Work from Home Options Help Ease Global Impact
Since 2010, remote work has increased by 91%. In today’s world, though, working from home is becoming less of an option and more of a requirement. Fortunately, there are many industries that enable people to do that – like customer service, design, software development, online tutoring, and data annotation. Many of these industries, however, require substantial training before people can start earning an income. Customer service may need training on the product, platform, company, or team that they’re working with. Software development or design are a good fit for people who already have the technical knowledge and the right hardware to work from home. And tutors might need special certifications, permits or verified skills to be able to teach. As more and more people look to add supplemental income or shift their career paths, altogether, during a period where many of us are forced to stay home, it’s important for work from home options to be made available to ease the global impact on our society. Fortunately, not all industries have such a high barrier of entry. Artificial intelligence, for example, requires large volumes of high-quality training data. Developing training data is an industry that allows people’s life experience to be the foundational background that is needed to be successful when working on many labelling and collection projects. Attention to detail and a good understanding of their community can help people be proficient at making good judgements for relevance tasks, while a passion for visual arts, design or architecture can help with identifying objects in pictures or videos. With training data, people can put their skills and passions to work. There are millions of people all around the world who are working from home on data projects, and this is happening today. Our global Crowd consists of over one million skilled contractors in over 70,000 locations and 130 countries. Tamira, a member of our Crowd located in Canada talks about how she was worried about being alone on her work from home journey, but that she’s happy to have a community to lean on:“I thought I’d be alone when it came to learning my job, but I found that the community is great! I use the chat feature all the time, whether I’m asking questions or answering them, everybody answered my questions when I was new and I like to think I’m giving back now.”Jutta, a member of our Crowd in Finland, is happy about the versatility that enables her to contribute to many data labeling projects and also has a few working from home tips for many people who are doing it for the very first time:
“I have studied four different degrees and have experience, for example, in Communication, animal care and training, jewelry design, making miniature models, and coding websites. …If you get stressed or worried, take a break and read the guidelines and other resources again and try to relax. Try not to overthink and overanalyze, just do your best and you will be fine.”Atsuya, from Japan, shares how he balanced everything else in his life while working remotely:
“I run an urban agriculture business, and I need as much flexibility as possible to run my farm and to market my product outside whenever I need to. Plus living in Tokyo, I hate riding a packed train to get to work. Working from home removes stress from my life, while staying time-efficient. …I love the fact that I can work anytime I want, and also knowing that I’m helping the online community have a smoother interaction and experience on the internet.”