Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Who Makes Below Minimum Wage on Mechanical Turk?

priceonomics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 60 posts

Re: Who Makes Below Minimum Wage on Mechanical Turk?

#11

Post by lqdc13 »

anamexis wrote: post #8
lqdc13 wrote: post #3

>>>$1.13 for writing a verbatim transcript of a 4 minute and 2 second audio clip What? That's actually pretty good...

I did this for awhile, and it takes surprisingly long to do these transcriptions. They are mostly transcribing accident interviews for insurance companies. The recordings are absolutely terrible, so you have to re-listen to each part many times to get it right. Additionally, since it is paralegal work, there are very strict requirements for formatting and accuracy. 30 minutes spent transcribing a 4 minute audio clip…

I guess it depends on the task a lot.

I transcribed a few college lecture fragments at one point just to figure out what it's like and i was able to type while listening as I could understand the accent right away.

While giving out Turk tasks, I noticed some people are about 100x more efficient than others depending on the task.

Re: Who Makes Below Minimum Wage on Mechanical Turk?

#12

Post by Mz »

I have never gotten into Mechanical Turk, but I do freelance work online. My "hourly wage" depends in part on how together I am. I am medically handicapped. Some days, I am fairly together and can make around $12/hour -- not dissimilar form what I was making at a corporate job after a few pay raises. On a so-so day, it can take me forever to complete tasks, lowering my "hourly wage." However, I still need the money, even if the hourly wage is not great. (Edit: On a bad day, I typically do not work. And I don't get fired for missing a lot of days. This was a constant worry at my corporate job.)

Do I wish I earned more per hour? Sure. But I worry about people who want to "improve" conditions for people choosing to do this kind of work. I cannot take a normal job and have any hope of getting well and staying well. I walked away from a corporate job because it was helping to keep me sick.

For me, this kind of low wage work buys me precious freedom and control over my life. If you take it from me, I am left with what? Panhandling? Prostitution? ...??? I don't know what I would be left with. But people making $100/hour should butt the hell out with their excessively privileged ideas about "good working conditions" and let people like me have some freedom to choose. It isn't like most people actually give a damn how hard life is for me or others like me.

Re: Who Makes Below Minimum Wage on Mechanical Turk?

#13

Post by pcthrowaway »

tracker1 wrote: post #9
lqdc13 wrote: post #3

>>>$1.13 for writing a verbatim transcript of a 4 minute and 2 second audio clip What? That's actually pretty good...

That was my thought as well.. I don't think the majority of tasks will wind up much under $10/hr for most people. Only Amazon knows what the average person is making in an average hour of turn around time though. It would be interesting to find out though.

Spend some time on mechanical turk.. the average transcription task takes a surprising amount of time to complete. I type 70-90 words per minute and a 30 second transcription might take me 5-6 minutes, due to having to replay parts over and over, and deal with formatting it according to the requirements

Re: Who Makes Below Minimum Wage on Mechanical Turk?

#14

Post by kruhft »

A while back I was using Mechanical Turk as a source for programming problems. The major issue was that they were distributing a lot of the work to get around things like the limit of google searches one can do a day (100 I think), so once the problems were scripted, you could easily break those barriers.

Certain problems were quite interesting, involving OCR and fuzzy pattern matching on google rankings, and I'm sure certain ones would make good research problems. It was fun for a few days, but even when scripted the amounts you would make were minuscule.

Re: Who Makes Below Minimum Wage on Mechanical Turk?

#15

Post by Frondo »

Mz wrote: post #12

I have never gotten into Mechanical Turk, but I do freelance work online. My "hourly wage" depends in part on how together I am. I am medically handicapped. Some days, I am fairly together and can make around $12/hour -- not dissimilar form what I was making at a corporate job after a few pay raises. On a so-so day, it can take me forever to complete tasks, lowering my "hourly wage." However, I still need the money,…

Would you complain if, through legislation, nothing were different about your work structure, but you were in fact paid more? I.e. nothing changes but you're making $15/hour instead of $12/hour?

Re: Who Makes Below Minimum Wage on Mechanical Turk?

#16

Post by Mz »

Frondo wrote: post #15
Mz wrote: post #12

I have never gotten into Mechanical Turk, but I do freelance work online. My "hourly wage" depends in part on how together I am. I am medically handicapped. Some days, I am fairly together and can make around $12/hour -- not dissimilar form what I was making at a corporate job after a few pay raises. On a so-so day, it can take me forever to complete tasks, lowering my "hourly wage." However, I still need the money,…

Would you complain if, through legislation, nothing were different about your work structure, but you were in fact paid more? I.e. nothing changes but you're making $15/hour instead of $12/hour?

There is no way "nothing else" would change. And your comment is rife with assumptions that I find galling. But I don't have time at the moment to address that.

Re: Who Makes Below Minimum Wage on Mechanical Turk?

#17

Post by AJ007 »

amelius wrote: post #5

I guess the wages are low because any task has to be verified by another person (possibly in a consensus-test, where the input of the other person is verified against your input). Or at least, that's what I'm guessing.

It has been years, but when I placed projects on mturk I had them listed to be completed 2-3 times each. This was the only sane way to filter out input by users which was completely wrong. The positive thing was once you identified someone submitting non-sense you ban them from the project and pay nothing.

Americans are not ready for what is going to happen to the labor market when minimum wage goes to $15 an hour.

Re: Who Makes Below Minimum Wage on Mechanical Turk?

#19

Post by zappo2938 »

amelius wrote: post #5

I guess the wages are low because any task has to be verified by another person (possibly in a consensus-test, where the input of the other person is verified against your input). Or at least, that's what I'm guessing.

Duolingo has hundreds of people translating the New York Times into several languages being paid nothing. (edit) What about people who spend hours answering questions on Stack Exchange?

American's spend several hours a day watching TV. What if the service gives people a distraction that they are mentally active in? There might be several advantages other than monitory performing these tasks over passively sitting in front of a TV.

Re: Who Makes Below Minimum Wage on Mechanical Turk?

#20

Post by [deleted] »

tracker1 wrote: post #9
lqdc13 wrote: post #3

>>>$1.13 for writing a verbatim transcript of a 4 minute and 2 second audio clip What? That's actually pretty good...

That was my thought as well.. I don't think the majority of tasks will wind up much under $10/hr for most people. Only Amazon knows what the average person is making in an average hour of turn around time though. It would be interesting to find out though.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN