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Comment by francisofascii | Hacker News Reader

Know a family member who worked for a reputable magazine as a fact checker, making about 35 K with good benefits. This was about 10 years ago. Fast forward to today. Same company, working from home only as needed, $30/hour, bringing in about 6K a year.

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Wow, that's a big difference. But what has changed? Was your family member doing the same amount of work (rough calc suggests around 4 hours per week) back then but in the context of a full-time job or is it just that there's less fact checking going on?

Well, they did have one other contractor. Also, back during the full time days, there were periods of no work or periods of waiting, due to either bad planning or maybe due to how the monthly magazine schedule works. Waiting on articles to get done, waiting for people to respond back, etc. Also probably cutting corners on fact-checking.

>>$30/hour, bringing in about 6K a year.

Was that a typo where you meant to type "60K" a year? That would make more sense, as $60K divided by $30/hr would be 2000 billable hours (40hrs/week * 50 weeks, not including 2 weeks vacation).

If that wasn't a typo, then 200 billable hours in an entire year (10% billable utilization) is a pretty tough way to make a living even with full benefits at the same company.

He said 'as needed'. Which I assume is a handful of hours/month.

Not a typo. My point was supporting the notion that publishing houses are doing away with employees and hiring 1099 contract workers from home on an as needed basis. Work would come in randomly and be due in a week. Instead of paying one FTE $35K plus benefits, they were paying presumably two contractors $6K each per year. $12K per year vs $35K is a huge savings for them. Also, it is more efficient, since the monthly magazine tended to have very busy periods and very slow periods during the month.

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