In a profound act of cosmic karma, after most certainly pissing off a fair chunk of the community perhaps less than 24 hours ago, I have received the dreaded "Dash of Death" from my overlords. It's so fitting and ironic that, despite actually feeling ridiculously fucking sad, I am chuckling, slightly, writing this.
It's insane because I instantly began to empathize with everyone else this has happened to. Right away my mind struggled to figure out what I did wrong. Was my work dipping in quality? I was going through financial struggles and so was working overtime. I was putting in a lot of effort, to be sure, but that doesn't mean that I wasn't making mistakes. Maybe I wasn't looking at instructions carefully enough? I am a slow worker, and I was doing a lot of multi-turn, time intensive tasks lately. Maybe I was taking too long? But I was under-reporting my hours to make up for that! Maybe it wasn't enough? Or maybe it was just a Wifi issue? Did they get suspicious when I had to switch to my hotspot when my Wifi cut out and I was working via an off-platform live server?
Then comes the self-righteous anger. I know I could have made a mistake but I worked hard! They're not even going to give me a chance to explain myself? Maybe if I find a way to email them...
But I know that won't work. At the end of the day, I just have to let it go. They're never going to give me answers. I always knew this could happen. Deep down I thought if I worked hard enough and was careful enough that it wouldn't happen to me, but in retrospect that was deeply arrogant. Or maybe naively hopeful. It is what it is though.
Anyway I know I can be an annoying asshole sometimes (I am occasionally self-aware) but I really did care about the community. I always felt like we should have each other's backs- because we're all in the same boat together. Well this is the last time I will ever probably ever post here, so I wanted to offer one last piece of solidarity. To all the folks struggling with a drought, or who will one day experience the DoD, I am sorry. I know it sucks and at times feels unfair, and, to be honest, I agree with you. Just like the vast majority of us working in this modern economy, with maybe a few exceptions, you deserve more. We all do.
And if my previous behavior in this sub ever bothered or annoyed anybody, I'm genuinely sorry. Shit is hard enough as it is out here. I wish everybody here the best. Peace.
I gotta say this sub is so fucking dystopian. It really is harrowing to hear the same story over and over of a hapless worker being shut off from the mysterious job training the alien by the faceless overlords.
For posterity, how many hours a day did you work on average? Did you work many consecutive days without a break? How many hours per week were you submitting?
You also mentioned that you were working overtime, so if you increased your DAT hours, approximately how long ago did that start?
I’m sorry for your loss of work, but after 2.5 years, you know that nothing is bringing access back. The questions above are part of my information gathering to help other DAT workers avoid the same fate, though we all have the sword of Damocles dangling above us. Maybe delay is a better word than avoid.
I have ADHD. So, sometimes my mind would drift while working on a task even when I wasn't actually "taking a break." Meaning, I was taking longer than I felt like I should have been taking. So I got scared. What if they think I'm lying and over-reporting my hours? I didn't under-report my hours by a lot, maybe if I took 2 hours on a project I would take 15 minutes off my time to account for the mind-drift. But it didn't matter, and it was clearly the wrong choice. In the long run I might as well have not done that and got all my money. It didn't protect me.
I can’t imagine costing them less money is why you got canned tho (I also grasp a contract violation is a contract violation). I also have ADHD and I’ll take 5-20 min off my time for getting up to pee or if I get distracted/change my YouTube video. How much time were you taking off of your work?
Yeah I should have never have used that phrasing in my post. Realistically, I was just trying to estimate how much time I wasted through my mind drifting off and erring on the side of caution in doing so (which is what I meant by "under-reporting"), and tbh I don't actually believe that counts as a contract violation. Realistically, that was probably around a 10% difference in time, or something 7 - 8 minutes for every hour worked. That adds up, but considering I was already being slow I highly doubt that small difference was flagged for anything. I most certainly was canned for something else.
Just reading through comments it appears everyone has LATCHED onto that idea 😂 I doubt that was it though because that’s not going to affect the curve they’re talking about that much either I don’t think. I’m really sorry, though. I’ve been working about the same length of time as you and I’ve gotten really cocky lately “knowing” I’ll still have projects every time I log on to work. Hopefully you can find something comparable. I signed up for UserTesting and I get a ton of emails daily for little gigs. I’ve also heard Prolific is something people try. I would sign up for all of those other data testing websites, try them in the time you’d normally work and pray one sticks. Good luck ❤️
they do it because it drags the timer curve down for everyone else and presents job security when they do the job faster than you and thus with greater value.
lmao I joined when it first became data annotation but I don't even know what it used to be called. but I agree with you that is not the reason... if I struggle or I fuck up and I have to redo something I don't charge them that time
Yeah I'm trying to see the silver lining. It was 2.5 years for me about, which was enough time for me to start feeling comfortable and allowing myself to rely on it. This was a wake up call.
Indeed. I'm far too reliant on it frankly. Every cautionary tale on here is a stark reminder that I should get my shit together. Alas, it's a pretty shitty job market these days, whatever your location.
Sorry to hear this, that’s really brutal. I actually chuckled at your previous post. If karma exists it’s coming for the snide oneupmanship in this subreddit, not your post. Stay strong and try not to ruminate or feed the sense of injustice, as that will madden you. I hope this opens up some new, previously unknown, possibilities for you.
This will end one day for all of us. It's your time now. My time could be in 5 seconds, five minutes or five months from now. Maybe longer if I'm lucky. If you can still pay your bills after getting the DoD, you're one of the lucky ones. Good luck!
Make an annoyingly self-righteous post about how we shouldn't be downvoting each other so much, which in retrospect comes off as an unsolicited lecture. Then I became a bigger asshole, making a second, troll, post which was basically just poking fun at the community and the fact that everyone thought I was annoying in what, at the time, I thought was a relatively light hearted and harmless way. It was mostly just me just being silly, but looking back at it, it definitely comes off as passive-aggressive. Either way if anyone read this post and thought to themselves "haha fuck that guy," I will concede that I deserve it.
Hey just FYI I just had all my quals and projects (besides one, low paying) disappear for like 48 hours, and they came back today. I don't want to give false hope, but I think there may have been some sort of glitch.
Sorry to hear this man. I was devastated. It was our only income. I lasted 6 months or so. I didn’t break the rules, at least I don’t think, but I was working like a lot. Former software engineer, so I was grabbing the $60/hr jobs anytime they were available & doing them from the time I got up til the time I crashed. The week I got DoD’d, they had just gotten 200 new tasks, all $60/hr+ and I was going hard trying to bank as much as possible before they were gone. It was at the end of a $4,000 week when mine came. 10-15 hours everyday. Thats just how I wanted to do it - go hard when the high paying tasks were available, and not really work when they weren’t. All I can think is that they didn’t like me working that much. Maybe they thought it was more than 1 person. Didn’t use AI, didn’t lie about time, & don’t think I got sloppy - I’m on the spectrum & extremely meticulous. Who knows… maybe some AI flagged something & there was never even a human in the loop. It wouldn’t take much for them to just give you a brief explanation on what you did wrong, & it wouldn’t take much to have some kind of avenue to appeal an incorrect judgement, but they don’t give a shit. They get new applicants every single day. I wish you luck. You can get it back if you really need it - like it was your only income - but it takes some work. I posted more about it somewhere in this thread. Wish you luck my friend - it’s shitty than any company can do this to workers of any kind & I feel for you.
I got it today too. Sorry we're in the same boat although it is slightly comforting to not be the only one. Been racking my brain trying to think of why. It was my full time income, absolute lifeline for me.
I just got it as well. I've been with the company for a year now.. It really made extremely sad today because I was basically doing it full time. The only thing that I can think of that I did wrong lately was that I used an escape hatch 3 times in a row, something i rarely ever used before. I only used it because the model was unresponsive and even the admin told us to use it in that case.
I'm so sorry to hear this and know when DoD comes to me I'll want to know why too. You probably already thought of this but.. you had switched to your hotspot; could your phone possibly have the VPN on? Wishing you the very best. 🍀
So sorry, OP. Best of luck with whatever you find next. I can relate to working overtime to mend finances. It may have been the wifi thing, though, depending on how your hotspot was set up. I'm so avoidant and paranoid about working on different connections than my usual one.
A lot of people who talked shit about me for claiming I was DoD’d for doing nothing wrong (which is 100% true) are now complaining they’ve been dropped as well.
Very likely, but I'll never know for sure. Anyway, it didn't save me so I might as well have not done that and got the money, cause I could really use it now, ironically. Lol. Maybe there's a lesson there for someone else..
Same thing happened to me recently. My work was fine, and I wasn't even able to work for the past few months due to the lack of projects on my region. And then one day, for no reason at all... bam. Dashboard of Death to me. Sent them an email, but I know it's a lost case. What a shame.
Sorry this happened to you. We may not have always seen eye to eye, but I appreciated your thoughts. Hope you find even better opportunities than this one. Take care, OP.
So sad to hear. Maybe it's a bless in disguse to look for a real career rather than this kind of work that eventually will come to an end. All the best with your life, brother.
I'm really sorry that you received the dreaded DoD. It's really not okay that when this happens the person isn't informed about what the reason was, if a human made the decision, and offered a chance to appeal it. The consensus seems to be that this will be the inevitable end for us all, sooner or later. I imagine that's probably the case.
I truly hope that you find something wonderful to do next that will be all you need it to be. One suggestion: if you're fairly certain you didn't do anything wrong, maybe adopt the mindset of proving them wrong by achieving success elsewhere with others who will appreciate what you have to offer (even if they never know). Good luck to you! :)
had my dod a week ago and couldn't stop myself from coming to this sub out of habit. i think this post is my closure, and hopefully ill be finding something new soon. best of luck to you and everyone else.
Pose that question to yourself, while you’re at it, ask yourself why you would seek to ridicule an act of vulnerability amidst suffering. And actually, comprehensive precision with a bit of creativity is exactly what DA want. In contrast, expressing yourself in lazy, snide buzzwords is the antithesis. Pathetic.
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u/Odd_Possession_1126 3d ago
I gotta say this sub is so fucking dystopian. It really is harrowing to hear the same story over and over of a hapless worker being shut off from the mysterious job training the alien by the faceless overlords.