My Life as a TaskRabbit
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My Life as a TaskRabbit
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Re: My Life as a TaskRabbit
#2> I call Chris Mok, a top-ranked local TaskRabbit who earns up to $1,500 a week. Mok was laid off from his job as an art buyer at Macy’s (M) in 2009 and now spends most days, including weekends, on handyman assignments such as assembling Ikea furniture.
TaskRabbit: Distributed underemployment.
Re: My Life as a TaskRabbit
#3My view on this is this is another example of a free market system of supply and demand. If you have an individual willing to spend money on having their lunch delivered or their car washed without moving a muscle, and on the other side you have someone that is willing to do the work, then it is win win.
Re: My Life as a TaskRabbit
#4What kind of risk/liability does these "employees" generally take? Like washing someone's unlocked car, is the employee liable for any damages or the company? If I'm do carpenting work distributed from TaskRabbit and hurt myself so badly I get disabled, do TaskRabbit have insurance for me? What is the standard for this? One reason why buying services is expensive is that the service provider takes risk and needs to insure their workers, I very much doubt that these TaskRabbit-type companies do that... Or am I wrong?
Re: My Life as a TaskRabbit
#5What kind of risk/liability does these "employees" generally take? Like washing someone's unlocked car, is the employee liable for any damages or the company? If I'm do carpenting work distributed from TaskRabbit and hurt myself so badly I get disabled, do TaskRabbit have insurance for me? What is the standard for this? One reason why buying services is expensive is that the service provider takes risk and needs to i…
You can write it off in the end user agreement for the runners, right?
Re: My Life as a TaskRabbit
#6What kind of risk/liability does these "employees" generally take? Like washing someone's unlocked car, is the employee liable for any damages or the company? If I'm do carpenting work distributed from TaskRabbit and hurt myself so badly I get disabled, do TaskRabbit have insurance for me? What is the standard for this? One reason why buying services is expensive is that the service provider takes risk and needs to i…
This is a huge point. A single uninsured mistake with an expensive car could potentially wipe out carwashing earnings for months. (See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4492619)
Re: My Life as a TaskRabbit
#7> I call Chris Mok, a top-ranked local TaskRabbit who earns up to $1,500 a week. Mok was laid off from his job as an art buyer at Macy’s (M) in 2009 and now spends most days, including weekends, on handyman assignments such as assembling Ikea furniture. TaskRabbit: Distributed underemployment.
It's better than being unemployed.
Re: My Life as a TaskRabbit
#8What kind of risk/liability does these "employees" generally take? Like washing someone's unlocked car, is the employee liable for any damages or the company? If I'm do carpenting work distributed from TaskRabbit and hurt myself so badly I get disabled, do TaskRabbit have insurance for me? What is the standard for this? One reason why buying services is expensive is that the service provider takes risk and needs to i…
You can write it off in the end user agreement for the runners, right?
I'm not sure about the US legal situation but here in Sweden there is so much legislation to protect workers that a TaskRabbit kind of service becomes hard to achieve.
Re: My Life as a TaskRabbit
#9I became a task rabbit almost three weeks ago. I have bid on at least thirty jobs. I have spent a total of 5 hours checking the site for jobs. I have not been assigned one task. I have applied for several graphic design gigs. Most people want a logo designed for thirty to fifty dollars. Some people want ebooks created from word documents for under a hundred dollars. The hard labor tasks is where the money is. Those jobs depend on bidding low and fast.
It is an interesting place. There are many companies that use TaskRabbit as their recruiting agency. They post jobs that require to sign up on their websites.
Overall, I have to stop wasting my time on it. I intern(unpaid) at a startup that was planning on using TaskRabbit as delivery service. I thought it would be good (could be fun) income.
edit: this is from my experience in Chicago
Re: My Life as a TaskRabbit
#10The one thing I have always wondered -- how would these companies scale ? These models work well in areas with a high population density (eg: SF, NYC, major city downtowns etc.). How well will they work when they spread out to the suburbs ?