181–190 of 620 posts
> there are two sets of entry-level knowledge workers at Facebook: > engineers ($150k/year, benefits, upward career trajectory) and > content moderators ($30k/year, no benefits, likely going to acquire mental illnesses). If Facebook could get away with paying engineers $30K/year, no benefits, believe me, they would.
I'm sorry but who wouldn't? I would.
Maybe Facebook should make all of their own employees do 15 minutes of moderation per day - just to share the pain out a bit....
Granted, not everyone does that, someone nibbling at the frontend or sitting deep in some distributed DB generally does not care much about data quality.
This was a valuable article to read. Facebook is enormously valuable. They made something like $15B in net income in the last four quarters. Content moderators are a necessary condition for that profit. If kiddie porn, gore and animal cruelty flooded the network, it would cease to be a destination visited by people that advertisers will pay to reach. And yet, there are two sets of entry-level knowledge workers at Fac…
> Can anyone at Facebook speak to whether engineers are aware of the working conditions of moderators, and agitate to improve their lot? They are passively aware but mostly don't care. The engineers who express frustration are in the vast minority. Most engineers are just super happy about their own situations, very focused on PSCs, and try to keep to their own stuff. Any internal frustrations are channelled towards…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand how this isn't a problem perfectly solved by the market. If it's a shit job that isn't worth the pay, people won't do it. If it's an okay job that isn't really worth the pay, they will have high turnover. High turnover has a cost, maybe it's worth it to them. If the turnover is so high or the job is so undesirable, maybe they'll axe the role. If the role is so important to the business that it can'…
>> If it's a shit job that isn't worth the pay, people won't do it. That assumes perfect knowledge. As mentioned in the article, these moderators often do not understand what they are getting into until long after they have committed to the job. Once you have quit a previous job, moved, setup your new life, only then do you realize your new "brand consultant" job means watching kittens die all day. Jobs like this als…
> there are two sets of entry-level knowledge workers at Facebook: > engineers ($150k/year, benefits, upward career trajectory) and > content moderators ($30k/year, no benefits, likely going to acquire mental illnesses). If Facebook could get away with paying engineers $30K/year, no benefits, believe me, they would.
I'm sorry but who wouldn't? I would.
I live in East Wall, Dublin -- beside the Facebook moderator (The Beckett) building. I wonder if this is true for them as well or if it's just N. America -- we've better employment protections and minimum wage in Ireland compared to the US.
AFAIK Content reviewers in the Dublin office work for Facebook as perm employees (are not contractors), and mostly deal with escalated cases from offsite contractors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how an average person could be expected to witness some of the things mentioned in the article. I didn't have time to read the entire article, but do they have counselors on staff or something? That one paragraph about organs was enough to ruin my day, and it was just text. I'm surprised such a "rash of videos" wasn't in the news somewhere.
From the article: He sought out the on-site counselor for support, but found him unhelpful. “He just flat-out told me: ‘I don’t really know how to help you guys,’”
> there are two sets of entry-level knowledge workers at Facebook: > engineers ($150k/year, benefits, upward career trajectory) and > content moderators ($30k/year, no benefits, likely going to acquire mental illnesses). If Facebook could get away with paying engineers $30K/year, no benefits, believe me, they would.
I'm sorry but who wouldn't? I would.
But in a society that advocates the hustle, I gotta get mine, right? /s