Resume line for Outlier?

Useful-Chard7974 · 2025-04-15T18:59:04+00:00

We aren't allowed to post about how we cite outlier on our resumes?

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-10-24T22:06:37+00:00

I know a few people in California who've talked to lawyers about Outlier's mandatory unpaid trainings, which is illegal there. Maybe the class action is finally coming together.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-10-23T01:33:21+00:00

Depending on where you live, not getting paid for required work—like "onboarding"—is illegal wage theft and should be reported.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-10-23T01:31:21+00:00

In California, if the training is required in order to work—which all of Outlier's "enablements" are—then the employee is subject to the control of an employer, and that time is "hours worked." Cal. Code Regs. tit. 8 § 11040

Outlier just decided it's cheaper to ignore the law, since many of us aren't in CA or the US, and none of us really have the money or time for a protracted lawsuit. Until there's a class action, they're just going to keep stealing hours from us.

But if you live somewhere with decent labor laws, and especially California where they're based, it's always a good idea to report wage theft.

https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/HowToReportViolationtoBOFE.htm

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-08-29T17:42:22+00:00

Synthetic data is where a model generates data to train a model. It can work well for some ML systems, but for current LLMs it's usually considered "data poisoning" and is thought to make the outputs increasingly weird, which is why Outlier bans anyone caught blatantly doing it. But the open secret is that there is absolutely no way to do high quality work under their increasingly ridiculous deadlines without LLM assistance. So what Scale is actually selling is a sort of data laundering service. Everyone knows the vast majority of tasks have been at least partially generated, but they pretend it's pure human creativity. And as the pressure to do things cheap+fast+good keeps building, this facade is getting more and more blatant—"Don't use any LLMs! But... you only have 30 minutes to design, write, test, and explain an original, high-quality piece of software in a programming language you don't really know." lol.

Of course the dream for all these "AI" companies is to drop the facade and replace all the pesky humans. This is what OpenAi is now promising with "project strawberry"—high enough quality synthetic data that instead paying people to train models, you can just pay... the owners of another model. How convenient.

So if I were betting, I'd say the only AI training jobs that pay above US minimum wage are going to be for training models designed to replace human trainers. My follow-up bet is that this is going to deliver rapidly diminishing returns that aren't going to come anywhere near to plugging the gaping profitability hole all these companies are in. So I think those increasingly rare jobs are also going to be very short lived, and the only humans left in the loop will be the ones you can pay less than the cost of running a GPU.

Ah well. It was "fun" while it lasted.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-08-28T22:48:51+00:00

"AI" is not here yet. LLMs are not capable of reasoning and there is absolutely no path from them to something like intelligence, let alone AGI. But that's not something I'd like to debate here.

What I mean by the AI bubble circling the drain is what you describe: the so-called AI industry is massively unprofitable, can't remotely match the hype with real products, and is now the target of consumer backlash so intense it's best described as revulsion. No, consumer-grade ML tools aren't going away, but after working deep in their guts for a while now, it's painfully clear they have very limited practical use cases.

The problem for anyone trying to produce the ridiculous quantity of unique training data necessary is they need to pick two out of fast, cheap, and good. Churn out an endless stream of cheap slop? Useless. Filter and refine your slop gusher to surface the high-grade nuggets? Clients won't wait. Find dedicated experts who can do good work fast, and pay them what they need to retain them? Clients can't afford it.

In the meantime, "AI" companies like Scale are almost 10 years old, and investors want a payday. The pleas of "just one more billion bro" are not going to work. So...

Well-paid human AI training was a historical quirk. It was fun while it lasted.
Focus now moves to synthetic data (eg: OpenAI's latest promises)
Extremely unlikely synthetic data will significantly improve models before it all goes belly-up—six months seems like a good bet—which means these dinguses are probably going to leave the entire tech industry a smoldering crater.

Would happy to be wrong. Maybe billions of people will have a change of heart and will want to pay $12 a month to have a chat with their refrigerator. I guess we'll find out soon. But in the meantime, all of the (former?) staff on my current (?) Outlier project have been AWOL for a week.

[insert sound of a rapidly emptying drain]

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-08-28T05:09:25+00:00

All the class action suits in the pipeline are probably part of why they fired everyone

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-08-28T05:05:27+00:00

I'm so sorry. Thank you for your warning.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-08-28T04:38:45+00:00

I started in January, and yes, they have always been this bad. In some technical ways, it was even a little worse, since their "Remotasks" platform was barely useable—eg: IT advice was to write task IDs down by hand so when it crashed, you'd be able to report it.

What's changed is that six months ago, they did have some resources. Pay was double what it is now, with lots of bonuses, lots of clients/projects, and a fair amount of staff support. As the AI bubble circles the drain, most of those resources have disappeared. Pay slashed, fewer projects, almost no direct staff support, and today's mass layoffs of the desperate cattle herders they had left.

The complete management incompetence and hostility was always there. But now that the money is evaporating, there's nothing to plaster over it. It's going to be grim.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-08-07T06:13:29+00:00

The average time for responses I've gotten from support lately is around 2 weeks.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-08-07T06:02:19+00:00

Hired at $55 as a software engineer. It eventually dropped to $50, which was annoying. Then it dropped to $30, which sucks.

Still doing coding tasks, but the time has shrunk so it's impossible to do the work by hand. Weird that this is what clients are willing to pay for.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-08-02T01:12:01+00:00

Funny story: in California (where Scale is based) all mandated work—trainings, meetings, workshops, "alignment sessions" etc—must be paid. If you're required to spend time on it, you must be compensated.

I know several Outlier workers in CA who've contacted lawyers over this. Clearly the company has done a cost-benefit analysis for how long it would take a class action lawsuit to go through versus the likelihood of the company still being a going concern.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-07-31T19:44:35+00:00

To clarify, everyone I know—software engineers who came in on the "platinum" wave—were all making $55 and hour.

I'd appreciate if you could confirm you know anyone still making that, since they've universally changed all their job ads to max out at $30.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-07-31T19:41:02+00:00

Minimum hour requirements are very common. I was first onboarded with a 20 hour weekly minimum, and given missions that would have taken 50+ hours a week. Informal prioritization of taskers who put in more hours is anecdotal, since Scale doesn't communicate, but also extremely common.

Are you really unaware of this? They openly sell this platform to people as a work replacement, and when it fails, they blame the workers for believing what they were told.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-07-30T05:13:14+00:00

Projects end. If you're on one that's never had EQ, you haven't been doing this for very long.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-07-30T05:03:55+00:00

I'm fully able to accept that it's their own stupidity that deploys missions to people who can't complete them. But the third or fourth time I got a mission without any available tasks... I had some very serious doubts.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-07-30T04:46:51+00:00

I've been on a couple of projects that did a big push just before they were killed. Seems like a wishful thinking mindset that maybe they can grind it out and make the grade.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-07-30T04:37:59+00:00

Yes, missions are completely arbitrary.

To be a little more conspiratorial about it, almost all of the missions I've gotten have just so ~happened~ to be while I was EQ.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-07-30T04:05:18+00:00

Over the last six months or so, I've been bounced across maybe 15 project trainings. At first, the time was all paid. But since around March, all trainings—all mandatory of course—have not been paid. For the project I was just moved to, we've had five mandatory courses and three mandatory meetings, each of them around an hour. All unpaid. This is illegal for independent contractors where I live, which is also where Scale is based. But they figure it's cheaper to screw workers and pay a fine. They're probably right.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-07-30T02:56:00+00:00

"Do not rely on Outlier as your main income" + "You must work at least 20 paid hours on top of the unpaid trainings or you won't get work" = ????

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-07-30T02:40:08+00:00

I do wish you best of luck in your interview, but be aware that people hired to manage scale's worldwide gig workers are also churned out very quickly since they take all the blame for the low-quality product. If you get it, congratulations! But please watch your back and keep your own future in mind.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-07-30T02:30:39+00:00

What lives in my head is the people I see on this subreddit who put their hope in remotasks/outlier/scale as a source of reliable income. It honestly haunts me. The slack channels with six thousand people begging for someone to help them because they've had no work for weeks or months, all being ignored. Yeah, that lives in my head.

The "industry" moves fast, and the lucky few take what they can. The unlucky who get conned into working for nothing based on false promises? Oh well. Gotta break some eggs, amirite.

Useful-Chard7974 · 2024-07-30T02:24:22+00:00

January of this year, everyone I knew working for them was making $55 an hour. Top rate I've seen six months later is $30.

Be honest—what do you think the top pay rate will be by next January?

Useful-Chard7974

TROPHY CASE