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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

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 number for revenue generated from McMahon's quizzes ($200k), it's easy to imagine a company paying that much or more to continue driving those numbers. 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? It would seem to me that BF never had the realization that "huh, maybe we should protect this asset instead of protecting our short-term profits and praying she keeps doing this for free forever."

slededit 8y ago
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.
- notahacker 8y ago
  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.
- bastawhiz 8y ago
  > 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.
  - slededit 8y ago
    It’s human nature, and it happens not just in business. People get up in arms whenever an open source project tries to monetize in some way other than “support”.
    - derefr 8y ago
      Isn’t the whole point of having things like CEOs and shareholder-elected boards of directors, to find people who are good at optimizing for the business’s profits over what their own human natures tell them to do?
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  Sure, as irrational as that may be, you're right that it's a larger problem to fix that's probably out of scope here. But the larger point is that economically productive employees in their early career are almost always exploited, so it wouldn't have been hard for Buzzfeed to throw some relatively token amount towards her and have her be over the moon with it. Most college students would love to get $20k for doing something they were procrastinating and doing for free, especially if you package it with an ego-boosting title.
jacobolus 8y ago
> 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.
- personlurking 8y ago
  I used to write several short articles per day, over several years. I did it for free and highly enjoyed it, but I was eventually paid to do the same (on the same topic), so I can second the commentor above. Once it was paid, I lost interest over time and saw it as a burden more than a pleasure. It's hard to make money for creative endeavors, for several reasons, and there are generally two ways to make money from them: put everything into it and hope for the best, or have a "real job" and do the creative thing on the side. Regardless, and personally-speaking, I prefer doing creative things for free because that's the best way to keep my interest-level high.
- lsc 8y ago
  >But monetary “incentives” are in general quite a terrible system for eliciting good work. I'm glad I don't work for you.
  - fbelzile 8y ago
    I think what jacobolus is saying is after a certain point, more money won't necessarily lead to better quality of work. [0] https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work
    - 8y ago
fdggdfsvscvsd 8y ago
I wonder if she would have kept up the same good work if she had been paid for it. Not meaning it in a bad way, I mean the difference of doing it for fun and doing it for money.
bjterry 8y ago
It could also be that the marginal traffic or revenue generated by her over the next best quiz author is much less than $200k. If so, having her specifically may only be worth, say, $5k and not worth the hassle in the context of the overall program continuing to work.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
oliwarner 8y ago
I think the logic is there'll always be another naive teenager willing to work for free. And they're probably not wrong. Bright-eyed teenage students are a self-renewing resource. Industries like BuzzFeeds thrive on them. As long as they keep them coming in as content consumers, they'll never be lacking of people willing to spend time creating content for them. BF can dole out status in a semi-respected field. That alone has value to the students. This isn't that new. Plenty of companies seem to be A-Okay not paying interns to do real jobs. Apprenticeships in the UK pay just £3.70/h. And every junior position requires 3 years industry experience. It's no surprise that people are forced into working for pennies. The only real problem for BuzzFeed here is people being able to kick up enough fuss that makes them look bad. Given how the rest of the world treats young workers, I think they'll be fine.

slededit 8y ago

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.

notahacker 8y ago
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.
bastawhiz 8y ago
> 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.
- slededit 8y ago
  It’s human nature, and it happens not just in business. People get up in arms whenever an open source project tries to monetize in some way other than “support”.
  - derefr 8y ago
    Isn’t the whole point of having things like CEOs and shareholder-elected boards of directors, to find people who are good at optimizing for the business’s profits over what their own human natures tell them to do?
wutbrodo 8y ago
Sure, as irrational as that may be, you're right that it's a larger problem to fix that's probably out of scope here. But the larger point is that economically productive employees in their early career are almost always exploited, so it wouldn't have been hard for Buzzfeed to throw some relatively token amount towards her and have her be over the moon with it. Most college students would love to get $20k for doing something they were procrastinating and doing for free, especially if you package it with an ego-boosting title.

jacobolus 8y ago

> 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.

personlurking 8y ago
I used to write several short articles per day, over several years. I did it for free and highly enjoyed it, but I was eventually paid to do the same (on the same topic), so I can second the commentor above. Once it was paid, I lost interest over time and saw it as a burden more than a pleasure. It's hard to make money for creative endeavors, for several reasons, and there are generally two ways to make money from them: put everything into it and hope for the best, or have a "real job" and do the creative thing on the side. Regardless, and personally-speaking, I prefer doing creative things for free because that's the best way to keep my interest-level high.
lsc 8y ago
>But monetary “incentives” are in general quite a terrible system for eliciting good work. I'm glad I don't work for you.
- fbelzile 8y ago
  I think what jacobolus is saying is after a certain point, more money won't necessarily lead to better quality of work. [0] https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work https://hbr.org/1993/09/why-incentive-plans-cannot-work
  - 8y ago

fdggdfsvscvsd 8y ago

I wonder if she would have kept up the same good work if she had been paid for it. Not meaning it in a bad way, I mean the difference of doing it for fun and doing it for money.

bjterry 8y ago

It could also be that the marginal traffic or revenue generated by her over the next best quiz author is much less than $200k. If so, having her specifically may only be worth, say, $5k and not worth the hassle in the context of the overall program continuing to work.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

oliwarner 8y ago

I think the logic is there'll always be another naive teenager willing to work for free. And they're probably not wrong. Bright-eyed teenage students are a self-renewing resource. Industries like BuzzFeeds thrive on them. As long as they keep them coming in as content consumers, they'll never be lacking of people willing to spend time creating content for them. BF can dole out status in a semi-respected field. That alone has value to the students. This isn't that new. Plenty of companies seem to be A-Okay not paying interns to do real jobs. Apprenticeships in the UK pay just £3.70/h. And every junior position requires 3 years industry experience. It's no surprise that people are forced into working for pennies. The only real problem for BuzzFeed here is people being able to kick up enough fuss that makes them look bad. Given how the rest of the world treats young workers, I think they'll be fine.