6 ms·

My Life as a TaskRabbit

95 points by nsedlet 14y ago

egypturnash 14y ago
> I call Chris Mok, a top-ranked local TaskRabbit who earns up to $1,500 a week. Mok was laid off from his job as an art buyer at Macy’s (M) in 2009 and now spends most days, including weekends, on handyman assignments such as assembling Ikea furniture. TaskRabbit: Distributed underemployment.
- kiba 14y ago
  It's better than being unemployed.
- philwelch 14y ago
  60,000 per year is not "underemployment".
  - grueful 14y ago
    You know all those jobs claiming you can earn up to $big_number a week? That's their all-time record. The odds of real numbers resembling it are low.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      The national median household income is around 45k. The third quintile starts just under 35k. Are you really going to say that half of the US population is "underemployed"?
      - majormajor 14y ago
        I don't think egypturnash or grueful are saying that; rather, they're questioning how many TaskRabbit workers come close to that. Let's look at Chris Mok, mentioned in this article as a top-ranked TaskRabbit who makes "up to" $1500 a week, but a Reuter's article from February describes him as making about $3500/month, which works out to 42k per year[1], far far below that weekly "up to" number. And so when TaskRabbit's Leah Busque says people make "up to" 60k a year, my assumption is that most are making much less, especially when a "top ranked" guy appears to be about 18k below that. I'd love to know mean and median figures, at the least, but haven't been able to turn them up—which doesn't do anything to alleviate skepticism about the "up to" numbers. Obviously if someone can make even 20-30k from this in a market where they can't find anything else, then it's a good thing they've got TaskRabbit, but I wouldn't really call that enabling entrepreneurship in line with the TaskRabbit PR message. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/09/us-peer-idUSTRE81814F20120209 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/09/us-peer-idUSTRE818...
      - huggah 14y ago
        Location also makes a huge difference; in San Francisco (where he lives), median household income is over $65k and the median rental price for a 1 bedroom apartment is over $2k. If Mok makes $3.5K / month, that probably qualifies as underemployment.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Sorry to say but there is no such thing as underemployment. Clearly there are less need for art buyers (or he wasn't good enough to do the job) than there were in 2009, so he has to do something else.
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    People grossly overuse (and abuse) the term unemployment like this. First, an unemployment rate of 0% is bad. This is because not all unemployment is bad. Frictional unemployment is actually a good thing (to a certain extent), because the alternative is having people stuck doing jobs they don't want when better jobs are available. Structural unemployment is what happens when $old_industry dies because $disruptive_tech_company changes the market. It's definitely bad for the unemployed (who will never be re-employed in the same field), but it's usually the result of positive improvements to society at large. The 'solution' is that those people losing their jobs need to be retrained to work in another field, which is admittedly difficult, or retire. Cyclical unemployment is undeniably bad. That's the result of boom-and-bust economies - people over-hiring during bubbles, and then having to lay off en masse when the market contracts. (The problem is largely that the people are being dumped into the jobs marketplace all at once, creating a glut, instead of being more evenly distributed). The rest - someone who's employed but at a salary lower than what they'd like, or someone who retires because they're laid off... that's not unemployment. Someone may dislike it and they may think it's a 'problem' that needs to be 'fixed', but they need to realize that they're talking about something completely different from unemployment. As for real unemployment, the ideal value is a point of debate amongst economists because it is tricky to measure, but somewhere in the ballpark of 5% is a commonly accepted value for the target 'natural rate' of unemployment. That is, a sustained, unwavering value of 5% unemployment is actually the target for a healthy economy.
    - lotharbot 14y ago
      The term used was underemployment.
      - chimeracoder 14y ago
- brown9-2 14y ago
  "Underemployment" is a characteristic of the economy that TaskRabbit operates in, not one that they create.
lobster45 14y ago
My view on this is this is another example of a free market system of supply and demand. If you have an individual willing to spend money on having their lunch delivered or their car washed without moving a muscle, and on the other side you have someone that is willing to do the work, then it is win win.
- tomjen3 14y ago
  Its is better than than. It is the answer whenever somebody comes around and complains that software is destroying jobs and not creating new ones.
mik4el 14y ago
What kind of risk/liability does these "employees" generally take? Like washing someone's unlocked car, is the employee liable for any damages or the company? If I'm do carpenting work distributed from TaskRabbit and hurt myself so badly I get disabled, do TaskRabbit have insurance for me? What is the standard for this? One reason why buying services is expensive is that the service provider takes risk and needs to insure their workers, I very much doubt that these TaskRabbit-type companies do that... Or am I wrong?
- bduerst 14y ago
  You can write it off in the end user agreement for the runners, right?
  - mik4el 14y ago
    I'm not sure about the US legal situation but here in Sweden there is so much legislation to protect workers that a TaskRabbit kind of service becomes hard to achieve.
    - chimeracoder 14y ago
      IANAL, but I'm almost positive they don't have to do this in the US. In the US, hiring contractors exempts you from many of the taxes and liabilities of hiring employees, and they are also exempt from most benefits (their right to litigation against the company is also limited). US readers will certainly be familiar with Vector (ie, Cutco knives) - they get away without providing any benefits/insurance, without reimbursing for expenses such as gas/phone bills, and with paying what often amounts to minimum wage because all of their salesmen are college students who are hired as 'contractors'[1]. Don't think I'm saying that contracting is bad - the same laws allow others to make very large sums of money working as contractors. It really just depends on what the setup with the company is. [1] I may be confusing some of the details with other similar companies, but I know Vector engages in at least some of these practices, all of which are commonly practiced.
      - 14y ago
fumar 14y ago
I became a task rabbit almost three weeks ago. I have bid on at least thirty jobs. I have spent a total of 5 hours checking the site for jobs. I have not been assigned one task. I have applied for several graphic design gigs. Most people want a logo designed for thirty to fifty dollars. Some people want ebooks created from word documents for under a hundred dollars. The hard labor tasks is where the money is. Those jobs depend on bidding low and fast. It is an interesting place. There are many companies that use TaskRabbit as their recruiting agency. They post jobs that require to sign up on their websites. Overall, I have to stop wasting my time on it. I intern(unpaid) at a startup that was planning on using TaskRabbit as delivery service. I thought it would be good (could be fun) income. edit: this is from my experience in Chicago
- autophil 14y ago
  Most people want a logo designed for thirty to fifty dollars. Some people want ebooks created from word documents under a for hundred dollars. I would expect those prices too if I went through TaskRabbit. I wouldn't expect the designer to be a top professional. I'd be looking for a deal. My advice (and I've been working freelance for about 7 years) is to brand yourself as a top shelf designer and never offer your services on outsourcing websites. Go hyper niche instead in a category where you have some contacts and can get work fast. If your designs are amazing, word gets around. Pretty much all new business I get is from word of mouth.
- mapster 14y ago
  Same on elance or odesk. You can now compete to be a virtual assistant for $3 an hour with someone in Delhi.
- sweded 14y ago
  Have you tried using 99designs to get some graphic design gigs?
unohoo 14y ago
The one thing I have always wondered -- how would these companies scale ? These models work well in areas with a high population density (eg: SF, NYC, major city downtowns etc.). How well will they work when they spread out to the suburbs ?
- dangrossman 14y ago
  What's wrong with most of their users being in the major cities? Look at Craigslist.
  - silverbax88 14y ago
    When you sign up as a hiring person, they only have a few major cities you can sign up in. I don't reside in any of those cities, so despite having work for people, I have no use for the service, at least not yet.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - unohoo 14y ago
    courier services (aka postmates) is definitely difficult to scale in the 'burbs. And that's because of the distances, traffic etc. involved. Certain tasks on Taskrabbit could work in the suburbs, but not all. How many times do you see these kind of jobs on Craigslist ? Ikea delivery, assembling etc are fine -- but when instant gratification (Postmates, Zaarly etc.) is concerned, scaling to the suburbs will be extremely difficult.
    - dangrossman 14y ago
      My response to this was... essentially... "so what?" They do not need an instant gratification task runner available for every door to have scaled to a large, very profitable company. This is no different than the scaling limits of many online media companies, in fact. 83% of the US population is in an urban center. 81% of the US population has access to broadband internet (and not all of them take advantage of that access). Netflix's addressable US market for streaming is smaller than TaskRabbit's for tasks.
guelo 14y ago
I had a bad experience as a TaskRabbit buyer. There was a dispute between me and the task worker as to whether the task was complete. The worker went ahead and marked the task as complete and TaskRabbit deducted my credit card. The dispute resolution process was a convoluted and manual process which I didn't have time for (which is why I was using TaskRabbit in the first place). It wasn't a huge amount of money so I let it slide. I can see why TaskRabbit might be biased towards paying for the task automatically after the agreement has been entered, the alternative would be to make it easy for the buyer to screw the workers over, but it seems like they probably need an easier dispute process or they'll lose the buyers, I know I'm not using them again. I guess the worker ratings is supposed to help with this but I couldn't quickly figure out how to rate the worker and TaskRabbbit didn't make it easy by sending me an email about it or something like that, so I just gave up.
- lengarvey 14y ago
  At Airtasker (an Australian competitor) we take the approach that it'ds an open marketplace and both sides need to confirm that the task is complete before money exchanges hands. We've found it's very, very rare that the buyer will "screw over" the runner. Also it seems much easier for us to scale up new runners than it is to get more task posters. It's super fun working for a startup that is focused on real-world interactions. Situations like the one you describe are difficult to deal with and definitely highlight the value of good community management and customer service. It's a shame that TaskRabbit let you down. Maybe in the future if Airtasker expands to the US you can give us a try :P Disclaimer: if it wasn't obvious I work for Airtasker.

95 points by nsedlet 14y ago

> I call Chris Mok, a top-ranked local TaskRabbit who earns up to $1,500 a week. Mok was laid off from his job as an art buyer at Macy’s (M) in 2009 and now spends most days, including weekends, on handyman assignments such as assembling Ikea furniture. TaskRabbit: Distributed underemployment.

kiba 14y ago
It's better than being unemployed.
philwelch 14y ago
60,000 per year is not "underemployment".
- grueful 14y ago
  You know all those jobs claiming you can earn up to $big_number a week? That's their all-time record. The odds of real numbers resembling it are low.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    The national median household income is around 45k. The third quintile starts just under 35k. Are you really going to say that half of the US population is "underemployed"?
    - majormajor 14y ago
      I don't think egypturnash or grueful are saying that; rather, they're questioning how many TaskRabbit workers come close to that. Let's look at Chris Mok, mentioned in this article as a top-ranked TaskRabbit who makes "up to" $1500 a week, but a Reuter's article from February describes him as making about $3500/month, which works out to 42k per year[1], far far below that weekly "up to" number. And so when TaskRabbit's Leah Busque says people make "up to" 60k a year, my assumption is that most are making much less, especially when a "top ranked" guy appears to be about 18k below that. I'd love to know mean and median figures, at the least, but haven't been able to turn them up—which doesn't do anything to alleviate skepticism about the "up to" numbers. Obviously if someone can make even 20-30k from this in a market where they can't find anything else, then it's a good thing they've got TaskRabbit, but I wouldn't really call that enabling entrepreneurship in line with the TaskRabbit PR message. [1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/09/us-peer-idUSTRE81814F20120209 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/09/us-peer-idUSTRE818...
    - huggah 14y ago
      Location also makes a huge difference; in San Francisco (where he lives), median household income is over $65k and the median rental price for a 1 bedroom apartment is over $2k. If Mok makes $3.5K / month, that probably qualifies as underemployment.
tomjen3 14y ago
Sorry to say but there is no such thing as underemployment. Clearly there are less need for art buyers (or he wasn't good enough to do the job) than there were in 2009, so he has to do something else.
- chimeracoder 14y ago
  People grossly overuse (and abuse) the term unemployment like this. First, an unemployment rate of 0% is bad. This is because not all unemployment is bad. Frictional unemployment is actually a good thing (to a certain extent), because the alternative is having people stuck doing jobs they don't want when better jobs are available. Structural unemployment is what happens when $old_industry dies because $disruptive_tech_company changes the market. It's definitely bad for the unemployed (who will never be re-employed in the same field), but it's usually the result of positive improvements to society at large. The 'solution' is that those people losing their jobs need to be retrained to work in another field, which is admittedly difficult, or retire. Cyclical unemployment is undeniably bad. That's the result of boom-and-bust economies - people over-hiring during bubbles, and then having to lay off en masse when the market contracts. (The problem is largely that the people are being dumped into the jobs marketplace all at once, creating a glut, instead of being more evenly distributed). The rest - someone who's employed but at a salary lower than what they'd like, or someone who retires because they're laid off... that's not unemployment. Someone may dislike it and they may think it's a 'problem' that needs to be 'fixed', but they need to realize that they're talking about something completely different from unemployment. As for real unemployment, the ideal value is a point of debate amongst economists because it is tricky to measure, but somewhere in the ballpark of 5% is a commonly accepted value for the target 'natural rate' of unemployment. That is, a sustained, unwavering value of 5% unemployment is actually the target for a healthy economy.
  - lotharbot 14y ago
    The term used was underemployment.
    - chimeracoder 14y ago
brown9-2 14y ago
"Underemployment" is a characteristic of the economy that TaskRabbit operates in, not one that they create.

lobster45 14y ago

My view on this is this is another example of a free market system of supply and demand. If you have an individual willing to spend money on having their lunch delivered or their car washed without moving a muscle, and on the other side you have someone that is willing to do the work, then it is win win.

tomjen3 14y ago
Its is better than than. It is the answer whenever somebody comes around and complains that software is destroying jobs and not creating new ones.

mik4el 14y ago

What kind of risk/liability does these "employees" generally take? Like washing someone's unlocked car, is the employee liable for any damages or the company? If I'm do carpenting work distributed from TaskRabbit and hurt myself so badly I get disabled, do TaskRabbit have insurance for me? What is the standard for this? One reason why buying services is expensive is that the service provider takes risk and needs to insure their workers, I very much doubt that these TaskRabbit-type companies do that... Or am I wrong?

bduerst 14y ago
You can write it off in the end user agreement for the runners, right?
- mik4el 14y ago
  I'm not sure about the US legal situation but here in Sweden there is so much legislation to protect workers that a TaskRabbit kind of service becomes hard to achieve.
  - chimeracoder 14y ago
    IANAL, but I'm almost positive they don't have to do this in the US. In the US, hiring contractors exempts you from many of the taxes and liabilities of hiring employees, and they are also exempt from most benefits (their right to litigation against the company is also limited). US readers will certainly be familiar with Vector (ie, Cutco knives) - they get away without providing any benefits/insurance, without reimbursing for expenses such as gas/phone bills, and with paying what often amounts to minimum wage because all of their salesmen are college students who are hired as 'contractors'[1]. Don't think I'm saying that contracting is bad - the same laws allow others to make very large sums of money working as contractors. It really just depends on what the setup with the company is. [1] I may be confusing some of the details with other similar companies, but I know Vector engages in at least some of these practices, all of which are commonly practiced.
    - 14y ago

fumar 14y ago

I became a task rabbit almost three weeks ago. I have bid on at least thirty jobs. I have spent a total of 5 hours checking the site for jobs. I have not been assigned one task. I have applied for several graphic design gigs. Most people want a logo designed for thirty to fifty dollars. Some people want ebooks created from word documents for under a hundred dollars. The hard labor tasks is where the money is. Those jobs depend on bidding low and fast. It is an interesting place. There are many companies that use TaskRabbit as their recruiting agency. They post jobs that require to sign up on their websites. Overall, I have to stop wasting my time on it. I intern(unpaid) at a startup that was planning on using TaskRabbit as delivery service. I thought it would be good (could be fun) income. edit: this is from my experience in Chicago

autophil 14y ago
Most people want a logo designed for thirty to fifty dollars. Some people want ebooks created from word documents under a for hundred dollars. I would expect those prices too if I went through TaskRabbit. I wouldn't expect the designer to be a top professional. I'd be looking for a deal. My advice (and I've been working freelance for about 7 years) is to brand yourself as a top shelf designer and never offer your services on outsourcing websites. Go hyper niche instead in a category where you have some contacts and can get work fast. If your designs are amazing, word gets around. Pretty much all new business I get is from word of mouth.
mapster 14y ago
Same on elance or odesk. You can now compete to be a virtual assistant for $3 an hour with someone in Delhi.
sweded 14y ago
Have you tried using 99designs to get some graphic design gigs?

unohoo 14y ago

The one thing I have always wondered -- how would these companies scale ? These models work well in areas with a high population density (eg: SF, NYC, major city downtowns etc.). How well will they work when they spread out to the suburbs ?

dangrossman 14y ago
What's wrong with most of their users being in the major cities? Look at Craigslist.
- silverbax88 14y ago
  When you sign up as a hiring person, they only have a few major cities you can sign up in. I don't reside in any of those cities, so despite having work for people, I have no use for the service, at least not yet.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- unohoo 14y ago
  courier services (aka postmates) is definitely difficult to scale in the 'burbs. And that's because of the distances, traffic etc. involved. Certain tasks on Taskrabbit could work in the suburbs, but not all. How many times do you see these kind of jobs on Craigslist ? Ikea delivery, assembling etc are fine -- but when instant gratification (Postmates, Zaarly etc.) is concerned, scaling to the suburbs will be extremely difficult.
  - dangrossman 14y ago
    My response to this was... essentially... "so what?" They do not need an instant gratification task runner available for every door to have scaled to a large, very profitable company. This is no different than the scaling limits of many online media companies, in fact. 83% of the US population is in an urban center. 81% of the US population has access to broadband internet (and not all of them take advantage of that access). Netflix's addressable US market for streaming is smaller than TaskRabbit's for tasks.

guelo 14y ago

I had a bad experience as a TaskRabbit buyer. There was a dispute between me and the task worker as to whether the task was complete. The worker went ahead and marked the task as complete and TaskRabbit deducted my credit card. The dispute resolution process was a convoluted and manual process which I didn't have time for (which is why I was using TaskRabbit in the first place). It wasn't a huge amount of money so I let it slide. I can see why TaskRabbit might be biased towards paying for the task automatically after the agreement has been entered, the alternative would be to make it easy for the buyer to screw the workers over, but it seems like they probably need an easier dispute process or they'll lose the buyers, I know I'm not using them again. I guess the worker ratings is supposed to help with this but I couldn't quickly figure out how to rate the worker and TaskRabbbit didn't make it easy by sending me an email about it or something like that, so I just gave up.

lengarvey 14y ago
At Airtasker (an Australian competitor) we take the approach that it'ds an open marketplace and both sides need to confirm that the task is complete before money exchanges hands. We've found it's very, very rare that the buyer will "screw over" the runner. Also it seems much easier for us to scale up new runners than it is to get more task posters. It's super fun working for a startup that is focused on real-world interactions. Situations like the one you describe are difficult to deal with and definitely highlight the value of good community management and customer service. It's a shame that TaskRabbit let you down. Maybe in the future if Airtasker expands to the US you can give us a try :P Disclaimer: if it wasn't obvious I work for Airtasker.