Inside the economy of on-demand crowd-workers displacing professionals, for cheap.
Harry found the gig on Crowdflower, a crowdworking platform. Usually that cell-tagging task would be the job of pathologists, who typically start their careers with annual salaries of around $200,000—an hourly wage of about $80. Harry, on the other hand, earns just four cents for annotating a batch of five images, which takes him between two to eight minutes. His hourly wage is about 60 cents. Granted, Harry can’t perform most of the tasks in a pathologist’s repertoire.
Some are paying off college loans, others are earning pocket money for restaurant meals and vacations. One woman needs work that allows her to care for her severely disabled son. A farmer crowdworks while watching over her livestock. A retiree calls it “a fun and profitable way to kill three or four hours a day.” One thing they have in common is their concern over pay.
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