line up to work for you of all people? They can work for anyone they want, it’s somewhat of a seller’s market when it comes to programming.

I imagine just about nothing is 100% fun 100% of the time. If many parts of your work are fun, it’s fair to say your work is fun. If you’d rather be doing something else, you could try that, too. Maybe you’d like it more.

[wccrawford]

Maybe not all programmers, and maybe not all tasks...

But when I compare programming to RPGs, I feel the same way. In both of them, I spend a lot of effort supporting the really fun parts with work. I enjoy both, and I keep doing both. But RPGs have a ton of grind that I generally don't like except that it enables me to get to the fun stuff.

Most of my hobbies are like this. There are things I have to do in prep for the fun stuff, or after the fun stuff to finish the project. And I do them to get back to the fun again.

[jpttsn]

What if it’s fun, but they can program without you? Then they might choose to have fun with the highest bidder.

I would program even if money was no issue. There are many who would.

[cies]

Me too, but not 30+ hours per week. And on something of my choosing. And...

Then programming usually does not come by itself: meetings, company politics, little mgmt, all usually come with it when programming professionally. Many of those tasks I consider less fun than the programming itself.

[pavel_lishin]

> figure out if he can get more responsibilities and a raise

Not sure about other parents, but when we had our baby, I was less ready for additional responsibilities than at any other point in my life.

[blaser-waffle]

Never been more drained then after baby-induced insomnia.

A couple of low-effort, no-brain mturk forms to make extra diaper money? Great! I'll bust out the laptop while killing time at a kid's soccer practice.

[prepend]

All the things you mention are not exclusive to MTurk. So he could do those and make a few hundred extra.

I view this as passive time where spending a few hours while watching tv, or rocking the baby, or whatnot seems acceptable to some people.

Many free to play games have the same attention span requirements and they don’t pay anything.

[blueboo]

We believe it's insane and dismiss it out of hand because we all realize Mechanical Turk doesn't pay a living wage in the developed world.

But I dunno, I feel OK with the premise that this guy reduced his expenses and optimized his career as much as he could.

Say you did all that and had a few hours a week you wanted to use to make your household budget a bit healthier...getting paid for some kind of remote work via an automated system that'll accommodate your inconsistent hours has an appeal!

[Ma8ee]

Yes, but someone who calls himself a BA should be able to get better return for his time.

[mruts]

He probably can but MTurk is superior because of liquidity and flexibility. There are very few jobs in which value is created and paid for in a span of a minute. By turning dead time into money, generating money in a way you could not for other jobs.

And a BA isn’t worth much regardless. Half the people I knew in college now work at coffee shops.

A general good rule is what when you see someone do something, there’s probably a, if not good, understandable reason for it.

[codetrotter]

> And a BA isn’t worth much regardless. Half the people I knew in college now work at coffee shops.

I agree with everything you said but just wanted to point out that in the comment you responded to, “BA” means “Business Analyst”, whereas in the sentence you wrote that I quoted it seems that you took “BA” to mean “Bachelor of Arts”.

[blaser-waffle]

> A general good rule is what when you see someone do something, there’s probably a, if not good, understandable reason for it.

In this case, presumably a middle-class kid who was fed a line that going to college is the way forward. They were probably decent but not outstanding students who went mostly because that was expected and got a A of Arts degree because the BS degrees are miserable.

Motivated folks can make that BA work, but your barista was probably going to end up there with or without a Bachelor's; the BA just means they're promotable, or may be able to break out of that place later.

[Ma8ee]

A business analyst should be able to analyse how to get better return for his money. There’s probably not much other work that you can deliver in such small chunks, but there’s definitely work that can be performed in small chunks at a time.

That you think that you understand someone’s reasons doesn’t mean that you have to agree with or not think there’s are better ways.

[londons_explore]

Some MTurk tasks are amenable to sub-contracting out or writing bots to mostly or fully automate.

If he does that, I could see it being competitive on an hourly basis to a regular job.

[brighter2morrow]

As someone who regularly purchases work from MTurk, some rando's crumby bot is absolutely not what I'm looking for. We're training our own AI from MTurk responses, and we're sending to MTurk difficult edgecases that our own AI gets wrong.

[fouc]

It's AI turtles all the way down.

[dalbasal]

How open are Amazon to this?

Ooh, the idea of mTurk is "human powered." OTOH, a market for tasks that can be do e via a combination of automations and humans could be powerful.

[jwieczorek]

Such a combination is what Unbabel does in translation. ML-driven automated translation followed by crowd-sourced human review and corrections. It's a neat idea and could be the future of translation (as opposed to full automation).

[dahfizz]

I would assume that Amazon already does this. If a task is trivial enough for an AI, they would do it themselves and get the posters money before the job gets forwarded to the Turks.

[dalbasal]

Sure, Amazon have all sorts of ml APIs. But a task platform where anyone can complete the tasks using ai, humans or a combination that f both could be substantial impressive.

Say you need to look through 20k images and determine if they contain hipsters. There may not be an off-the-shelf hipster detector. Maybe you could make one, or use humans or a combination by training an NN.. etc.

[AcerbicZero]

The article is more or less an advertisement for the book the "senior business analyst" has written, with a little context thrown on top to make it look legit. If you look at the authors other works, this seems to line up with their style.

That might be a little harsh, and perhaps there is no ill-intent here, but the majority of the second half of the article reads like a low-pressure sales pitch to me.

[navigatesol]

>This sounds insane to me.

Isn't the entire point of the article that he thought it sounded like a good idea, and turned out that it wasn't? In principle, it's easier than some of the options you list, since any corporate job ("analyst") involves a lot of downtime at your computer.

[anewguy9000]

“I’d literally be sitting around bored half the day without it" lol