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

Inside Amazon's clickworker platform

techrepublic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 53 posts

Re: Inside Amazon's clickworker platform

#31

Post by pas »

PostOnce wrote: post #29
wjossey wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You know a WHOLE LOT of people would rather make 500k a year than 300k even if it means their employees are damn near homeless and malnourished. See: any biz with min wage employees in the US. Nah, sorry. That's just over the top and not true. I worked two separate minimum wage jobs before I was 20, and both had owner / operators who made no where near that kind of money. One was an entrepreneur who was losing mone…

"Minimum wage does not imply improperly priced labor" even if it's not a living wage? If it's not a living wage, it's not proper, is it? What are you saying? Have you read anything about the McDonalds and other franchises paying their employees in cards which carry transaction and withdrawal fees ON TOP OF the fact they're already making min wage? Even if you make $10/hr which isn't min wage, and you're fully employe…

Do people on min. wage have to pay taxes? And how much?

Also, what is the total income of those who work min. wage? (So what are the other sources of income, or the monetary equivalent of regular support they receive?)

It's also fine to pay just a security guard and rent a machine that can make burgers and pay the franchise mothership delivery service a tiny bit more to not just unload the cargo but to load it into the burgermachine.

Yes, we ought to pay people a fair wage. People should look after people a lot better than we do today.

And please do, show us that the majority of those making under 20K/year work somewhere where the company is making huge profits _and_ that the work they do is AI-hard.

And of course we're greedy, just look how many people are still clinging to concepts such as nation, fate, hard work and so on.

Re: Inside Amazon's clickworker platform

#33

Post by pranaygupta »

kozikow wrote: post #19

In my company I have my own image labeling team in Poland and I pay $4 per hour. I can go down to $2.5. Median hourly rate of amazon mechanical turk is supposedly $1.38[1]. My dataset is harder to label than ordinary images, so it takes a few hours to ramp up the labeller. I have been contemplating migrating to mechanical turk for a while. Anyone have some experience to share? 1. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/…

you may want to try out Squadrun. Their quality is pretty high and they are typically faster and cheaper than MT.

https://squadrun.co/

Re: Inside Amazon's clickworker platform

#34

Post by zaroth »

Erik816 wrote: post #15
Sanddancer wrote: post #11

My mother had a job like this 30 years ago. She worked data entry as a keypunch operator. However, it was a full time job, above minimum wage, provided insurance and vacation time. Mechanical Turk relies on the race to the bottom, the fact that some people need any job to keep from being on the street. Of course companies love the gig economy, it keeps them from having to think of their workers as people.

Alternative interpretation: 30 years ago this kind of job could't easily be done by someone in a third world country for a fraction of the price. Now that it can, the price has adjusted.

Per TFA, about 75% of Turkers are American.

Re: Inside Amazon's clickworker platform

#35

Post by zaroth »

75% of Turkers are Americans. And I didn't see it in the OP but I would guess that similarly 75% of companies issuing HITs are American.

Now I don't know the exact wording of minimum wage law, but I'm pretty sure if you hire an independent contractor through a 3rd party staffing company, let's say to clean houses. And then you set a fixed price on the service, say you will pay $20 for each house cleaned, knowing it takes 4 hours on average to clean a house. And then you let anyone who wants it take the job. This would be illegal.

So, I honestly don't know how mTurk is allowed to operate the way they do. American companies should not be able to hire American workers to perform labor at below minimum wage, just because they use an API to do it.

I'm willing to bet if someone was willing to spell it all out in front of the right AG or the right class action legal team that there would be significant settlements to be had.

Re: Inside Amazon's clickworker platform

#36

Post by WhitneyLand »

What a dystopian vibe. They were debating how long this type of work would be available, but didn't emphasize that ultimately it's a zero sum game.

Is anyone predicting when various jobs will fall to AI? I here about the 3 million truck drivers a lot. However I think some groups like radiologists are still underestimating the speed at which reading x-rays will become mostly a job of double checking computer interpretations.

Re: Inside Amazon's clickworker platform

#37

Post by beachstartup »

zaroth wrote: post #35

75% of Turkers are Americans. And I didn't see it in the OP but I would guess that similarly 75% of companies issuing HITs are American. Now I don't know the exact wording of minimum wage law, but I'm pretty sure if you hire an independent contractor through a 3rd party staffing company, let's say to clean houses. And then you set a fixed price on the service, say you will pay $20 for each house cleaned, knowing it t…

lots of companies do it. look at farm workers or car washes or -- allegedly -- amazon's very own warehouses. not to mention the overseas factories that build everything they sell.

there's a whole section of society that minimum wage laws simply don't apply to and everyone looks the other way while enjoying the benefits.

someone like bezos basically just enjoys complete non-accountability and even high praise and wealth for putting an api in front of literally everything he can think of, including illegal labor practices.

Re: Inside Amazon's clickworker platform

#38

Post by mtw »

zaroth wrote: post #35

75% of Turkers are Americans. And I didn't see it in the OP but I would guess that similarly 75% of companies issuing HITs are American. Now I don't know the exact wording of minimum wage law, but I'm pretty sure if you hire an independent contractor through a 3rd party staffing company, let's say to clean houses. And then you set a fixed price on the service, say you will pay $20 for each house cleaned, knowing it t…

From what I understand, most of the american turkers are stay-at-home moms. They have a family to cater to and various obligations that prevent them to pursue a full-time job. Mechanical Turk gives them the possibility to work anytime, at their own rhytm. 10mn there, 2 hours, early am, middle of the night. I'm not sure if there are jobs that can offer this flexibility.

Re: Inside Amazon's clickworker platform

#39

Post by orly_bookz »

pas wrote: post #31
PostOnce wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Minimum wage does not imply improperly priced labor" even if it's not a living wage? If it's not a living wage, it's not proper, is it? What are you saying? Have you read anything about the McDonalds and other franchises paying their employees in cards which carry transaction and withdrawal fees ON TOP OF the fact they're already making min wage? Even if you make $10/hr which isn't min wage, and you're fully employe…

Do people on min. wage have to pay taxes? And how much? Also, what is the total income of those who work min. wage? (So what are the other sources of income, or the monetary equivalent of regular support they receive?) It's also fine to pay just a security guard and rent a machine that can make burgers and pay the franchise mothership delivery service a tiny bit more to not just unload the cargo but to load it into t…

I believe someone making minimum wage will get all of their Federal taxes back, so they could probably just claim 99 exemptions and never pay that money in the first place. I'm not sure about state taxes as that may well vary from place to place.

Re: Inside Amazon's clickworker platform

#40

Post by novaleaf »

A bit of anecdotal insight: I have a relative who is psychologically incapable of finding a job due to fear of rejection, and will justify not applying for any job by considering how hard it would be to get a job. Quite literally he finds it more attractive to get a guaranteed minimum wage job than to apply and face possible rejection for a high paid job which he is qualified for.

I believe this same kind of pathological behavior is what's causing people (like described in the article) to stick with AMT jobs.

I wish I knew a way to break this vicious cycle :(

Post reply on HN