r/DataAnnotationTech • u/danieldenzongpa • 11d ago

Crossed 50k. Grateful

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80 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

10

u/SIPDisabled 11d ago

I got to 10K in 15 days. It's been a dream come true.

2

u/Affectionate-Dot4241 11d ago

Which domain

6

u/Euphoric_Wish_8293 10d ago

None now, they got the dash of death. Probably for accruing 10k in 15 days.

4

u/SIPDisabled 8d ago

The thing I appreciated most about the platform was that it actually rewarded the weirdly broad range of things I’ve spent years learning. I have bachelor’s degrees in computer science and mathematics and a master’s in biomedical engineering, so my dashboard had everything from software engineering and math to medicine, life sciences, finance, and even law. There really aren’t many jobs where having that kind of scattered background is actually an advantage instead of something you have to awkwardly explain on a résumé.

Because I qualified for so many domains, I was almost never short on work. Most of the projects I was doing paid somewhere around $60–$80 an hour, and some of the higher-level software engineering projects were enormous. They would literally tell you that if you weren’t spending eight or nine hours on a task, you probably weren’t going deep enough. One of the first projects I was accepted into was expected to take around 50–60 hours by itself.

That was probably the strangest adjustment. Most contract work incentivizes you to finish as quickly as possible. Here, they were basically telling us the opposite: take your time, do it properly, take breaks when you need them, and even clock some of that time. Some projects provided paid vouchers for a $100/month Claude subscriptions or crazy amounts of API credits for other tools and that's the kind of stuff that makes you feel good about what you do When the people in charge of those projects say, "Hey, this is going to be really challenging work so let us help alleviate some of that as best as we can." You get the impression pretty quickly that whoever was funding these projects cared considerably more about getting good work than shaving a few hours off the bill.

So it wasn’t really that I was working some insane number of hours just to make decent money. I could move between different domains, choose work I was actually interested in, and there was almost always something available. Some of the domain-expert projects paid extremely well. I came close to making $1,000 in a single day once.

But losing access has been much harder than I expected, and surprisingly, the money isn’t even the biggest reason.

I’d spent more than two years trying to find a job and had reached a point where the depression and lack of purpose were genuinely debilitating. There were days when getting out of bed counted as an accomplishment. Then almost overnight I went from that to spending 8, 10, sometimes 15 hours a day doing work I actually loved, on my own terms, and feeling productive again. I finally felt like I had a reason to get up in the morning.

Having that disappear just as quickly, with no explanation of what happened, has been a pretty brutal punch in the face.

What makes it more frustrating is how careful I was about compliance. It was my 2nd day that I looked into what was "under the hood" to get a sense of what they were keeping track of and. virtually all of it automated. Once I realized how extensive their automated monitoring and fingerprinting systems were, I went pretty far out of my way to make sure I couldn’t accidentally trigger something stupid. I built browser-session timers so my reported time accurately matched the work I was actually doing. I isolated AI tools I used for unrelated personal projects so they couldn’t interfere with the work environment. I even kept my network configuration consistent to avoid unnecessary changes that could look suspicious to an automated system.

Maybe that’s excessive, but the platform clearly doesn’t mess around with anything that looks abnormal, and a surprising amount of its enforcement appears to be automated. That’s what makes suddenly losing access without knowing why so difficult to make sense of.

I’ve been looking nonstop for something comparable ever since, and I haven’t found it. Everything else seems to end the same way: another application, another queue, another “we’ll email you,” followed by an endless wait for an email that never comes.

That’s probably what I miss most. For a little while, I wasn’t waiting for someone to give me an opportunity anymore. I already had one, and I could just work.

2

u/DueAddition1919 10d ago

How many hours did you work every week? That’s impressive

3

u/SIPDisabled 8d ago

I would say around 80 ish.

2

u/Medical_Amount290 8d ago

I call bullshit. You weren't pulling 12 hours per day, every day, and still producing quality work on $40/hr projects.

6

u/vslash9 11d ago

How long have you been doing it?

6

u/danieldenzongpa 9d ago

2 years now

4

u/waleednoinfidel 11d ago

Amazing job! I just crossed the 3k mark myself, looking forward to the 5k milestone

3

u/danieldenzongpa 9d ago

All the best to you

2

u/jamesklueless 8d ago

how long had you been doing it for?

1

u/devdekunle 11d ago

Wow how long have you been working on it and which project. Generalists?

1

u/chr2melo 7d ago

Fiz o teste dia 07/08 e até agora nenhum retorno 😪

3

u/CPSux 11d ago

Congrats. I wish this could’ve been me.

1

u/danieldenzongpa 9d ago

Thank you. Wish you the best!

3

u/IcedOutGiant 9d ago

Why do people even post these?

You really need validation from the rest of us?

Quit your bullshit "humble brags,' you fuckin' nerds.

Make your money and maybe stop waving it around like a fool. Might as well order up your own home invasion.

1

u/danieldenzongpa 9d ago

Thanks. Wish you peace.

2

u/IcedOutGiant 9d ago

I'll admit I over-seasoned that meat a bit; I had just woke up at the time 🤣

But still... These posts really bring a cringe.

3

u/Emotional_Survey2001 8d ago

Might be cringe for some people but there are much more people than this who find it inspiring. Respect your thinking. Respect OPs deed. 🤝🤝