Get ready to make a lot less money doing SpeechInk home transcription HITs. It looks like they're again testing the new multi-part HITs they had up a few weeks back, which I interpret as meaning they're getting ready to put the new forms into production very soon. For example, what was once four 4 cent hits (of 5, 3, 7, and 1 second duration) now gets bundled into a single 16 second four-part hit that pays 5 cents. This means instead of making 16 cents, you'll now make 5. I've done literally thousands of these hits and made a nice piece of change from them, but it looks like I'll be taking a pay cut of about 50% - 70% with the new format if I decide to continue working on them at all. I can't say that I blame them: they're in business to make money, not provide me with an easy source of income, but it was nice while it lasted.
So, we learned recently that their review HIT batching was a mess and that reviewers on home inspection still seem not to get the style guide. And now they're batching the home inspection transcribing itself, for less money. I'm still thinking SpeechInk's sounding like a company falling on hard times. Hope they figure this out, though, because paying so little isn't exactly going to keep their transcriber pool high quality. (Also, chuck, you write the best headlines...er, thread titles.)
You have to remember that even though they're huge on MTurk, Speechink is a tiny company, and they kind of have to be. They charge $1 minute for transcriptions through their Web site, but I'll bet their contracts with companies like Imfuna and the insurance companies pay them quite a bit less. If they have 3 people on payroll, you're talking about no less than $150K in payroll and another $150K in benefits per year, not to mention whatever rent they have to pay on their office space in the Copeland Building and other overhead, which means they have to move a lot of volume through to make their nut. This is why they don't respond to E-mails; they simply don't have the staff to do it. I would be truly shocked if the coding of new batch-based system for home inspection HITs wasn't outsourced to programmers in some distant land (that's how they did their Speechpad iPhone app).
Oh, I understand that they are not large. But IMO, not responding to their Turkers is still wrong. That isn't a measure of them being small. That's a measure of their being overwhelmed and disorganized. Part of good business has to be *not* doing stuff that you don't have the staff to handle, or figuring out first how you're *going* to handle it before you do it. I think the measure of a well-run MTurk company or requester, whether in transcription or not, is that they manage to make time to listen to you, and better yet, to let you know they're listening. To me, those are the ones worth paying more attention to, because they're still able to learn and grow. They make it a priority to take in information that could help them have a different perspective. So I'm sorry, but SpeechInk still is acting like they're drowning, from my point of view. Not confidence inspiring. (And although I'm wording this strongly, please know that I have always greatly respected your analyses! I just have a firm stance here.)
I think the reason they don't respond to their Turkforce is they simply don't have the time. I envision a tiny office with maybe 1-3 (5 on the outside) people working there, some of whom aren't even full-time. Most of the company functions (payroll, IT, application development, customer service) are probably outsourced. Likely most E-mails to the company get routed to their salespeople, who are absolutely disinterested in dealing with some irate Turker who's unhappy about the rating he got on his transcription, because that makes them no money, so any E-mail that doesn't have a prospect of making them money gets deleted. The founder of Speechink is a former professional poker player (he even wrote a book about how to play 7 card stud) and serial entrepreneur named Konstantin Othmer, but I think he's moved on, because his Linkedin profile says he left the CEO role in January of this year. CloudCar, Inc., which has the same office address as SpeechInk, is his baby now. You can check out his blog at konikaze.blogspot.com. His March 9, 2011 entry talks about Speechpad, which is just Speechink by another name.
Good and interesting info on the guy who founded SpeechInk...thanks! I know, you keep saying this. But I don't think it's a valid explanation. There are other companies and requesters on Turk that are that small, and they are highly responsive. In transcription, CastingWords is the main example. But Houdini is that size, also, or say, David Matchett---he's a one-person operation. John Gaddy might have a business with a small personnel list too, though I am not positive. Heck, there are companies all over the world that are that tiny, but their size is not an excuse for them to not respond to workers. The key is, they don't allow it to be. That's what it's really about. Not allowing possible excuses to be real excuses. I guess I'm saying that I never think it's a good sign when companies don't. It means they haven't got it all together and haven't got their priorities straight. Really glad you don't mind having this debate, though! Fun.
I am not debating you, because I think you're right. Companies should be responsive to all their stakeholders, not just their paying customers, and the Turkers that actually do the grunt work of transcribing all this work for SpeechInk should be actively engaged by the company. What I am arguing is that no one is going to do it free, and SpeechInk isn't going to pay someone to do it because they're a shoestring operation. I will say that there's a revealing blog post about the quality of transcription that Speechpad, which is another of SpeechInk's businesses, was willing to allow out the door: group on this was the best way to save some money to be out of these days more more of a start clicking coupons on the website of dvd else but how good are those deals and where can you turn if you want to get rid of that one tonight that c-17 favorite shows us how to find all that started in one place and how to resell the ones that you know honor what When held a radio logs onto her computer at least three coupon deals are waiting for her It’s close to have offered To subscribes to group on leading social in prague kat the real deal of the day websites that are popping up all over the wet leaving have won it wcco.com but group on this the biggest and the generic term... There's more at the blog post "TRANSCRIPTION FAIL: Speechpad vs. Dragon vs. Google Voice", but you get the point. Personally, I would have been ashamed to accept money for such a shoddy work product and would never have let it out the door, but Speechpad did. If they were willing to let such an obvious piece of garbage go out the door to a paying customer, what does that say about the company?
They are going to *stay* a shoestring operation because they aren't willing to pay someone to respond to their Turkers. That's my main point, that these are the small but crucial details that make the difference between companies that aren't building crap (or should I say...that are only building crap!) and companies that will manage to adapt and even innovate so they don't get buried. By the way, I think in companies that are well run, employees/contractors get invested enough that they'll care to go the extra mile on their own. Not necessarily to do whole jobs for free, but to do a little bit more. Surely SpeechInk knows Turker emails are going unanswered. So what would it take to put in an autoreply at any of their email addresses for Turkers, something saying that they're busy and might have a little delay in responding? At least then you'd know they got it. But no one there has even managed that. So it's not just a we-can't-afford-it problem. It's obvious they have an internal morale problem, too, because no one's bothering to even do little things. You provide some great supporting evidence about (lack of) finished quality, also. It makes me curious as to who (they think) their customers are. Because yeah, dictating into my own Google Voice voicemail would have gotten me similar results and been totally free. To me, this is why it's worth it to pick good requesters/companies to work for. Those are going to be folks who care about their business and what it stands for. That means they pay attention to the details, including workers and the quality of the finished product. If I pick who I work with/for that on that basis, then I don't have to feel like I have to be embarrassed about my choices, and I don't have to worry that they'll be happy to screw me over. One more thing: you mention their founder left as CEO in January. That's interesting, isn't it? 10 months later and they're not doing so well. Sounds like they needed him, or that possibly he took somebody with him.