[demadog]

When those reports come out that “The average Google employee makes $220k a year” or whatever, it’s totally misleading since it doesn’t account for all the outsourced labor at $10 an hour that is critical to tuning their algorithms.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I don't think that's misleading at all. Why would I assume that non-Google employee compensation would go into the calculation for what the average Google employee makes?

As someone else pointed out, this pays substantially more than AWS Mechanical Turk. To be honest, it's difficult for me to imagine an easier job than this one. I mean, most people who would do this job could easily now make more at McDonald's or Walmart or whatever. But I think jobs at McDonald's or Walmart are considerably harder, so I don't see why this job should pay the same.

[Retric]

Google has publicly described these people as it’s “extended workforce.”

Employee is generally used as the legal definition, but if you’re only job is to work for company X under their explicit micromanaged directions you fit the colloquial definition of employee even if your paycheck is signed by a different company.

[Nexxxeh]

I did voice training tasks for Google through a 3rd party I can't remember the name of. I was recruited via /r/beermoney or something. I enjoyed it, and it was easy work that fit around my schedule. It also gave a feeling of improving the lives of users, which was cool.

[daniel-cussen]

It for sure can be good, win-win.

[kappuchino]

Its better paid than Amazon Mechanical Turk afaik (not saying it should not be paid better). The tuning is done literally by thousands world wide and since every rating task is done by multiple quality raters (afaik side by side is done by at least 5), it seems to be a cost vs. scale factor.

[demadog]

Amazon Turk is more of a platform for small business to hire other workers for micro-tasks. Raterlabs is used only by Google to improve their core product.

[vultour]

Google salaries outside of the US are a fraction of that.

[kappuchino]

No, not generally, because it depends. With mandatory paid social security and cheaper rent, it is somehow lower (for example) germany - but not for each every job, since some are in high demand (ml/ai specialists for example) . Google employees in switzerland are paid higher than in the US for similar tasks due the cost of living higher. (Same with other companies like facebook, twitter, etc.)