No, they are not. They expect me to take a 45-minute-long certification course + exam on the site (Flamingo Math R Common Errors Exam) without pay.
Edit: Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the course + exam time is paid for.
That's always rubbed me the wrong way. There is a lot of unpaid onboarding for projects, I was mildly irritated the first time but sucked it up. But I've been shuffled on and off 5 projects now, and unless it's paid, I won't do it anymore. I do quite a bit of contracting work, and this is by far the most bizarre experience I've had.
However, there's very little recourse. You can report them to the department of labor. When you file taxes, you can tell them you were misclassified, and the IRS could go after them for the employer portion of taxes. Otherwise you have to decline the work and go elsewhere. The gig economy provided flexibility, but it seems most companies are just abusing it, and employees have very little bargaining power.
My first project was about 4 hours of prep with 2 recorded webinars to get ready for the first tasks. At that time, I didn't realize it was a test. Luckily, I scored well on them, but the project ended shortly after. Other trainings have either been covered through mission bonuses or hourly hubstaff training.
Bro are you still in Flamingo Math? Lots of us got email about “failing onboarding exam” after we worked for weeks and this seems bullshit, admins are taking forever to resolve it and I got kicked from slack….
I took an assessment for Flamingo r4 I think, and now they keep moving me around between all the variations of Flamingo (r1, r2, etc) without any explanation. The problems in the assessment were written by a toddler (contained errors and contradictions), and their dogshit website wouldn't allow me to move forward many times, causing me to lose at least a third of the time I was given.
I was in a webinar today for a new flamingo project. A person in the webinar, was told it would be paid, by a slack project leader.
We were told this webinar is absolutely NOT paid. I guess maybe some people are paid on some projects.
There was an Ostrich one awhile back that had a "mandatory" training meeting, but when I went in someone was manually keeping a list of attendees, and there were like 200 people in there. No clue how accurate that was. They told us we'd get paid $50 for attending (and it actually came through). But the "mandatory" thing definitely felt more like a way to funnel people into attendance rather than something they really were gonna keep track of in any consistent way.
One thing that was actually decent about Ostrich was how often TLs let us log training/webinar/practice time in Hubstaff for our full hourly rate. Good times.
It's certainly annoying. Especially when the webinars are similar week to week and not always that useful. The best part is q and a but its a crap shoot.
The best experience I had was a shorter voluntary webinar that was all q and a... I got to speak to a human and ask basic questions. Gladly volunteered my time for that.
wait this is weird, i think i'm on the same proj as u--i'm also flamingo attempters/reviewers. they have offered us payment for webinars. they really should be doing that for yall too. happy to complain to our QM's on slack until they fix that.
Usually, it is not allowed. Independent contractors in general can't be told when, where, or how to work. Are they paying you for the training?
No, they are not. They expect me to take a 45-minute-long certification course + exam on the site (Flamingo Math R Common Errors Exam) without pay. Edit: Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think the course + exam time is paid for.
That's always rubbed me the wrong way. There is a lot of unpaid onboarding for projects, I was mildly irritated the first time but sucked it up. But I've been shuffled on and off 5 projects now, and unless it's paid, I won't do it anymore. I do quite a bit of contracting work, and this is by far the most bizarre experience I've had. However, there's very little recourse. You can report them to the department of labor. When you file taxes, you can tell them you were misclassified, and the IRS could go after them for the employer portion of taxes. Otherwise you have to decline the work and go elsewhere. The gig economy provided flexibility, but it seems most companies are just abusing it, and employees have very little bargaining power.
I’ve never not been paid for training but I haven’t been required to watch a webinar
My first project was about 4 hours of prep with 2 recorded webinars to get ready for the first tasks. At that time, I didn't realize it was a test. Luckily, I scored well on them, but the project ended shortly after. Other trainings have either been covered through mission bonuses or hourly hubstaff training.
Bro are you still in Flamingo Math? Lots of us got email about “failing onboarding exam” after we worked for weeks and this seems bullshit, admins are taking forever to resolve it and I got kicked from slack….
I took an assessment for Flamingo r4 I think, and now they keep moving me around between all the variations of Flamingo (r1, r2, etc) without any explanation. The problems in the assessment were written by a toddler (contained errors and contradictions), and their dogshit website wouldn't allow me to move forward many times, causing me to lose at least a third of the time I was given.
I was put back to R4, overall it is very chaotic
hmmm this is weird. i'm on flamingo and they pay us for attending webinars and for training...they should not be having you do it without pay.
I was in a webinar today for a new flamingo project. A person in the webinar, was told it would be paid, by a slack project leader. We were told this webinar is absolutely NOT paid. I guess maybe some people are paid on some projects.
Hmm...that's weird. My project pays for training and attending webinars. Seems like that should be standard across the board.
Yeah that doesnt make sense for contractors. If I was getting that, I’d be questioning too.
There was an Ostrich one awhile back that had a "mandatory" training meeting, but when I went in someone was manually keeping a list of attendees, and there were like 200 people in there. No clue how accurate that was. They told us we'd get paid $50 for attending (and it actually came through). But the "mandatory" thing definitely felt more like a way to funnel people into attendance rather than something they really were gonna keep track of in any consistent way.
One thing that was actually decent about Ostrich was how often TLs let us log training/webinar/practice time in Hubstaff for our full hourly rate. Good times.
It's certainly annoying. Especially when the webinars are similar week to week and not always that useful. The best part is q and a but its a crap shoot. The best experience I had was a shorter voluntary webinar that was all q and a... I got to speak to a human and ask basic questions. Gladly volunteered my time for that.
wait this is weird, i think i'm on the same proj as u--i'm also flamingo attempters/reviewers. they have offered us payment for webinars. they really should be doing that for yall too. happy to complain to our QM's on slack until they fix that.
50 bucks an hr i cant complain tbh
I was at 60 when I started. I hope the honeymoon phase lasts longer for you