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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

#31

Post by phillipcarter »

peteretep wrote: post #23
randomacct3847 wrote: post #22

So called “shadow work” is becoming more prevalent. When you choose to self checkout at a grocery store you’re essentially doing work for free (scanning and bagging your own groceries) in place of a paid cashier and bagger.

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.

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

#32

Post by notahacker »

slededit wrote: post #27
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…

People are sorted into different classes in companies. You’ll never get a company to pay six figures for someone they consider a free intern - regardless of whether it’s in their economic interest.

Nobody's saying she should have been earning six figures. But they could certainly have been smart enough to offer her and other prolific quizmakers paid positions with a revenue share upside if they thought they'd get more quizzes as a result. She's 19 and made 700 quizzes for free - she'd have probably thought an entry level wage and a $10k bonus was Buzzfeed being very generous.

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

#33

Post by esoterica »

randomacct3847 wrote: post #22

So called “shadow work” is becoming more prevalent. When you choose to self checkout at a grocery store you’re essentially doing work for free (scanning and bagging your own groceries) in place of a paid cashier and bagger.

When you choose to drive your own car you’re doing work for free in place of a paid driver. When you choose to do your own dishes you’re doing work for free in place of a paid housekeeper. Etc.

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

#34

Post by jacobolus »

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 like a job instead of a hobby, and can lead the person doing the work to choke on deadlines, slack off, look for shortcuts, or even give up entirely.

Of course, people providing valuable services to a for-profit business should be fairly compensated, and companies shouldn’t be trying to exploit volunteers.

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

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

#35

Post by bastawhiz »

slededit wrote: post #27
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…

People are sorted into different classes in companies. You’ll never get a company to pay six figures for someone they consider a free intern - regardless of whether it’s in their economic interest.

> 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.

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

#36

Post by Dirlewanger »

kukx wrote: post #26
randomacct3847 wrote: post #22

So called “shadow work” is becoming more prevalent. When you choose to self checkout at a grocery store you’re essentially doing work for free (scanning and bagging your own groceries) in place of a paid cashier and bagger.

Upside is that the queues are usually much shorter and you do not waste as much time waiting in line. Also, as noted in another comment, it may lead to lower prices.

As much as I like self-checkout, I find the opposite is true, and it gets worse as the number of items increases. Most people are generally pretty slow scanning items as they struggle an extra second or two to find the barcode. It's great for express checkouts, but not for people that have a cart full of items.

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

#37

Post by ddxxdd »

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.

Businesses are generally more competitive than people realize. The average person believes that corporate profits are typically in the 36% range, which is 5X higher than what reality shows:

http://www.aei.org/publication/the-public-thinks-the-average...

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

#38

Post by driverdan »

peteretep wrote: post #23
randomacct3847 wrote: post #22

So called “shadow work” is becoming more prevalent. When you choose to self checkout at a grocery store you’re essentially doing work for free (scanning and bagging your own groceries) in place of a paid cashier and bagger.

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.

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

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

#39

Post by eitland »

scardine wrote: post #18
mikeash wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia is a nonprofit, which is why it gets a pass. YouTube pays (some) creators, so it looks more like a normal business. Stack Overflow is much more interesting to me. People generally love it, but it makes a lot of money off the backs of its unpaid users. I suppose the key factor there is that people see SO as really useful, and doing good unpaid labor there can pay off greatly in indirect ways, like being hire…

Volunteering at Stackoverflow is a win-win game for me. When I answer questions there I'm improving my English communication skills while earning online reputation. I'm spreading knowledge and making the Internet a better place and I really hope Stackoverflow is making a buck in order to keep the lights on. It is a great online resource.

Agree.

And unlike certain other websites Stack Overflow shares the dataset back to us.

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

#40

Post by mruts »

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.

There is a much much stronger historical precedent of businesses competing rather than colluding. Price fixing isn’t a Nash Equilibrium, and therefore, isn’t a stable state. The market will ruthlessly push prices on goods to their lowest profitable price by means of the marginal consumer.

While price fixing obviously happens, it usually only happens in markets with a small number of producers. And even then, it will inevitably collapse.

Look around, goods are very competitive nowadays. Computers are competitively priced, all goods on Amazon, nyc $1 pizza, food, gasoline, cars, clothes, etc.

Very few businesses have the fat margins you claim are the norm. And the businesses that do are usually not producing goods, but renting services: telecoms, advertising, etc.

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