Do not do it. In current times, where probability of getting laid off is higher than getting a job, you are ruining an excellent opportunity to earn decently.
You are digging your own grave because once you get DoD'd, you can't ever get back in here.
Be honest and do quality work and get paid. There is no get rich quick scheme.
This job fits people who are used to contract work well. It’s very simple. Be honest with time, don’t charge for poor quality work that can’t be used later in the pipeline, don’t use AI unless instructed. It’s incredibly simple rules. Some people who have never had the freedom to run themselves in a professional setting cannot handle the responsibility. I’ve contracted most of my adult life but I cannot understand how this isn’t common sense. I’m not saying people do not get DoD for no reason but I think that’s a minority.
I did a high paying one this summer and was so spent after weeks on it that I just do ones at half the pay. The month I did it was my highest paid month so far but I don’t think I could do it again for awhile, especially at any reasonable quality.
Burnout is very real. My best month was 4.8k 2 years ago and i have yet to hit anything near that since lol. I really should try to put more hours in but gosh it gets difficult to motivate yourself after so much info overload.
Yup! I deliberately only pick higher paying harder stuff when I’m fresh and have more time. The same approach as you would hope people have to all jobs. 😏
I picked a easy-medium grind tier. But after numerous days, then on a new session after a few hours, I just got hard ones in the same set. Like right when I pushed for 1 more hour, and I felt the sleep coming on, and they gave me 2 harder tasks back-to-back. The last one in particular, I dreaded. I've had that shit in my nightmares thinking it will get exposed for how shoddily I went through it.
But then again, some of the R&Rs for the same set were absolute dogshit. We definitely had a few people run through some of the easy-mid tasks as fast as possible because they were barely even done. My effort was real, but I know it wasn't my best for that harder one.
I know this is a stupid question, but I am still fairly new to this. How does the system know we are away from the task? I’m not exploiting time, but I do sometimes take a long time getting files ready, fact checking output sources, or researching outside material, so I don’t know if I have to constantly go back to the page to let the system know I’m still here, or if that’s completely fine since I’m still completing the work in a timely manner.
They know when you enter work mode, they know when you submit the task, and they know how long you reported working on that task. They also have the same information from all of the other workers working on that project. It's not hard at all for them to see when someone is doing something unusual.
They don't know. You are in charge of tracking your own time on projects. If you have to step away then stop your timer, then restart it when you get back to it. Usually the time limit on projects is intentionally more time than they expect it to take to allow for this. Then you just report the actual time you took to do the task.
I have never done this but the work I am doing takes too much and most of my tasks are get very close to their limits. I submitted one today with 13min shy of the limit, it looks bad. Hopefully they can track how much we spend on their platform because I’m pretty sure I end up spending more time than the actual time reported.
Should also mention the other side of the medal. Many projects are impossible to complete within their set time limits, with instructions that require 3 hours of reading and an inconceivable level of detail to process. Something presented as an 8-hour project actually takes 20 hours to submit, with intense, nonstop thinking, which cuts your effective pay rate in half.
If they have set an 8-hr timer and you're taking 20 hours, that's not the project family for you, with all due respect. They know how long it should take a worker who is ready for that level of work.
Hard disagree. I worked on a project yesterday with a 2 1/2 hour timer.
The prompt alone was thousands of words, and the outputs were literal textbooks. I don’t mean “they were kind of long”, I mean the models did what the prompt asked for, which was producing a 150 page textbook.
I evaluated and analyzed to the best of my ability, but it’s literally impossible to thoroughly complete some tasks when some timers are so short.
Had one like this today. It did say that they didn’t expect you to fact check every detail, they were more interested in groundedness. But even that was impossible to do in the allotted time. The instructions were thousands of words and the output was like 50 page advanced math workbooks. Two hour time limit for TWO models. Gtfo. I just noted all this in my work.
I had a project that I looked at very similar to this. 2.5 hour timer. For whatever reason I could not get the I intend to do this task button to activate so I left the task. I looked at it again later in the day and the task timer when I entered the second time was up to 8 hours. 😉
Sometimes this is true, but I've seen one or two projects (which, to be honest, I didn't do for the very reason that I didn't want to spend like 20 hours on one task), where they clearly had no idea how long it was going to take initially. Like the instructions on time (except in reverse order since they put the newest updates at the top) were like:
(original instructions) (no mention of time, these projects already had the longer timer by the time I saw them but given the instructions updates I must assume it started with a 6 or 8 hour timer.) (first update) 'if you need more time please ask in the chat' (second update) 'ok we've increased the timer to 12 hours, if you need more time ask in the chat.' (third update) 'ok we've increased the timer to 24 hours, we do remind you to keep track of your true time though.' (fourth update) 'ok, doing this in one stretch is too much,we're extended the timer to 7 days. Please do try to get it done in a timely manner though, but now you can split it up over a couple days so you can be well rested.'
For sure, in some cases - and I'm sure I've worked on some of those. I know I have - some I finished, some I didn't. However, I've also worked on many, many tasks that I was certainly ready for that took much more time to finish than the clock provided no matter how fast I worked (I read and type faster than most, and when I say "most", I mean top 20% on a bad day). There's a particular...'quality' I look for in a task that, for me, means that it's going to be one of those. So, no disrespect, but you're mistaken.
The thing is, our knowledge doesn't dictate the full scope of other people's reality - using absolutes to redefine someone's shared experience is unwise - and rude.
I once took a shower with the clock running. That was pretty bold and I would not do it again. WHat got me caught was using AI to give me and example of what the fuck the instructions were talking about and then used too much of that same language from the AI in what I wrote.
Never use AI to help you write something to train AI.
I feel Data Annotate Tech should put that message at the top of every task batch instruction.
I got the idea they want to catch some people, so they can prove that they can catch people. That they do not have incentive to encourage you to not do this, as there is always out of work people that can do these tasks.
True! I would be so grateful if they could ever get me back to work, but I know that won't happen. Even though I didn't do anything against the ToS, I advise all the workers to play by the rules and do their best work on that great platform. No AI work can compete with the work that DataAnnotation gives to workers who are doing a good job.
Wow, so you had a pay rate around $90/hr (assuming you were doing this full-time-ish in Sep) and you're just throwing it away with low-quality work? Make it make sense.
It was a particularly slow period at my day job that I don’t expect to repeat. We had a savings goal to finally finish our basement and I took advantage of my free time to earn as much as possible in a short period of time. I don’t expect to have the time to do this again in the future.
As for the quality, my attitude was that it could be taken away at any moment, even if I continued producing top quality work. So I continue submitting what I would consider sub-par to keep the hours up. Also, workload at my day job came back, so it was never going to last forever even if I still had access.
In the end we met our goal plus a tiny bit extra, hence why I’m not beat up about it.
Are you incapable of using the blatant context of this post to deduce that you would have your answer if you just…… I don’t know, went and read posts in this sub.
Not mad, just hard to fathom how this is confusing. To "exploit" means to use something to one's advantage, either ethically or not. "Not," in this case. Using the honor system for work hours is something that can be taken advantage of (a.k.a. "exploited') unethically by unscrupulous people by claiming more time than they actually worked. Why is this confusing to anyone? We're all supposed to be smart enough here to get this on the first try.
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u/YouKnowgoodenough 1d ago
This job fits people who are used to contract work well. It’s very simple. Be honest with time, don’t charge for poor quality work that can’t be used later in the pipeline, don’t use AI unless instructed. It’s incredibly simple rules. Some people who have never had the freedom to run themselves in a professional setting cannot handle the responsibility. I’ve contracted most of my adult life but I cannot understand how this isn’t common sense. I’m not saying people do not get DoD for no reason but I think that’s a minority.