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BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

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Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#61

Post by derefr »

slededit wrote: post #45
bastawhiz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You’ll never get a company to pay six figures for someone they consider a free intern And yet here they are, having lost that percentage of revenue because they had this mindset. I don't think she needed a six figure salary necessarily, but BF made exactly no attempt to do _anything_. Unlike an unpaid intern, McMahon could have kept doing this indefinitely, not just for three summer months.

It’s human nature, and it happens not just in business. People get up in arms whenever an open source project tries to monetize in some way other than “support”.

Isn’t the whole point of having things like CEOs and shareholder-elected boards of directors, to find people who are good at optimizing for the business’s profits over what their own human natures tell them to do?

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#62

Post by dceddia »

owenmarshall wrote: post #48
driverdan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets passed on in the form of faster checkouts and shorter lines, resulting in less wasted time.

“Please place the item in the bag.” “Please remove the last scanned item from the bag and scan it before placing it in the bag.” “Please wait, help is on the way.”

Every damn time.

I really wonder whether that system actually helps prevent theft, or if it was originally put in place because stores suspected that theft would be a problem, and we're just stuck with it now.

Plus, in the couple stores I frequent, there's always an employee standing at the ready to clear out the errors. Which, I imagine, would go a long way toward reducing theft on its own.

Either way, they seem to be universally bad. I can only hope a store tries to buck the trend by turning off the weight check and finds that it causes no problems. Maybe if that happens, the other would follow suit.

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#63

Post by lsc »

jacobolus wrote: post #34
bastawhiz wrote: post #20

For me, the real story here is that BF failed to take any action at all to retain a top five driver of traffic to their ad revenue - driven website. Let's say that quiz interactions from McMahon come out to 5% of ad impressions for all of BF. What would a site as big as BF pay to ensure that those 5% of impressions don't disappear overnight? At most companies, I'd imagine quite a bit. Even if we look at the low numbe…

> If someone is providing you a service for free that accounts for a very meaningful percentage of revenue, how much revenue could they be generating for you if you actually incentivized them to do that work? 1.25x? 1.5x? 2x? More? In some cases, it could be less output, or lower quality. Money (or other explicit rewards) changes the psychology of doing work vs. volunteering it. It adds pressure, makes the work feel…

>But monetary “incentives” are in general quite a terrible system for eliciting good work.

I'm glad I don't work for you.

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#64

Post by fbelzile »

lsc wrote: post #63
jacobolus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If someone is providing you a service for free that accounts for a very meaningful percentage of revenue, how much revenue could they be generating for you if you actually incentivized them to do that work? 1.25x? 1.5x? 2x? More? In some cases, it could be less output, or lower quality. Money (or other explicit rewards) changes the psychology of doing work vs. volunteering it. It adds pressure, makes the work feel…

>But monetary “incentives” are in general quite a terrible system for eliciting good work. I'm glad I don't work for you.

I think what jacobolus is saying is after a certain point, more money won't necessarily lead to better quality of work.

[0] https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#65

Post by bookofjoe »

phillipcarter wrote: post #31
peteretep wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would assume that in a sufficiently competitive market (for examples, certainly in the UK, supermarkets), this then gets passed on in terms of price cuts.

> One would assume I severely doubt it's the case. Besides, businesses aren't typically interested in having a competitive market anyways. It's probably more profitable to not lower prices at all and lobby to make it harder for competitors to lower prices . . . or just conspire with major competitors to keep them higher. Both actions have a strong historical precedent in US markets, at least.

Concur. I've always been puzzled why self-checkout isn't, say 1% cheaper, considering how much labor costs in supermarkets and razor-thin profit margins.

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#66

Post by randomacct3847 »

esoterica wrote: post #56
randomacct3847 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad take. If youre an average worker and don’t drive yourself to work and have no alternative form of transportation a company is not going to pony up and pay for a private driver for you. How is that remotely analagous to the buzzfeed situation or self checkout

If you’re a cheap shopper and you want to go to the grocery store with the cheapest prices, the store is not going to pony up and pay for a bagger for you because that would drive their costs up. See the analogy now?

No, you can choose to not do work and not shop at a grocery store that doesn’t have a cashier (but then you’re taking about the Amazon Go stores where its a true win win because you just walk out)

If you choose to not drive to a job that you signed up for knowing that your only option to get to work was driving, then you’ll just not earn income. The company won’t otherwise pay to transport you there.

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#67

Post by iaw »

alexkavon wrote: post #24

> "It's just crazy because, like I said, I'm in college. I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my career yet, and now I have all these options, so it's really good." glances over at timer counting down from 15 minutes

She's talented enough that she was driving a substantial portion of BuzzFeed's traffic without work experience at the age of 19.

Netflix did not reach out to her because it's her "15 minutes" they reached out because she has a skillset that overlaps with their needs. Long after we've forgotten about this article she'll likely continue to be successful in internet marketing if that's the route she chooses.

This young woman just learned that something she does for fun in her spare time has a high economic value.

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#68

Post by lsc »

fbelzile wrote: post #64
lsc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But monetary “incentives” are in general quite a terrible system for eliciting good work. I'm glad I don't work for you.

I think what jacobolus is saying is after a certain point, more money won't necessarily lead to better quality of work. [0] https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work

My argument is that if you pay less than your competitors, you can't expect to hire and retain the best people.

edit: More to the point, I think this idea that people don't work for money is one pushed by management at the expense of the workers, and when I hear employers putting that out there, I assume those employers are... bad to work for, because they think that by being manipulative, they can get you to work for less.

Usually, those employers have less pleasant cultures and pay less than employers who simply pay more than their competition.

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#69

Post by jshowa3 »

Chick goes to the university one of my close friends from elementary school went to.

Man, maybe I should've made a bunch of dumb quizzes. Probably would've been easier for me to get a job out of college.

However, I couldn't live with myself knowing that all I did was make quizzes asking what Disney character you were most alike. Especially if I got paid 200k a year for it.

Re: BuzzFeed’s 19-year-old quizmaker will no longer work for free

#70

Post by makapuf »

lsc wrote: post #68
fbelzile wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what jacobolus is saying is after a certain point, more money won't necessarily lead to better quality of work. [0] https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work

My argument is that if you pay less than your competitors, you can't expect to hire and retain the best people. edit: More to the point, I think this idea that people don't work for money is one pushed by management at the expense of the workers, and when I hear employers putting that out there, I assume those employers are... bad to work for, because they think that by being manipulative, they can get you to work fo…

I guess since those mangers are generally well paid they must be bad at what they do.
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