A Revolution in Tech Jobs? The Murky World of Online Labor
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Need help tweaking or translating your website? You could hire a techie you already know. Or you could hire a "web worker" you'll never meet through online marketplaces like CrowdFlower and Amazon's Mechanical Turk. These sites offer an interesting model for cheap labor and leveraging the wisdom of crowds. But they also present unique ethical and practical concerns. Tech Tuesday explores labor online.
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The University of Maryland's Ben Bederson posted a job on Mechanical Turk asking respondents what kinds of topics they'd like to hear more of on our show. Below is a sampling of the responses:
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Are young people addicted to their mobiles?
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Possibly a topic about raising money for charity such as the Red Cross
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inside tips for navigating federal job application
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Social Relationships
And some of the answers to the same question on CrowdFlower:
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Reducing man-made poison in foods (rBHG)
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I'm interested to hear what other real options a business owner has.
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Interview with Connaitre Miller, artistic director of Afro Blue, Howard University's vocal jazz group, about the group's history and upcoming projects.
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Education
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What is the REAL ID Act?
Ben also posted a Mechanical Turk task asking people how they would express the idea "I love you" without words. Below are some of the answers:
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"I would help the person complete the most unpleasant or demanding task that the person is responsible for completing. A new father could keep the baby happy for a few hours so that the new mom can get some sleep. Surprise your partner with a special meal."
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"surprises! Visit them unannounced on a lunch break and bring a small picnic. Buy flowering plants not cut flowers...they die...plants can live a long time and you'll always have the memory of the moment they were given, right there."
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"I would fix the person I love a nice meal -- with their favorite foods including dessert. I would then have dinner with that person and wait on them by filling their dinner glass, clearing dishes, washing dishes. After dinner, I would offer a backrub or footrub to show my love to this person."
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"There are little things that allow you to express love without saying it. Like remembering the things that you know is important to the one you love. Listening to what they say. Doing what they want. Being open to new ideas because you know it's something they like doing/eating/etc. The look in your eyes often can show it. Saying cute and meaningful things can often show it. You can just tell if you love someone even without words, but there are many ways to show it."
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"Hold hands."
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"I would clean/polish his shoes. Many men don't worry about how their shoes look so they can use a cleaning/polishing. This is dirty work that takes some effort and eye to detail, but yields beautiful shoes. They would be noticed and my work appreciated."
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"I would make a nice candlelit dinner for them and run a bubble bath for them after that."
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"I would hug that person."
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"simple acts of kindness - doing the dishes, vacuuming, flowers, praise"
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"Show them little affections. It's the little things that normally mean the most to a girl/guy. Carry their bags and open their doors, brush the hair back from their face, look into their eyes when they speak and actually LISTEN."
Comments
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Techsploitation is real.
Why didn't you book a labor economist for this show?!
A friend of mine recommended that I try using some of these virtual job-bidding sites so I can find some programming/development work after a long hiatus. However, there is NO WAY I can compete with most of the rates offered by the self-professed techs on these websites. The only way I can compete is if I move way out into the sticks, share very cheap housing (like foreign tech workers often do), find lots of supplemental non-tech income, and/or collect public assistance.
This trend represents a one-way race to the bottom that threatens the wages and standard-of-living of vulnerable low-level workers in this country.
If our so-called business leaders are going to rig the global labor market this unfairly, then we need to stop sending so many underskilled and undereducated American (and U.S. resident) workers into the labor market.
(Meg in Kensington)
I was somewhat disappointed with the coverage of this topic. When your sole guest is a computer scientist and entrepreneur, the opinions are likely going to gloss over the darker realities of these emerging job markets. In my experience, technologists often think that technology can solve just about any problem; they have a tendency to discount how the worst aspects of human nature can undermine their goals and ideals.
This is Ben Bederson, the guest on this show. I wanted to clarify the results on this web page that ask web workers to suggest topics for future Kojo shows. Even though I asked the same question of workers using two services (Amazon Mechanical Turk and CrowdFlower), they were NOT comparable.
For Amazon Mechanical Turk, I restricted the participants to the U.S., and I further restricted them to having 85% prior approval ratings. These two constraints significantly reduced non-serious answers. For CrowdFlower, I didn't use any restrictions at all - and thus the results included these bad answers (there were also several good ones).
The point wasn't to compare MTurk and CrowdFlower. I was just getting different kinds of results. CrowdFlower, in fact, has much better support for getting accurate data through a combination of worker reputation and "gold standard" data.
Sorry for the lack of clarity here.
- Ben