A startup ushered thousands of Indian women into gig work, for better and worse
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: A startup ushered thousands of Indian women into gig work, for better and worse
#2If they wanted me to read that article they shouldn't have started by forcing me to scoll past a bunch of unenlightening pictures each with a single sentence scrolling over them.
After the third one I closed the tab. What's wrong with people? Someone went to the effort to research and write a story and then somebody else erected an annoying barrier to read it.
Edit to add:
I am well aware commenting on site design is discouraged on HN, but many of us do generate web sites of one sort or another (from blogs to customer-facing SaaS or ecommerce to corporate sites) so I felt that mentioning this egregious example is germane.
This scolly-barrier reminds me of 1990s sites that began with a splash screen that needed to be clicked through to get to the first page of the site. People would even complain about visitors using "deep links" (i.e. links) that meant they didn't get to see the splash page each time.
Funny that when you get to amazon or google or in fact most sites who actually want you to use them you immediately get something related to site use: a search bar, some content related to your past visits or something explanatory.
The approach this site took I consider as self-indulgent as a splash page, hence my calling it out.
Re: A startup ushered thousands of Indian women into gig work, for better and worse
#3The spirit of the sweatshop is alive in India!
Re: A startup ushered thousands of Indian women into gig work, for better and worse
#4The spirit of the sweatshop is alive in India!
It always was.
Re: A startup ushered thousands of Indian women into gig work, for better and worse
#5If they wanted me to read that article they shouldn't have started by forcing me to scoll past a bunch of unenlightening pictures each with a single sentence scrolling over them. After the third one I closed the tab. What's wrong with people? Someone went to the effort to research and write a story and then somebody else erected an annoying barrier to read it. Edit to add: I am well aware commenting on site design is…
"If they wanted me to watch the documentary they shouldn't have started by forcing me to sit through a bunch of unenlightening establishing shots with the name of the studio, distributor, or director over them. After the third one I walked out. What's wrong with people? Someone went to the effort to research and produce a documentary and then somebody else erected an annoying barrier to watch it."
I'm being perhaps unnecessarily facetious, but is there really that big of a difference here? This is the publication's attempt (and one may debate how successful it was) to immerse the reader in a way that a traditional layout wouldn't.
Re: A startup ushered thousands of Indian women into gig work, for better and worse
#6If they wanted me to read that article they shouldn't have started by forcing me to scoll past a bunch of unenlightening pictures each with a single sentence scrolling over them. After the third one I closed the tab. What's wrong with people? Someone went to the effort to research and write a story and then somebody else erected an annoying barrier to read it. Edit to add: I am well aware commenting on site design is…
This is pretty common. The NYT does this with large stories. I think it’s a nice way to add some mood-setting images and concepts.
Re: A startup ushered thousands of Indian women into gig work, for better and worse
#7This is a very confusing article to me.
It features a woman who talked about how her family had no work opportunities. But then had a job as a dental receptionist for 15 years, and got married to a guy with a sales manager job. She has bought a house and a motorbike. And now she does this beauty stuff. And she makes 20% more than her husband?
The rest of it… eh. Seems like they’re suggesting a lot of this is just a middle man inserting themselves into a pre existing market.
Gig work seems like socialized slavery to me. Peel back the sticker and you have all sorts of constraints around what work you have to do to maintain your rights and wages as a worker. Like the reference here of requiring paid retraining if your rating falls too low. In such a system, at purchaser of labor can inflict serious harm to their worker at will. I don’t think this is a mainstream idea but it feels like the natural end game.
Re: A startup ushered thousands of Indian women into gig work, for better and worse
#8This is a very confusing article to me. It features a woman who talked about how her family had no work opportunities. But then had a job as a dental receptionist for 15 years, and got married to a guy with a sales manager job. She has bought a house and a motorbike. And now she does this beauty stuff. And she makes 20% more than her husband? The rest of it… eh. Seems like they’re suggesting a lot of this is just a m…
> Gig work seems like socialized slavery to me.
You're not wrong, it's the logical next step for capitalism.
"Again we have diluted ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew and prospered out of the protestant ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is that Capitalism was build on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor – both black and white, both here and abroad. If Negroes and poor whites do not participate in the free flow of wealth within our economy, they will forever be poor, giving their energies, their talents and their limited funds to the consumer market but reaping few benefits and services in return." - Martin Luther King
Re: A startup ushered thousands of Indian women into gig work, for better and worse
#9If they wanted me to read that article they shouldn't have started by forcing me to scoll past a bunch of unenlightening pictures each with a single sentence scrolling over them. After the third one I closed the tab. What's wrong with people? Someone went to the effort to research and write a story and then somebody else erected an annoying barrier to read it. Edit to add: I am well aware commenting on site design is…
This is pretty common. The NYT does this with large stories. I think it’s a nice way to add some mood-setting images and concepts.
That's what a first paragraph is for.
Re: A startup ushered thousands of Indian women into gig work, for better and worse
#10If they wanted me to read that article they shouldn't have started by forcing me to scoll past a bunch of unenlightening pictures each with a single sentence scrolling over them. After the third one I closed the tab. What's wrong with people? Someone went to the effort to research and write a story and then somebody else erected an annoying barrier to read it. Edit to add: I am well aware commenting on site design is…
"If they wanted me to watch the documentary they shouldn't have started by forcing me to sit through a bunch of unenlightening establishing shots with the name of the studio, distributor, or director over them. After the third one I walked out. What's wrong with people? Someone went to the effort to research and produce a documentary and then somebody else erected an annoying barrier to watch it." I'm being perhaps u…
I always scrub forward though the name of the studio etc, much less an elaborate intro.
And apparently a lot of people find it annoying as most streaming sites provide a "skip" button for that stuff and queue up a "watch next" that skips all the credits.
The "traditional layout" is an introductory paragraph.